This is a lesson I took from my good friend and best-selling author Jonas Saul. Have a word count goal.
The reason I think this is so key is it gives you a small, but manageable goal to hit every single day.
Writing a book is a huge task—it can feel almost overwhelming. My last novel was over 100000 words. Writing that was a monster, and editing and re-writing it was probably worse. Even the idea of writing a 100000 word novel terrifies me. And I’ve done it.
But writing say, 500 words, is something almost can sit down and do in a day. Some days it’s going to be harder than others, but it’s almost always a manageable task.
And if you write 500 words a day, every day, for 120 days, you’ve got the first draft of a novel.
You can use a similar process with your editing. Rather than make a goal of editing your entire book, just try to edit one chapter per day.
That’s a doable task.
This process is a simple principle we can apply to almost any goal, not just writing. Break your goal down into small, manageable steps and tackle them one at a time. That’s how I approached starting this website. That’s how I approach my fitness goals.
So set a word count goal, and be disciplined. And let me know what that novel is done 😉
