Making Plans

I'm a planner by nature. I thoroughly enjoy the process, whether it be for a vacation or a party, I really just thrive on organizing and researching, making choices, bringing everything together. Which surprises me that I started out writing as a panser, but in the end I did reform and become a plotter.

Thus far in my career, I have gotten by on making my own deadlines. I never had to finish a book by a certain date. It was all on me to make the plans. And I've been pretty damn good about sticking to them. It's really hard to be motivated to work hard to get something done by a certain day when no one is breathing down your neck. If you fail, there's no one to hold you accountable. But I do hold myself accountable. I mean, no, I don't reprimand myself or anything...that would just be weird. But I do feel pretty crappy when I let myself down.

I made a new plan for the rest of summer vacation and for the month of September. At the start of this week, I had four full weeks until we leave for our big California/Vegas adventure. I'm currently working on the second book in my Classy n' Sassy series. I don't have an official deadline for it, so I made my own. I want it done by September 30th.

In order to do that, I have decided to aim for 5,000 words a week until we leave. That's 20,000 over the course of 4 weeks. Now, my normal weekly goal is 10,000 words. But in the summer when the kids are home and we have activities and things going on, it's just not an attainable goal. I would be setting myself up for disappointment if I tried to reach that. So I made a far more accessible goal, and if I do more, fantastic. After those 4 weeks, we go on our trip, and I've allotted for recuperation when we get back. I plan to get back on the wagon on Tuesday the 3rd of September with a proper 10K a week word count goal. That should give me another 40,000-50,000 by the end of the month and should finish the book.

I also have a writing retreat in September. My local RWA chapter will be spending the weekend at a fabulous B&B. Last time we did this I wrote 11K+ over the course of 3 days.

So there's my plan! Do you make plans? Do you have deadlines put on you by others or just yourself? Are you good at meeting them?