At our writing group meeting tonight, we talked a bit about taking stock of how the writing year is going so far. That's not a bad thing to do; we're about halfway through the year and it's always good to re-examine goals periodically.
However, what interested me was the different ways we approached it. One member knew how many rejection slips she'd received so far this year. I had just finished adding up new words I'd written for the year, and wasn't completely satisfied with the numbers. There are other ways we could have taken stock, too; I had two short stories published; my partners and I have almost completed work on a new anthology; we could have counted submissions made or larger projects completed. The member who knew her rejection numbers is working on her second new story in just a few months. So some of these ways of looking at our writing obviously would have turned out more positively than others.
Similarly, I was intrigued earlier this week when another writing group (the virtual one this time) decided to post personal goals to try and reach by our next meeting. What interested me was the variety of ways people set those goals: write X number of words daily or in total; finish a particular story; work on a writing course or lesson; put something into submission. I don't know if any two writers approached the exercise in exactly the same way.
I guess my point is this: it's important to set goals, and it's important to re-examine them and your progress as a writer from time to time. But there are many ways of doing both. The thing to remember when setting goals is to make them reasonable; attainable if challenging. And the thing to remember when taking stock is that while you may feel you haven't done as well in some areas of your writing life, chances are that if you've been working at it, you've made progress in other areas. Be sure to consider your writing life from all angles and get "the big picture," rather than focusing on one or two negative areas. That will make it easier to sit down and write again tomorrow.
Okay, everyone get back to work! We'll see you next month!
Taking Stock
