What are these things you call widgets?

See those bits on the side, below the archives? Those are what we in the blogosphere call “widgets” — it’s a very technical term, and I’m not sure you’ll be able to follow me.

Actually, I only figured out what they were last week.

Apparently, they’re little doo-dads you put on your blog. Like a Flickr badge or a del.icio.ous link (I haven’t figured out what that is yet, either) that you put on your blog to make it look like you know what you’re doing. Ok, something that I put on the blog to make it look like I know what I’m doing.

Fine.

Oook, where was I? Ah yes. Widgets. So, as of 7/23/07, I have two. One shows the progress I’m making on Baby’s First Novel. I’ve made up a word count of 500 words a day, which is not a whole lot, really. I could probably crank out more in any given day, but the next day my brain would be as gimpy as I would be if I walked out my door and ran the New York marathon.

So far, I’ve averaged 472 words per day since starting. It really is a crappy novel so far. I’m taking the NaNoWriMo approach: I have a daily word goal that I have to meet and I don’t have time to edit. I actually find this approach to be very freeing. I used to start writing and then get so caught up in editing every. single. word. and I’d never get much further than page 10. I think it was E.L. Doctorow who compared writing a novel to driving at night with only one headlight. That’s exactly what it’s like, except I’ve also taken off the rear view mirror.

The second one, Joe’s Goals, is a bit more quotidian. I have my goals on there: going to the gym, getting up early enough to go to the gym in the morning, putting up a blog post, etc. I also have negative goals, the things I want to discourage myself from doing: eating candy, wasting time on the internet, etc. So every time I accomplish a positive goal, I get points. If I eat a Snickers bar, I lose points.

Really, it’s an online sticker chart. I’m basically three years old.

But, to get to my very drawn out conclusion, I posted these widgets so I could have some accountability on my goals. It’s from a tip I read about increasing your writing productivity. So I am making my goals public, and thus making myself accountable to you, my audience of…one? Maybe two?

I’ve been reading productivity/lifehacker sites recently. There’s something about wasting time reading productivity tactics that is so evilly ironic to me. For example, Merlin Mann’s site is about tricks to be more productive. But each time I log on, I end up wasting MORE time by clicking all the pretty links. Also, I kind of hate the name. Why “43 Folders”? Why the number 43? What goes in the 43 folders? Are they labeled?

These are the questions that keep me up at night.

(I originally wrote this around midnight; when I logged on this morning, the last paragraph was pretty much incomprehensible. Oops. My bad.)

Confession: I actually stole these widgets from Mur Lafferty of the I Should Be Writing podcast. Mur writes sci-fi/speculative fiction, which is SO not my genre, but she has very sensible, down-to-earth advice for newbie writers. I’ve been a little obsessed with listening to the archives, and I’ve picked up some cool tips from her. Check it out.