Jeff's goals: the big picture

Right now I'm looking at a target rate of only 4.5 pages per week to hit my big goal of 80 pages[1] before the Fall term begins. I wish I could just sit down and bang out a page a day and call it good, but sadly there's a lot more to it than that.

Sometimes I wish I were just writing a novel and could do just that. Then again, I've tried to write a novel and discovered that it's hard, hard work. So sometimes I wish I were writing a novel until I remember how hard it is to write a novel and then I recognize that both kinds of writing are harder than they look.[2] I need to remind myself of that, often, so I don't get caught up in the self-loathing that is pretty typical for me.

Then there's the other little problem that I don't yet have my prospectus done and accepted. So I need to write that first, and then perhaps recalculate my pages-per-week. Which is kind of a bummer, because I find the 4.5 pages per week a pretty comforting number. And nothing says that I have to wait until the prospectus is finished before I start writing the parts that are unlikely to be changed by my committee. That's the plan, at least.

Honestly, for now my goal is just to write consistently and make nearly perpetual progress. If I'm writing every day, then I'm getting closer. The faster I write, the faster I finish.

Hm: "the faster I write, the faster I finish" sounds like a good mantra for this week. I think that's going onto a sticky note on my monitor, so's I don't forget.[3]


NOTES
[1] My real goal is two chapters, each about 35-40 pages each. If I get two 35-page chapters completed, I'll consider my goal met.

[2] I'm not sure that's a true statement either. No one looks at a guy writing a dissertation and says, "that looks so easy! I'm sure I could do better than that."

[3] I'm stymied by that phrase: how do you write it? "So as I won't forget" is too slow and stilted. But "Sos I don't forget" looks funny. Then again, maybe I'm the only person who says that, and maybe it only works verbally. Sometimes language is a stinker.