feels so good….

…to have set writing goals that I finally achieved.

The Serious Writer girls are meeting today and, for the first time in a long time, I actually don’t have to fork over my five bucks in defeat for not meeting the goals I set three weeks ago.

I was on a destructive path toward emptying my retirement account to contribute to the kitty because I couldn’t get my act together on the writing front a few months ago. I’d make my goals (write a chapter, a scene, etc. etc. etc.) but never managed to make them, or, in some cases, even come close to touching them.

I think I figured out why.

The story I was working on during that time was a flash-in-the-pan idea for a contest entry on a sub-genre I like reading but really didn’t have a good idea for writing. I struggled with trying to cram an old semi-circle-plot-idea into a square hole story and it just didn’t work. Those characters didn’t talk to me in my sleep, didn’t tease me with bits of their lives while I walked in the morning, didn’t compel me to pick up a pen and, well, frankly–do anything.

But this time, I set the bar so low I could almost trip on it. I only pledged to do morning pages for the past three weeks. I know with school schedules, my time is not my own (but slowly getting there), but I wasn’t about to shirk writing. If I managed to eke out any real writing…pages, scenes, dialogue, etc., that’d just be a bonus–but not the goal.

It worked. I’ve gotten up progressively earlier and written every single day. My morning pages might start with a dream snippet or a brain dump, but with growing regularity, they’re honing in on my story. Slowly, ever so slowly, but surely. Three weeks ago I was getting up at six, and this morning I hopped out of bed for an hour-long walk at 4:30 before settling in at 5:30. I didn’t have as much to write (hence my dropping by the blog) and the story didn’t do much today on paper but I picked up a few more details on the story that I wouldn’t have if I weren’t morning-paging.

Still deliberating the goal to set today. Page output? Chapter to finish? Plot to arrange? Or more intense morning pages? Not sure, but what I am sure of is that I get to spend that five bucks on a well-deserved coffee and cookie with the SW girls and not in the kitty!