Personal Writing Contracts

National Novel Writing Month site.
The Weekend Novelist
The Free Dictionary.com

From The Desk of Liz Ensley:

Hello.

It's been a while, has it not, old friend.

I decided to blog about an idea that occurred to me. It's very much like National Novel Writing Month, which is an informal contract to write a 50k novel in a month.

Why not a writing contract, with yourself? Say, x number of words per day, y number of days per week. You can set z as a penalty for not meeting the conditions of x and y. Making it a sort of game, you can make it a bit of fun, as well as motivational. You should not set more than you can handle, as that is for the bigger ,more important contracts. Not that writing is not important: but it is better to set lower goals first, until you are in the habit of accomplishing these goals Then you can "up the ante".

National Novel Writing Month is a 50k madhouse; but there's nothing stopping you from exercising your literary muscles a bit at a time, to stretch them.

Life is going to happen anyway, you may as well write around the events, right?