It’s a struggle.

Trying to still get some words written despite school and other life stuff. Just trying to write down that one idea, just one paragraph, or that one sentence. And at the end of the month, sometimes we wonder, where in the world did my time go? 

Sometimes the only thing keeping us from reaching our word count goals is inadequate planning. It might even be unrealistic goals that we’ve set for ourselves. When you set your goal too high, you are setting yourself up for failure. Sure, you want to push yourself, but be honest about your abilities and take into consideration life commitments.

Here’s a simple process to plan out your word count goals every month, and achieve them.

Step 01. Figure out your average Words Per Minute (WPM)

Start a timer for five or ten minutes and start writing immediately. Try not to think about the timer; just go at your normal pace. At the end of the time, do a little match (I know, ugh) to figure out how many words you can write per minute. Doing this will help you better figure out your goals for the month.

Step 02. Take a look at your calendar

Be sure to take a look at your calendar for the month to be aware of commitments and other things that may come up that you will have to work around or will cut into writing time. Keep all those things in mind when you take this next step…

Step 03. Set your goal for the month

How many words do you want to get written this month? Write it down.

Step 04. Figure out your weekly goal

Divide your month’s word count goal by the number of weeks in the month. Now you know how many words you have to write each week in order to reach your goal.

Step 05. Figure out your daily goal

Now divide your weekly goal by the number of days in the week you’ll be able to write. For example, for me, I would probably divide it by five, since I don’t write on Sundays and usually not on Saturdays either. Be sure to take into consideration your other commitments when figuring out how many days you’re going to write in a week.

Step 06. Figure out how many minutes you have to write a day

Here’s where you WPM comes especially in handy. Based off of that, figure out how many minutes you would have to write in one day to reach your daily goal.

At the end of the month…

Once the month is over, compare you starting goal with the words you actually wrote. Did you reach your goal? Go over? Just under? If you didn’t reach it, try to figure out why. Maybe you set your goal a bit too high, or maybe life stuff got in the way. Figure out what things are in your control and what aren’t. And don’t beat yourself up over it if you didn’t get done what you wanted. You got something done, and that’s better than nothing. 😉

Now, you can start planning out your next month, following the same steps. You’d only need to retest yourself for your WPM if you feel like you’re writing faster/slower.

I hope you find these simple steps helpful in accomplishing your word count goals. If you’d like to continue to use this method to plan your month, then click on the graphic below to get access to a monthly planner template using these 6 steps that you can print and fill out. Enjoy!

Write on,

How do you like this method? Do you find my PDFs helpful? How do you plan out your goals?

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