Today’s #WritingTip: How to Get the Writing Done 

Some people get really overwhelmed by the size of a project. It might be an entire novel, a short poem, or a short story and the scope and sequence of that projects seems really overwhelming. How do you plan this?

When you’re planning a writing project:

1. Write down your end goal. Is is to complete a short story or to write three finished poems? Once you got your goal in mind you’re going to write down the steps to get there. You might start generating ideas or you might start by setting aside some time to actually write the project. 

2. Choose a deadline. Choose a day that you are going to have this project done. This is really really important for actually completing projects. I can’t emphasize the importance of deadlines. Once you set that deadline for yourself you’re going to work backwards from that date. So, today is the day you would do step one and tomorrow, or two days from now, or a week from now, will be when you take on step two.

3. Pace yourself. Be really honest with yourself about how much you can get done. It’s very admirable and ambitious if you say you’re going to get everything done today but you also might be setting yourself up for failure. When you set yourself up for failure you’ll feel yucky about yourself. You don’t want to come back to the project feeling like you failed. So, make reasonable goals for yourself and pace your project in a reasonable way. 

Follow these steps above and you will notice how much lighter it feels to write and finish your project. If you are ready to talk about where you are, where you’d like to go, and how you can get there let’s chat. You can put yourself right into my calendar with this link. I look forward to hearing about your writing.