Going into the New Year, I have decided to focus more on productivity, time management and tracking. This is my seriouser serious year. 

Last year, my goal was to publish my first book. This year, my goal is to publish the final four Second Star novellas, to finish out the series and begin work on the two other projects I have sitting in my TO WRITE folder. Hell, I may even do something crazy and work on a few projects simultaneously.

The word-count spreadsheet I used last year, tracked daily, weekly, monthly and yearly word counts. This year I’ve kicked it up a notch, and started tracking avg. daily word counts as well, as well as non-fiction words. After all, a lot of my “work-time” is spent writing blog articles (like this one) and interviews and reviews. Too many days on my calendar were blank last year, because I didn’t track those words. NEVA AGAIN! Muahahaahaa…ha…

So…anywho,

Writing…it’s what I do.

Because I’m so close to releasing my first book, Second Star: Breaking Through, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’m trying to get out of this whole “writer” thing. What goals am I trying to accomplish and how am I going to measure success? Of course, numbers are important, but is that all it really boils down to?

Yesterday, while watching my writing partners swim around aimlessly in their own little private world, I decided that numbers weren’t really the driving force for my writing, and that I would count it a success if I sold one copy or one million copies. Hell, I’m going to be writing anyway, I’ve been doing it for years before I even learned about the world of Indie Publishing.

I mean, if I’m going to be writing anyway, whatever money I make is just a bonus, right?

As I was writing Breaking Through, I constantly worried about it if would sell or not. Of course, I want people to enjoy the book, but for some reason I had it in my head that if it wasn’t a breakout hit, it would be a failure.

This weekend, I read an article about Elmore Leonard, an extremely successful and popular Hollywood author. It covered some details about his life and described how he struggled to become that popular writer. You see, he wasn’t always successful and popular, in fact, it took him thirty years of writing to finally have a breakout hit. Thirty years.

That’s when my own light bulb came on. DING! I didn’t have to write a breakout hit with my first book. Don’t get me wrong, that would be awesome, but I was putting so much pressure on myself thinking that if the book didn’t immediately soar to the bestseller list in its first week then what was the point? When selling books really isn’t the point at all, its writing them and knowing that people are reading them. Even if it’s only twenty people.

I write because I enjoy writing. 

You say, “But doesn’t it cost a lot of money to publish your work?” Well, sure, it does, but then I would come back with this, “what hobbies don’t cost money?” And my follow up would be, “and how many of those hobbies pay you back?”

Now, granted, I’ve only made a grand total of $5 on my first published story, The Watch, but I’m completely okay with that. There are people out there that have read my work, and from the feedback I’ve received, it appears that people enjoyed it. That’s enough for me.

Now, I’m not saying that writing is just a hobby for me; I take it very serious and dedicate a lot of my time and energy to perfecting my craft. Whether it's working on posts for my blog, doing reviews or author interviews or playing around with cover art, it's all part of my passion to create. 

I don't plan to hit it big; in fact, I don't even plan to hit it any size. I plan on writing stories, then making those stories into the highest quality book I can and putting them out there for people read. If it took Elmore Leonard thirty years to make it big, why should I care if I make it big with my first book?

When I was considering going back to school a few years about, I was talking with my Dad and I told him it was going to take forever to graduate. I said, “Dad, at this rate I won’t graduate til I’m 40.” His answer to this was so profound I literally blew my mind and changed the way I look at almost everything I set out to do, he said, "Well, son, you're going to be 40 anyway, so you can be 40 with a degree or 40 without one." 

Mind. Blown.

If by some anomaly it sells a gazillion copies, well, I’ll probably freak-out for a few days and then I’ll write the next one. If it doesn't sell a gazillion copies then I'll still be writing the next one, and the next one, and the next one. 

It’s what I do.

I have dabbled in writing off and on for the better part of twenty years; it’s always been a fun hobby and until recently, I never really thought about it as actual work. I can’t count the number of projects I’ve started, loved and worked on, only to get bored and lose focus halfway through. The amount of unfinished stories I have laying around is silly. Maybe one day…

Throughout my life there have been times were I would write every day for hours, but usually those periods of inspiration were separated by weeks—even months—of not writing a single word. Little voices in my head told me I would have time to finish the book later, that eventually inspiration would hit and the book would write itself. Surprisingly, this never happened.

Until recently, my “writing career” has consisted of unfinished projects and ideas that never seem to make the transition from my brain to paper. It was always been just a fun pastime, something I really didn’t take very seriously. Of course, I’ve always dreamed of seeing my books on bookshelves, even thought about becoming rich and famous, something always held me back. I’m not exactly sure what that was either. Maybe it was the dread of submitting the completed manuscript to a publisher or worse: that people would hate my work. (I know on some level that fear is still there.) 

But you know what I discovered? If I don’t ever finish a book, no one will ever have the opportunity to hate it and more importantly; love it. About the same time this light bulb went off a second blinked on right beside it: books don’t write themselves. They take work, and finally for the first time in my life I made the decision to take that work seriously.

My first hurdle was not having a deadline. Anyone that knows me can tell you, I’m quite possibly the biggest procrastinator in the entire world. Hell, I put off vacuuming until 5 minutes before my wife gets home when I’ve had all day to do it. Not having a deadline was killing my writing. I could put off working on a project indefinitely because it wasn’t due…ever.

So, I stated this blog and decided that no matter what I would have something posted every week. I planned several post for this blog, as well as posts that I will write for my reviews page, and gave myself deadlines for everything. Looking at my “work” calendar can be slightly overwhelming sometimes, but having something due every week reminds me that I need to sit down and write.

After developing my work schedule for the website I decided to push the envelope even further and give myself a daily word count that was completely independent of the words I wrote for my blog or reviews. 500 was the lucky number and I created a spreadsheet to track and calculate my daily, weekly and monthly totals.

At first, I told myself I needed 500 words EVERYDAY but after the first week, I realized writing seven days a week wasn’t the best idea either. I didn’t want to burn myself out. There is a reason the workweek isn’t 7 days, body and mind require rest to work properly. So I decided to give myself a break during my writing week as well. I set aside two days during the week that I’m not required to work, even though I probably will.

Week 1 is officially in the books and so far, I have met my goals (with the exception of Sunday--Bad Josh!) What’s interesting is that the more I hit “Publish Live” on by blog and the more numbers I punch into my spreadsheet, the more I want to write. Finishing a book is a great goal, and one that you should work hard at, but sometimes that can been too much to handle. If you’re anything like me, that goal seems so far away that some days I doesn’t even seem reachable. So, instead of having one massive goal give yourself smaller, more manageable ones. 

Having reasonable and attainable goals will keep you motivated and make you WANT to reach the next one. Sometimes it feels like it takes forever to reach that 500th word, but other days I surpass it and keep right on typing. Even Stephen King can’t write a novel in a day but he can (and does) punch out a few hundred words each day. 

Set yourself a goal: a page a day, 500 words a day it doesn’t matter. But whatever it is, stick to it no matter what. So, finish reading this silly blog, pull up your project and start typing. They don’t have to be good words; they just have to be words.

Because if you don’t take your writing seriously no one else will.

Now go write.

Josh