Moving Forward

I've spent quite a lot of time over the past 2 months beating myself up over slow progress on "Heal Thyself." I've been feeling stuck, as if I've been struggling through the final 10+K forever. The truth is, on Feb 7th, I posted a snippet at 88k. Today, I clicked over 93k. That's a net gain of 5K in 2 months. With my unofficial goal of 1k a day/ 5K a week it would be easy to look at this small progress as failure.

The truth is I'm pleased with what I've accomplished. Would I have liked a higher word count? Certainly. But this 5K was hard fought and hard won. And it wasn't the only writing I did in the timeframe. I wrote and edited a short story for the Writers of the Future Contest, edited and organized an ebook on pain for writers, and provided workshop support for poems at Wild Poetry Forum.

In addition, I worked up the idea for a new YA UF and drafted a few scenes for it.

All in all, I'll take it for someone writing in and around the demands of family and a day job.

Which is not to say I don't want to get back to my 1K a day goal.


Goals are wonderful as long as they help move you forward. Slavish adherence to an unrealistic goal can derail the writing process.

May the writing flow smoothly for all of you in writer land.