Set Professional Goals

The Author's Blog - Pen to Paper

2. Set Professional Goals

I started off targeting the completion of two pages per day, clean. Clean meaning free of spelling and grammatical errors. It should also represent as close to the final version as can be expected in your stage of development for a particular work. In other words, the first two pages of a book may not be as correct as you may like compared to pages ninety-nine and one-hundred.

Nevertheless, at first, two pages per day seemed challenging but doable. Then my wife suggested I watch an interview between Stephen King and R. R. Martin. You know the author of ‘Game of Thrones.’ Anyway, so I asked my wife about the interview.

"How long was the interview, sweetie?"

"Maybe an hour," my wife was happy to reply.

"Huh, an hour seems too long." I responded a tad insensitively.

"Well, I enjoyed it. Especially when R.R. Martin asked Stephen King ‘how the hell do you write so many books?’"

I wanted to tell my wife I wasn’t interested but that statement caught my attention. "What did King say?” I asked for clarity.

"I don’t remember but I'll find the interview and fast forward to that segment of the program. I remember that question coming towards the end of the interview."

My wife googled the video clip and quickly had it ready and available for my viewing.

I sat down next to her and watched the two minute clip. In short, Mr. King focused on writing six pages a day, clean. Now I’ll remind you that I had been working six to eight hours a day for weeks trying to generate two clean pages a day.

"Wow, six pages per day seem kind of ridiculous," I muttered under by breath as I got off the sofa. However, it was loud enough for me wife to hear.

"Well, it must be possible if he’s doing it," she countered innocently.

"Thank you sweetie, but if I were Mr. King, I would agree, but I’m just me; and six pages a day seems impossible." I informed her hoping my negativism did not detract from her obvious support.

"Well, you never know until you try."

I replied, "Yes" as I walk away a little discouraged.

Nevertheless, those ‘six pages a day’ hung over my head for hours like LA smog. Finally, I waved away the black cloud and confessed to myself the prophetic words my wife said to me just a few hours before. "Well, you never know until you try."

I moved my head from side to side and cracked my neck twice, and I was off. My six to eight hours a day miserably turned into fourteen to sixteen hours. It was a grueling, exhaustive march up a fifty degree incline mountain which had treacherous and to my misfortune, seemingly unpassable crevasses.

One day, I complete my writing for the day, edited my work and proclaim to myself six pages clean. Just then, I receive a text from my wife informing me she would be home in thirty to forty-five minutes. I notice the time and realize it’s only been seven hours since I started writing that day.

Ha, and Bob’s your Uncle. There is the moral of the story, “Set professional goals.” In time, you may go from an amateur and total disbeliever to a professional and not even notice. Life is fickle that way. And remember to, practice, practice, practice.

Good luck and keep pen to paper.