time on task = success

When I was teaching high school and middle school English, the easiest way to explain to students and parents how to bring up a student's grade was to simply "do the work and try to do it well." In most cases bad grades had less to do with intelligence and talent than it had to do with "time on task," how long the student spent on an assignment or independent study. Greater time on task equaled better grades.

The same case can be made for success in writing. Here's what novelist David Morrell has to say about accomplishing the task of writing a novel in his non-fiction work on the subject, The Successful Novelist.

"To accomplish the task, the goal has to be redefined. When I sit down to write a novel, I don't think of it as a novel. Oh, sure, I've made my preparations. I know the scope of the plot and the nature of the characters. But if I keep reminding myself of the size of the job, if I constantly bear in mind that I'll be sitting at this same spot a year from now, working on the same project, I'll quit with exhaustion before I get started. For me, the goal isn't to write a novel. It's to write five pages a day. They're not perfect. They need frequent revision down the road. But at least they exist.

If you're someone who doesn't have the luxury of writing all day, restrict your goal to so many words per day or week. The mathematics is interesting. A page a day is 365pages a year, the length of a novel. The key is to subdivide the huge task of a novel into smaller steps. By achieving the manageable goal you've set for yourself, you'll have a sense of daily accomplishment. Focus your attention on the short term, and the novel will take care of itself."

My goal is to average a 1,000 words a day, but I don't write every day. I'm happy if I write 7,000 words in a week, even if it means nothing on one day and 2,500 on another, as long as I make my 7,000 at the end of the week.

What's your writing goal?