Hello, 2011

This is the promised “writing goals” post. I’ve sorted my plans for the year into short-term, medium-term, and long-term. I think I will also print them out and put them up on my bulletin board, because the fact that I habitually have to hunt around at the end of the year to find the last year’s goals makes me think I’m not using them to the greatest advantage.

Short-term (within the next one to two months)
1. Finish anthology story
2. Organize submission history/tracking
3. Submit Murder Prophet to second market

Medium-term (within the next six months)
1. Get short story submissions moving again (and keep them moving)
2. Revise and complete last year’s NaNo novel

Long-Term (by the end of the year)
1. Write five new short stories
2. Get another novel ms into submission

Besides all these things, I will be doing more school visits, regular critiquing for my SL writer’s group, and in the first part of the year, acting as a first reader for a writing competition, so I don’t think there’s any worry that I won’t have enough to do.

*Photo courtesy of rdragan79

Goodbye, 2010

Yes, it’s been a while. The end of 2010 flew past without even giving me a chance to properly say goodbye here. But it’s not too late.  I’m pretty sure I had made some writing goals for 2010…(digs around a bit and comes up with a dusty list)…yep, here they are:

Short-term:
1. Plan more structured writing time, if not daily then most days. Most of
the time I do a lot of procrastinating before I actually get down to
writing, and I know that’s a bad habit.

Result: I did get into a better writing schedule for at least part of the year.  I can’t give myself full marks for this one, but I made some progress.

2. Log my writing time for at least a month, so that I have an idea of how
much time I actually spend on writing.

Result: I kept these logs for a while, and decided that I did not spend nearly enough time actually writing, and too much time on writing-related-but-not-really-writing things.  However, I didn’t *fix* that problem as well as I might have.

Medium-term:
1. By the end of January, finish the last pass of the novel edit that is
almost done, and get it to my first reader.

Result: Completed this goal, but it was in July, not January.

2. By the end of February, finish the two (or three?) short stories I have
underway.

Result: Sadly, I can’t remember precisely what stories I was talking about here, so I don’t know if I did it or not.  I’m thinking not.

3. Get some more stories back into submission.

Result: Again, I did make some subs, but did not complete this goal as fully as I would have liked.

Long-term:
1. By the end of the year, complete the novel I started this past NaNoWriMo
and get it submitted.

Result: Did not do this, but wrote the second half of this story during NaNoWriMo 2010.

2. Complete the second anthology Third Person Press is working on, with a
projected release date of October 1st, 2010.

Result: Full marks for this one.  We completed the anthology and released it on schedule.

I’ve already made some decisions on writing goals for 2011, but I haven’t put them into short, medium, and long-term form.  I’m going to think about that some more and include the new goals in my next post.

Aside from actual goals, I also had three short stories published in 2010 and got a third novel into submission, did some great school visits, gave some classes and readings in Second Life, and, I think, grew as a writer and editor.  So all in all I’d have to say it was a good writing year.