Writing, Word Counts and Children

I have two kids, aged nine and seven. The older of the two is Donnie, and the youngest is Audrey. The pair of them are mischievous and tend to get into things. They are kids.

My son is interested in anything and everything. Especially when it comes to three things. Learning, being active, and telling stories. He enjoys reading, asking as many questions as he can, and learning everything. I have a policy of “if he asks the question, I will answer it.”

Audrey’s work rotates around one thing; dancing. She loves to dance, and she does ballet. She also loves animals, reading books about dragons and swimming in the ocean. She has also taken to asking different questions.

With it being summer, they both want to do things. Going to the park, going to the beach, going out to the mall. Or spending all day on their tablets, watching Netflix or on their Gameboy. Trying to be a good parent, it is hard to balance time outside, time reading, and screen time.

Being an author, I have a goal of writing half a million words by the end of 2019 and writing for 365 days in a row — I haven’t missed a day yet — it’s hard to keep the balance between being a good dad and writing my words.

There are a couple things that I  do to help keep that balance. The one thing is that I’ve informed my kids that writing my words is my job. I have to do this. I have also talked to them about making goals and the importance of them. They have set their own goals. My son will go out of his way to encourage me to write. I have written a set of posts about making and keeping goals. You can read that post here.

I also keep my goals at the forefront of my mind. It is easy to get discouraged and lose track of the goal. It is easy to say, “You have worked hard. It’s fine to take a day off.” This mentality is problematic. Cause if you break it one day, then it happens the next, and then three weeks later, you realize that you haven’t done your goal in that time.

For me, getting time to work on that goal, my writing, is a daily struggle. I have to set the time out in able to do it. I’ve talked to many people that have similar goals that work day jobs, or have other distracting things to deal with each day. However, it is still important to fight for that time. If you work a labor-intensive job and at the end of the day you are tired, then perhaps writing when you get home from work is a bad idea. Maybe getting up an hour earlier will be better for you.

The important thing to realize is, your goal is important. If you followed my steps I posted in Jan 2019, then you will have split the ultimate goal into smaller daily steps. Those daily steps need to be done. Mine is writing every day. If your goal is to lose weight, then perhaps exercising every day is important.

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