Writing Schedule: 1 page/day=250+/year

I’m a terrible writer!
I planned to start on my new novel yesterday and got so busy catching up on correspondence, just sitting and doodling, that I wrote NOTHING!

That does it. I’m back on the one page/day schedule.

When I first started writing, I was home-schooling 4 kids. For months, I carried around an ink pen to remind myself that I was a writer. Several pairs of jeans were ruined when the ink ran. At first, I tried to write 15 minutes/day. Even then, I realized that slow and steady does the trick. That’s when I first when on the page-a-day schedule.

One Page a Day Writing Schedule

You write one page a day, five days a week. You get the weekend off. At the end of a week, you have 5 pages; at the end of a month, you have 20+ pages. At the end of the year–you get two weeks vacation!–you have 250+ pages. If you’re lucky, it’s a complete draft of a novel.

It’s a simple plan. And it works. You can write weekends, too, if you want and skip the vacation. Almost anyone can follow this plan. If you work full time, if you have small children, if you have physical handicaps–doesn’t matter. You can do a page a day. You can.

Today, no matter what, I’m writing a page.
And I’ll do it again tomorrow.
And the next day.
Until, I hit my stride and think that writing ONLY a page a day isn’t enough.

But even then, I’ll always know that this is my fall-back plan.

Tracking Progress

Some people like to track their progress by setting up a spreadsheet and recording the number of words or pages/day. I know there is software that tracks progress toward goals and widgets for your website. What are you using to track your progress?