i really suck at goals

Hopefully I'll do better next time. Not a good summer on my part.

Comments

[Cerulean Voice]

Hey, that's 59,258 more words than I wrote this summer so congrats!

[Luna Aeterna Solutae]

4919307
Same

[Super Trampoline]

Still far more than I wrote so good job!

[Crescent Minor]

I'm staring a writing goal in the face that I think I'll fail, myself. Looking back, I could have stood to try harder; there were far too many days I didn't manage to write a thing, I just worried about it all day. I feel your pain. But there's always another try, eh?

[The Elusive Badgerpony]

You wrote more and more consistently than 99% of the people here, Gary. That’s an accomplishment in of itself.

However, wordcounts alone count for little when the content of that wordcount isn’t good. And I’m not saying you don’t write great things, because you do, but I am imploring you to consider in the future undertaking self-imposed challenges that will help you write better, not write more.

Though if the goal of this particular exercise was the simply get writing consistently, then I would file it underneath “success”.

[GaryOak]

4919354
Yeah. I'm just sad because summer is prime writing time... except for the heat and not having AC.
4919307 4919315
Thanks guys. The issue for me is that my goal was intended for me to get my project from ~100k to 200k words by the end of summer, and it's only just shy of 150k. 16.5k of those words went into a clopfic that got very poor (compared to its predecessors) reception. It's hard because the project in question is looking like it'll be 400k words long.
4919386
Yeah... I'm trying to write lots of words that are also fairly good at the same time. I always look to get better each time I write a section of my novel, but the main goal of the word count sheet was to get me to write faster, due to the sheer number of words the story will need.

[GaryOak]

4919349
Thanks

[Luna Aeterna Solutae]

4919433
I'm also staring two contests in the face that I know I'm not even going to bother writing for, let alone submitting, because I know I can't place and that I won't hit the miniscule required wordcounts

[GaryOak]

4919480
I've never really tried contests since I'm either busy with something else or writing for a different project.

[Bad Horse]

60K is a lot of words for a few months.

I wouldn't worry so much about word count. It's not very important. All of Earth's culture only gets two words in the Guide anyway.

[equestrian.sen]

56. Bronycon

How many words is a good con worth?

I, uh... I'm not much of a writer. Let's see if I can draw an analogy though.

There's a lot more to writing than putting words to your thoughts. I imagine you also need a ton of inspiration for the story, a ton of time discovering the details, a ton of time doing the research, and a ton of motivation to carry through. How much of that did you gain this summer?

It's hard because the project in question is looking like it'll be 400k words long.

It sounds like you gained a lot of that.

[GaryOak]

4919704
True. The most taxing aspect of writing an epic is just the sheer amount of words you need to put on the page for the story to unfold. That's why I set such a high goal for myself, since I want the draft done before summer of next year. Having this epic come out by the time Bronycon 2019 rolls around would be nice, but I don't know if it'll happen.
4920255
The cons last year actually inspired me to take the plunge with starting this project in the first place. I've had it in my head for several years, but never acted on it because I was afraid of committing to something this ambitious. The whole 400k words expected target isn't new from this year's cons. I did rigorous outlining at the end of spring, where I made a 25 page beat sheet for the whole book, and made the calculations based on "present" course numbers and how many scenes I have left to write. Currently, they're averaging around 3,000 words apiece, and I have over 100 scenes left to write.