Hello!

News:

I wrote another 8,000 words from my Frostfire draft this week. Much slower than I’d originally hoped, but still significant progress. If I can keep up this pace I ought to finish by at least the end of September, and that’s not too bad.

Looks like I’ll get to go to some writing conventions this year, so stay tuned! Also, I’m finally getting business cards! And I finally got an annoying issue with the website fixed! Progress! Woo-hoo!

Writing Tip:

It really helps to set weekly and daily goals. Goals can be a great way both to motivate you to work harder and also to help you see the progress you’ve made. Writing a book can take months or even years, and whether your book sells or not is out of your control, so for your own sanity as much as anything else you need to have smaller goals that you can consistently set and reach (note that setting ridiculously high goals that you don’t reach doesn’t really help). I can’t tell you how much it helps to be able to see that you’re making progress, that you’re actually accomplishing something.

I’ve also found that different kinds of goals work better for different parts of the writing process. Word count goals work well for the drafting phase, whereas a number of short stories or scenes to finish editing can work better when you’re just fine-tuning things. Setting goals to accomplish specific tasks can help (works better when you can break them into small steps so that even if you don’t finish the entire task at least you can measure the parts you did get done), but that can be a bit iffy if you haven’t done that kind of task before and don’t really know how long it’ll take. One goal that I find works well for just about every part of the process is a time goal. You might not know how long it’ll take to finish worldbuilding or write your outline or solve this problem with your story that seems impossible, but you can commit to spending a certain amount of time each week towards getting it done, and if you keep throwing time at it, eventually you’ll figure it out.

I like to write new goals in pen at the end of each day and check them off during the day as I get them done. Don’t be afraid to adjust your goals if something comes that ruins your day. The point of goals is to encourage you to try harder and to see your progress, not to beat yourself up. I like to set stretch goals so that if I can exceed my base goals, I get some kind of reward, whether that’s 10 to 15 minutes to work on a fun side-project, a spoonful of ice cream, a chance to read a writing book, or something else. It helps to keep the rewards small for daily stretch goals, but for weekly ones or completing a major project? Feel free to have fun with it!

Anyway, thanks for reading. Good luck on your journey, and may you make tomorrow better.

For Redwall!!!

Timothy Kuhn