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Status: Drafting the fourth book in the PERILOUS series!

Monday, August 19, 2013

Having Realistic Goals

I've been setting myself up for failure, and I just now realized it.

My life is full with wonderful pleasures, and there's hardly a spare moment to sit and breathe. My baby dinosaur (i.e., my baby girl who roars like a dinosaur) is happily roaring next to me as I type, her little feet and toes playing on my arm. I am content, happy, and fulfilled.

And every evening when the kids have gone to bed and I have an hour to myself, I write.

I'm currently working on the third book to the Perilous series (can I get a "yay!"?), a book I had set a goal to finish by the end of September. My plan was to write 3000 words every night.

And each night for the past week, I've written between 50-300.

I can't reach that goal of 3000, and I've been beating myself up for it. Instead of blaming myself, I've decided to blame the goal. It's too high. If I'm struggling to reach 500, how can I do 3000?

So I'm changing my goal to 500. That's lofty for me. It's not a lot, but it's more than what I've been doing. It's a reach. And I can do it. And I will reward myself generously for doing so.

The bottom line is, I think having a realistic goal will help me more in the long run than having one I consistently fail at. Who knows? I just might write more than that from time to time.

Self-esteem goes a long way, baby.

What are you working on? How do you feel about your goals?

2 comments:

Librarian said...

Here's another "Yay" for you :-)

You are right about setting yourself realistic goals. Anything else would be just too frustrating.
Knowing myself very well, I rarely set myself a goal I can not reach, and therefore am rarely disappointed with myself. Well, I rarely set myself much of a goal anyway - there is stuff that needs doing and stuff I want to do, and it usually balances out quite well between the two sorts.

Aaron and Emily said...

I didn't realize there would be a third book, I am glad! It sort of seemed like the series could be over, but I wanted to know if anything else would happen... you know, character attachment!

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