Supernatural Writer

It’s the first week, of the first year of a new decade and one of your resolutions is to complete your book on the paranormal or supernatural.

You may have been here before. But it just didn’t last. The experience has made you a little bitter about writing projects. They’re easy to start, but hard to finish, you think.

If this sounds a little like you, here are a few tips you can use to make sure you stay resolved throughout the year.

Set a word count goal
Start with an idea about how big your project will be. A short guide to the paranormal will be about 15,000 -25,000 words. A book project will fall in the 45,000-80,000 word range.

Break it down
Break your word countl into a monthly, weekly, and/or daily goal. So, for example, you want your book to be about 24,000 words and you want a year to complete it. That means you’ll want to write 2,000 words a month, about 500 words a week, and 100 words a day. (Or, just 250 words on Saturday and Sunday–if you just want to work over the weekends.)

Set a monthly review
Instead of the “set it and forget it” approach to New Year’s resolutions, schedule a monthly review session when you look at your overall goal, note your progress, and determine next steps to complete the project.

Buddy up
Work with a writing buddy to urge each other on. (Your writing buddy doesn’t necessarily have to be a paranormal writer, or, really even a writer,just a writer or artist who’s on a similar goal-setting path.)

Stay inspired
Invest in some good books, movies, and trips that will keep you inspired. Staying in the flow is always easier than swimming against the creative current.

Tags: book project, goal setting, goals, New Years, resolution, word count, writing

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 2nd, 2010 at 5:03 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.