Some Words

One of the hardest things, I think, when trying to write while holding down a regular job, is holding yourself accountable. I’ve set many goals over the past few years. Few of them have been met. It might be that I was setting my sights to high, it might be that I’m lazy. I’m not sure which it is. I think part of it is that sometimes I sit down, start to write, and the world falls away for a while. I come back a couple of hours later with somewhere between one thousand and four thousand words from that. Generally speaking I find it better when it’s less. The few times I’ve done four thousand words in two hours it has not been very special. Anyhow, I’m digressing, those times when I just sit down and write are great, but I have the attention span of a lemur most of the time.

To this end I’ve tried setting myself a goal that has a solid deadline, 60,000 words in the main project by the start of 2007. I then figured out what that meant on a daily basis, and set up to track how I was doing against that number, so that if I fell behind I would know how much slack I needed to pick up. So far it has been… less disappointing than other methods. As an experiment in productivity, I will have to wait until the new to see if it bear fruit.

On an just slightly related note. 43folders makes me wonder what the balance is between being productive, and just thinking about being really productive. At least I’m thinking.