IWSG - Month End Performance Review

This is my May post for Alex Cavanaugh's Insecure Writers Support Group, which as always features a group of writers helping other writers.  To read more posts, click here.  

When I worked for corporate America, each year before review time, we were required to write goals for the upcoming year.   Early on in the game, my husband taught me a valuable (albeit cynical) lesson.  “Make sure it’s a real goal.  But before you submit it, make sure it’s one you can achieve.  At next review time, you don’t want to have to explain why you didn’t.”

I must have had some of that in my heart when I announced my April writing quest in my last IWSG post. I planned to write 1000 words a day for at least five days a week on my first draft of my WIP,  for the entire month of April.  If I factored in the two week-days left at the end of the month, I’d write 22K by April 30.  Adhering to my husband’s guidelines, that number was a real goal, and achievable.   I could have raised the bar higher, could have gone for 1000 words seven days a week, or 1500 a day five days a week.  But I know myself.  Too much pressure stresses me out.  So I announced my modest proposal here, and went at it.  

Now I've reached review time.  In spite of a few instances when life took away my opportunity to write, and a couple of days when I managed a mere 200 words, my total word count for the month comes to over 26K (just on this project, I didn't include any other writing) which, in corporate parlance, exceeds expectations.  This brings me about 20K away from the end of my first draft.

What does any of this have to do with IWSG?  Well, one of the most difficult things about being a writer is holding ourselves accountable.  It’s so easy to say, “I like to write.”  We can like it all we want, but we can’t be writers unless we write.  No one however, is going to stand over us and watch, no one is going sit us down for a year-end review filled with financial incentives.  No one is going to stop us if we fritter all our time away Googling obscure facts, or writing Facebook or Twitter updates.  Borrowing a phrase I used to use to my staff of corporate recruiters, it's up to us to drive the bus.  It takes digging deep, setting goals and going after them (and in my case broadcasting them here at Middle Passages).  Bottom line, we are all responsible for discovering what works for us and using that tool to move forward. 

No matter how we do it, success is more likely to come when push ourselves beyond our comfortable limits, in other words, when we force ourselves to exceed our own expectations.

P.S.  A hearty thank you to Alex Cavanaugh and his A-Z challenge which triggered my April writing quest as a result of my desire to challenge myself "differently." I am so pleased with the result!