As I continue to grapple with my procrastination and time wasting tendencies, I've been trying to look at my goals in smaller chunks to make them more approachable.
Faced with a deep edit/rewrite on my current novel, I have been blocked from working by the overwhelming size of the project. When you write a book, you can say to yourself, I'm going to write two pages or I'm going to write two thousand words. When I edit, I find that I might delete and rewrite as many as a thousand words from a chapter and net what appears to be nothing. And that may have taken me three hours to do. So, I'm still on page 35 and I don't have anything I can track that I've accomplished. So, how am I supposed to set goals when I don't know how long something will take.
Then today I had a brainstorm. Two pages a day (or night in my case). That's what I'm going to do. Ninety single spaced pages divided by two is 45 days. I'm going to edit my book in 45 days. Now, I'm not sure if this will work, but at least I can say to myself every day that I'm going to edit two pages. Anything more that gets done is gravy. Anything less and I track how long those two pages took so I can make adjustments down the road.
So now my task doesn't feel quite so daunting and I'm eager to get at it. I'll keep you updated as to my progress and how my process is working.
Today's Goal: 2 pages of editing on Chapter 3
Yesterday's Accomplishment: I submitted my entry to Harlequin Presents Instant Seduction Contest
What I'm Grateful for: My new Change Coach, Karen Hughes
Today's Affirmation: Slow and steady wins the race (oh wait, that's the moral of a fable)
