Word points

          Life is getting away from me! Or more accurately, life is catching me, overrunning and running over me. I’m not complaining, but I am struggling to get any writing done. It seems like as soon as I take care of one pressing task, another is waiting in the wings for my attention. Only a few of them are the 9 tasks I listed out that I wanted to complete in 99 days and none of them are writing . . . except this blog.

          How do I get off this merry-go-round?

          I just now remembered something I’ve done in the past. Word points. A couple of years ago I was participating in a NaNo-like push to get writing done with Kitty and Shonna and a couple other writer friends. We all had different writing goals for the month, but wanted to have a friendly competition to generate motivation for all of us. Kitty suggested assigning word points to certain tasks, thereby turning all the tasks into “words”, making it easy to compare our progress to the others’.

          I loved that idea! In fact, I used it for months, long after our competition ended. Suddenly, I had a way to easily tell how I was progressing toward my stated goals. I assigned word points to things like editing (every 30 minutes=1000 wp) or researching (every hour=1000 wp) and added them up as I accomplished them. I even converted non-writing activities into word points, making it easier to monitor my entire life with that system.

          As with many things in my life, this one slipped out of use (and memory). Not because it wasn’t helpful. It was immensely helpful! I think my life just got way too overrun with non-writing activities (like moving cross-country and, soon after spending a month away from a still-unpacked home to care for my dad after heart surgery). I fell out of the habit of assigning word points to all those activities. By the time I returned home and settled into a routine, I’d forgotten all about that habit.

          I think, though, it is time to resurrect word-points. There are many things I need to do in the next month or two. I have several non-writing tasks of importance (like tutoring my young cousin), but I don’t want to neglect my writing. I have stories that need finishing and others that are clamoring to get out of my head. I want to make sure I stay on track, headed toward my dreams and long-term goals no matter how busy my life becomes.

          I’ll spend the first free moments I get today prioritizing all the tasks I need to finish this week and assigning word points to each. I’ll let you know how many word points I need to reach (and what percentage of those are actual writing tasks) as soon as I’m done. Would you like to join me?