als on blast targets

what's the point of setting targets?

if you feel like writing, you write, right?

and if you don't, you don't.

that's the way i used to write when i started this whole thing of trying - pretending - to be a writer.

i had no idea how much i'd written in a week, or a month, and i had no idea how much i should be writing in a week or a month.

no one can tell you how much you SHOULD be writing. no one apart from yourself.

and that's where targets come in, for me.

it's easy to con yourself that you're a writer, but if you've got records of how much you wrote that week, that month, that year, how many words, stories, poems, how many subs, how many rejects ets then you can prove it. or otherwise.

it helps me to realise that i'm not doing enough, and it gives me a buzz to know that, hey, this month i'm the most productive i've been since january.

this month we're having a blast. personal targets are set for amounts of words, stories, flashes, poems, subs. these targets are posted, made public, and a continuous thread is kept updating how close we get to meeting the targets.

now that's pressure!

but a good, positive kind of pressure. the kind of pressure that inspires you to work, to admit your failures (and successes) to your peers.

the setting of these targets is, for me, important.

no point being all pie-in-the-sky about it. they have to be realistic, otherwise the month is a failure befre you start. but equally, there's no point being cautious, just in case. that ruins the whole point of the exercise.

so i've set realistic but demanding targets for myself. targets i should be able to meet, if i put in some effort. this should mean i get some writing done, more than usual, and get some stories out there, more than i already have.

the big thing is - as alex always says - to hit these targets quickly. a push at the beginning of the blast means that you're never playing catch-up.

personally, i find this almost impossible as i live my whole life around the premise of why do today what you can put off til tomorrow.

but i'm going to give it a go and try for a quick start to the blast, today, and try to hit all my targets early.

so here they are:

4 stories (usual for a month)

10 flashes (usually i do none!)

10 poems (most i've evere managed is six)

20 subs (i struggle to hit 10 usually)

20,000 words (again, i usually struggle to hit 10,000)

these might not seem like a big deal, but they are to me (and that's the point)

so, let's see how it goes.