After attending Sunday’s Writers Coffeehouse, I decided to adopt Scott Sigler’s suggestion of a scoring system. Thought it’d be a good way to push me to get back in the writing habit, after the fiasco that was the last few months.

I decided on the following:

• A goal of 1,250 words a week. That's five pages total, or one page a day if I write every weekday.
• Words on the new novel count full. Words for professional or marketing writing (query letters, etc) count half. So a page of query letter writing equals half a page toward my goal.
• I can't check the news, or do chores, or pay bills, or anything I usually do in the morning, until after my word count for the day is met.
• If I hit my weekly word count total, I get a reward: buying a new music album. I love getting new music, and albums are cheap enough now that I can buy one once a week and not break the bank.
• If I don't hit my weekly goal, I get a punishment: no beer or wine for a week. I'm a big craft beer guy, so this hurts: no more pairing a nice IPA with some fish tacos, or a tiramisu with a coffee stout.

As a result, I’m writing about 300 - 400 words a day, not 250, so I hit 1,554 words yesterday. If I sustain that pace, I’ll need to up my weekly goal.

So hooray for me! I’ll be getting some new music this week :)