2015 Writing Goals

 

As promised, my tl;dr 2015 writing goals:

• 10 tokens
• 2 pro
• 4 subs

My longer read 2015 goals: Write productively by focusing on length and using past experience to set realistic goals. Write broader by putting more effort into other genres I write. Write smarter by implementing what I learned from that Kameron Hurley article.

Write Productively

The novelette has always been my sweet spot even though the market doesn't care for it very much, and vice versa for shorts. I'm focusing on length because I've noticed I have a habit of just writing until a story ends--shorts turn out to be novelettes and novelettes end up having only enough story for shorts, ideas that were too big and plots that cover too much grow unwieldy and difficult. All because I didn't plan and commit to what I wanted a story to be in terms of length and scope. This is counterproductive and results in disappointment and discouragement. At this stage in my journey, I've reached the happy middle on the scale of pantser to plotter.

Write Broader

Writing more poetry last year was a spontaneous why-not sort of thing. I didn't think I was very skilled at it, not the non-rhyming, non-meter, 'serious' kind anyways. But then I started subbing pieces and getting positive feedback. I have been exclusively researching and working to publish sci-fi prose fiction. It's the genre my ideas most readily spring from. I speak the language, so to speak. But that's not all I read or write. Just as I took my poetry more seriously to encouraging results, I'm going to give the other genres a chance to flourish.

Write Smarter

"It's the difference between knowing what I'm doing and doing what I know." That means understanding how I'm able to do it, and it isn't magic. It's replicable, which is the exact opposite of what I have always tried to do. Nothing new must resemble that previous story or else I was being lazy, unimaginative, and cheating. That has led to variety in my bibliography, yes, but also a lot of incomplete works, inconsistency, and long periods of unproductiveness. Here's the link again for why it is okay to be a little formulaic. By plugging new story ideas into existing formulas, by doing what I have already done and not always trying something new from scratch, I know in finer, more tangible detail the contours of similar stories, why having my protagonist make a poor choice is essential here, how allowing others to help her there will be critical later, what skipping this and elaborating on that will do to the feel and structure of the plot. By knowing those peaks and troughs, pitfalls, and yes, cheats, I can work more efficiently and with the most effective techniques to help the story shine.

So those are my aspirations for writing in 2015. Overall, I aspire to be very strategic in playing to my strengths as much as to the market. We'll see how it goes!

What are your aspirations? Comment or link below.

2014 In Review

So, last year I posted my writing goals for 2014. How did I do? What will I do differently this year? Lets get to it!

I had four areas I wanted to push myself on: submissions, revisions, pro-level pieces, and token pieces just to keep in the habit of writing. Here's how close I came to reaching my goals:

• Subs - 80%
• Revisions - 10%
• Pro - 25%
• Token - 112%
• New Pieces Overall - 83%

Not bad. I did a lot more token writing and that was mostly poetry, some of which turned out to be good enough to sub. I've revised that goal upwards this year.

Speaking of subs, I only counted new submissions, as opposed to resubmitting the same piece different places, so I did a lot more subbing than the number reflects. Still, I came up a hair short, so I'm revising that goal down. I realize that I am very picky about what I sub, so even if I wrote more, I may not feel confident sending everything out.

The pro number seems okay, until you realize I only set out to write 4 such pieces. These pieces have always taken me a long time to write. I had hoped to push myself to go faster, but the stories fought me all the way. Needless to say, I'm revising the goal down for this year.

Revisions. When I made this category, I thought I would be dusting off old pieces, spit-shining and firing them off. Yeah, no. I focused my time and energy on new pieces. This goal is going away entirely. Rather, my goal is to write more saleable pieces which, naturally, will have been revised and polished as needed.

Overall, I'd say I did okay and ended the year on an encoraging note, which I'll get into in my 2015 goals post.

How'd you do?

photo credit: Gina Fairchild

Girl, Where You At: 2014 Writing Goals

So, I read an article on the CritiqueCircle blog about meaningful ways to set realistic goals and track progress. As I was in a more productive place, mentally and emotionally, I felt like giving it a try.

I had to look at my past performance honestly to understand what I could achieve in the span of a year. Outliers, like that time I knocked out 16k in 6 days, didn't count. More recently, I was doing the same wordcount in about 30 days, on average, consistently. These were stories I had no intention of putting on track to publication, so I was freewheeling it and not taking the time to make a good first draft.

I had to set milestones. So, no vague by-end-of-year-kazzam goals that I  could choose to do whenever and however. What could I do in one month--how many pieces could I productively work on at the same time? What should I have done in 3 months? Every 3 months? Where could I push myself and where would I need slack?

I had to decide what areas of my writing I would focus on and which had to take a backseat. Since I wanted to get in the habit of being a prolific, published short story author, that meant no long works and no reviving old works.

I had to commit. That's where this post comes in. I'm 3 months into the year and doing better than projected in some areas while in others I'm way behind or doing nothing. It has helped in the past to make my goals known to a writer friend--sometimes known as an accountability buddy. I hope making my goals public (ha! Like anyone's reading this!) will add a bit more incentive to try harder.

So here are those goals. (If you do the math, you'll note I gave myself at least 2 months' padding, and I should be working on 3 pieces at a time):

2014

• 4 for-publication pieces
• 8 token pieces
• 10 pieces polished
• 5 unique pieces subbed

Every 3 Months

•  1 for-pub piece
•  3 tokens (max)
•  3 polished
•  1 subbed

Every Month

• 1 token completed
• 1 act (or a third) of for-pub completed
• 1 polished

Now you know where I'm at. Now you (yes, you!) can nudge me on how it's coming along. I ain't scairt.