I started a new book. A YA thriller. I'm about 5,000 words in. It's not contracted. I'm just writing it for fun. And it's easy enough, I tell myself, to write 500 words a day. And if I did that every day, and the book were 50,000 words long, why I would have a finished book in 90 days. And wait - if I just wrote 800 words a day, or a thousand, I could have it done in just a few weeks. I think of
onegrapeshy who wrote a 68,000 word book in two months while working a stressful full-time job. Two months, people! So it should be a walk in a park to finish it my new book by the end of the summer.This is the same kind of math that always gets me into trouble. Say if I lose three pounds the first week I'm on Weight Watchers (and it's not because I weighed all my clothes before the second weigh-in and chose the lightest outfit), why then in 12 weeks I'll weigh 36 pounds less! I'll be too skinny!
Or if the stock market grows 1% in one day, why by the end of a year, my stocks will have more than tripled in value!
I have to remember that everything - everything! - is two steps forward and one step back.
Is anyone else out there guilty of this kind of thinking?
