On Writing Challenges and Goals

I have noticed a tendency in writers (and people in general) to respond with more productive work when they have a definite, short term goal. This Ultimate Blog Challenge is a good example. I usually post once a week, now I am going to post every day? Are they nuts? The mind starts throwing up all sorts of reasons why it won’t work, we just started a new school year, I have to finish the trilogy, NaNoWriMo is next month…  However, I’ve been down this road before.  Non-essentials have a way of fading from view, leaving more time for what actually matters. Creativity gets shifted into overdrive and you start thinking outside the box.

When I am just writing, all sorts of things distract me from the task at hand. The only times I used to get serious about writing was when I was part of an active, online writing group that regularly challenged each other by posting word counts and during NaNoWriMo. For those of you who don’t know, that it National Novel Writer’s Month and the challenge is to write 50k words on a novel in the month of November. That’s a huge goal, and I have never quite achieved it. I continue to participate because the goal, the awareness of daily word counts for a finite period, makes me both more productive and more creative. This seems to extend out beyond the actual time of the challenge for several months.

I guess we are all a bit lazy. It would be easy enough to set personal goals for yourself all the time, but something mystical seems to take place when doing it as part of a group. Part of it is cheering each other on, or maybe the sense of competition. Whatever it is, it gets the mind in focus, the fingers limber, and the spirit seems to soar.