Smash Your Word Count Goals in 3 Easy Steps
from our sponsors at Freewrite
Here at Freewrite, we help writers reach peak productivity in order to meet word count goals and create their best work yet. Thatâs our reason for being.
Today, weâre going to share the three easy steps proven by science to help you reach your writing goals!
1) Set A Goal & Write It Down
The psychology of goal setting is pretty clear. Itâs what NaNoWriMo is all about, right? Research has proven that people who set goals experience higher motivation and are more likely to feel accomplished.
However, the type of goal you set makes a big difference to your efforts. Make sure that your goals are (a) clear and specific, (b) realistic, and (c) measurable.
Being clear about your goal will help you hone in on what youâre trying to achieve and ignore distractions. Make sure to write it down, as well. Research by psychologist Gail Matthews has revealed that people who write down goals are 33% more successful than those who simply set a goal in their head.
Next, be realistic. This means being honest with yourself about what you can and canât achieve based on your other life obligations. Setting goals that you canât achieve will only lead to frustration and, ultimately, a lack of motivation.
And last, make sure each goal is measurable. âWrite 1,000 words each dayâ is much easier to measure than âFinish this book.â Because we all know itâs difficult to measure a book being âdoneâ!
Breaking these goals down into smaller, simpler steps will help, too. If your goal is to write 20,000 words during Camp NaNo, break that down into 5,000 words a week, and then figure out how many words youâll have to write each day to reach those smaller goals.
2) Practice Freewriting
Freewriting is thinking. Itâs as simple â and as difficult â as that.
While every writer is unique, and there is no one way to be a writer, there are similarities we all share as humans â especially humans in the modern world â that create common obstacles to doing the things we love â like reading, writing, and yes, thinking. There are the obvious external obstacles: social media, email, the internet. But there are sneaky internal obstacles, too â the main culprit being the inner critic.
As humans, we are judgmental. Itâs in our DNA. Our brains are constantly assessing situations, imagining outcomes, and making decisions. Itâs part of survival at a very basic level. However, that means that when we do anything, including writing, we tend to automatically assess our actions â judging our own words, tweaking and editing them as we go along. That constant evaluation not only hinders progress, it can also stop us from ever getting started. And if we do manage to sit down to write, that inner critic creates an unconscious anxiety that prevents us from experimenting and writing down our most innovative and creative â and weird! â ideas.
Weâve all heard the advice to âwrite now, edit later.â Or perhaps youâve heard writers reference âthe sloppy/crappy/messy first draft.â Those are just fun ways of referencing the writing method in which you separate the drafting process from the editing process. Or, what we call freewriting.
Many people havenât written this freely since childhood, but thereâs a reason this method is taught in MFA programs. Getting your thoughts down first and revising later increases productivity and yields better, more creative work because it allows you to give your brain fully to each task. It means that when youâre drafting, youâre drafting, and when youâre editing, youâre editing. Thereâs no context-switching or multitasking.
So, what if you gave yourself permission to write badly at first? And we donât just mean cheesy or with glaring plot holes â we mean typos, missing words, character names replaced by big Xs because you couldnât remember them in the moment.
The next time you draft, we challenge you to give it a try. Just let yourself go and give your thoughts and feelings over to the act of creating. Because thatâs when the magic happens.Â
3) Track Your Stats
OK, youâve set measurable goals, and youâve started drafting. Whatâs next?
Track your efforts!
Here at Freewrite, weâve created a tool to automatically track important writing stats, like word count, writing days, writing streak, and more! Itâs called a Postbox Profile, and it gives you a unique URL that allows you to share your stats with writing friends.
Anyone with a Postbox account â thatâs anyone who writes on a Freewrite OR uses our free in-browser drafting tool, Sprinter â can create a Postbox Profile and track their stats.
đDonât have a Freewrite yet? No problem! We have a FREE in-browser drafting experience called Sprinter that helps you shut down distractions and make progress â and gives you access to Postbox. Start writing today absolutely FREE at sprinter.getfreewrite.com.
đReady to grab your own Freewrite? Our entry-level device, Alpha, is $50 off this June only! Just use code STARTWITHALPHA at checkout.
