Real Life of an MSW

Goals set goals by scene or passage, not by words. Daily goal settings is a time honored staple of “writing advice” sit in the chair and don’t get up until you’ve written 1,000 words or until you have two or five or 10 pages neatly tacked on your desk. -But for me, and I bet for you too, its much more effective to think in terms of scenes of your novel or memoir or screenplay, or passage of an essay article -Writing one complete scene each day -and by scene, I mean a dramatic unit with an inciting incident, rising conflict, a climax and ending that includes a new question or kicker into the next scene – is an excellent goal if you have an entire morning or afternoon to devote to your fiction. If you get to write only before the rest of the house wakes up or when the baby takes a nap, you might aim to complete a scene or two every week. The typical scene unfolds over four to eight pages, so you build up pages at the same rate..- Failure I can live with. Not trying is what I can’t handle! – Sanya Richards-Ross