I am blessed to know some other aspiring authors and be able to share this journey with them. I made a Facebook group for us, so we can share the disappointments, excitement, and everything in between that trying to become a published author causes, and all in the safety of a private group of people who understand the deeply personal nature of writing. When I started the group, I knew I wanted a place where I could share my journey without announcing it to the world in general. It is rare to get the first book you write published, and knowing that, I was unwilling to share my hope of doing just that with everyone.
This year, we have started telling each other what our writing goals are for each month. So far, we have only January finished, and out of the three of us who ventured forth our writing goals, I was the only one to complete them.
I could just feel the sighs from the other two ladies when they said that they had not completed their writing goals. One of them actually wrote that she had "failed" both of her goals.
Now I don't know exactly how driven they are to complete their goals right now. I know one of them is traveling, and the other is in the very early stages of resurrecting a book she started writing years ago.
But I do know that there are times when our writing goals don't get completed in the time allotted to them.
Writing is so different from anything else I have done in my life. With most things, when you set a goal, they are easily achievable. If I plan to exercise three days a week, I know exactly how to complete that goal. If I want to spend an hour cleaning a week, I know how to do that. If I don't succeed at those goals, it's because I didn't put the time in to finish them.
Writing isn't like that. Yes, you can certainly fail to put the time in. But there are times when writing comes slowly. There are times when you need to spend time mulling over the plot or the characters, and sitting down to write that day will come to nothing because you're not ready yet to put it down on paper. There are times when you sit down to write and it comes at a trickle. Each sentence seems difficult, and you may delete the entire scene when you return to it on a day when inspiration hits. Other times, the words come out in a torrent, and your fingers struggle to put keep up on the keyboard.
This month, I had an entire chapter that I wrote that didn't sit right with me. I was unable to keep writing until I figured out what was wrong with it. At that point, I deleted it and wrote an entirely different chapter in its place, which works much better. Now the story can continue, but it was unable to before because that chapter was wrong.
I think you can "fail" your writing goals if you don't attempt to achieve them. But I think that sometimes, even with putting in the time and the effort, our goals may remain unreached for the simple fact of how writing works.
