Today I explained to someone who perhaps I’m behind on my word count because my heart isn’t quite into NaNo this year. The advice I got in return was that perhaps I shouldn’t spread myself too thin, and maybe not participate in NaNo.
The reality is that I’m setting a couple of different goals with regards to NaNo this year. The first is the obvious goal: 50,000 (new) words and a completed novel. However, I have another, smaller goal. I want to work on Mara’s Tale, and without the driving force of NaNo, that hasn’t happened. Each time I fill in another gap, every day that I write (even a few hundred words) is a success in my mind. Earlier this week I wrote only about 600 words, but they were important because they completed the last section I had left of a particular part of Mara’s life. The word count may have been short for the day; the accomplishment was not short.
I think layered goals are perfectly acceptable, don’t you?
Butterflies and Dragons 