Missing the goal, it's not the end of the world!

After a ZERO word day Saturday, I woke up Sunday morning thinking about my writing goals. I've set up a spreadsheet that shows where I am supposed to be each week to meet my deadline. On Sunday, the good news was that I was at 22%...bad news, I was supposed to be at 38%! While the spreadsheet is a nice tool, it's also a burden in that it doesn't take into consideration the peaks and valleys of creativity or my full-time job.

Saturday was a rough day for a few reasons which I won't torture you with, but suffice it to say that bad days color my attitude all around. So back to waking up...so I realize that I was way behind on my writing goals, I was feeling down overall, and wondering why I was writing at all. And just when I was thinking of blowing off writing on Sunday, I was greeted by a movie reference that brought back my hope and faith in myself.

I'm a big fan of the 1998 movie Armageddon...life as we know it threatened by a killer asteroid, an oil-drilling team goes up into space to nuke the asteroid. So at 2 hours into the drilling, the Air Force leader checks in with NASA that they are only at 57 feet; according to the cute little printed and laminated USAF drill time cards, they should be at 200. Panic ensues as the higher-ups assume that means they'll never make the drilling depth and the Earth will be destroyed.

So the main character, Harry Stamper (Bruce Willis) grabs the cards and says, "This is what happens when you drill! We cannot use your Air Force personnel-only drill time card! Who wrote this thing, anyway?"  I turned the movie reference onto my writing goals...goals are great, but missing a mark doesn't mean I cannot finish in time. Creativity is fickle, and honestly, I've always done some of my best work under the pressure of a deadline. I wrote over 1000 words on Sunday despite a late start and a bad mood most of the day.

I may still be behind the mark set by the spreadsheet, but I'm not out of this contest yet!