Thursday, January 12th, 2012

2012 Writing Goals

Goal!I still need to post the results of my 2011 Goals, but that’s going to take some effort to get together. Things sort of fell apart toward the end of the year, and while I kept paper-based records, I didn’t enter anything into my spreadsheets.

I’ll get those together soon.

Even without punching the numbers, I realize I haven’t met many of last year’s goals. I might have been able to do so, but I didn’t anticipate the writing funk I fell into after losing a manuscript, as well as the time-sink The Great Roof Debacle turned out to be.

But instead of scaling back most of the number-based goals, I’m going to re-target them toward fiction. That aligns nicely with my overall plan.

Here are the goals:

1 – Write 250 days in 2012

Last year I tried to write 302 days out of the year, and I found it nearly impossible to reach. Working full time with a long commute just doesn’t allow for it. But I’m hoping that by cutting other “writerly” commitments (like no longer serving as the Secretary for my county’s writer’s association) – I’ll be able to manage a few more days.

2 – Double last year’s fiction output.

3 – Finish the first draft of my current work-in-progress.

4 – Write stories for three separate anthologies I’ve been invited to write for – before March 30.

5 – Write an average of 3 blog posts per week (at least 156) for 2012.

6 – Fifty-two (52) of the 156 must be Writing Prompts.

7 – Clean out my office, and clean off my virtual desktop.

Those of you who have seen my computer’s desktop know what a jungle of files it is. I want to organize all that. Likewise, I want to re-organize my office. Things are still in boxes due to the roof issues, and living out of boxes is really annoying.

I think that’s going to take a whole separate “project plan” to accomplish, but it will be worth it.

How about you? Posted your goals yet?

Monday, January 4th, 2010

More on Resolving…

I made a mistake!

While updating my work-progress spreadsheet for 2010, I discovered in error in the “percentage of days written” column. In my post on 2010 Writing Goals, I mentioned that I’d failed to write more than 50% of the days in 2009.

Not so: it turns out that through the magic of cut and paste, I’d introduced a tiny error in my spreadsheet on those months that don’t have 31 days, consequently adding five more days to the calendar year.

I was dividing 370 days rather than 365. So…my actual days of writing last year were almost 53%.

With that in mind, it hardly seems fair to only shoot for a total of 57% days writing this year. What’s 4%? Not much to aspire to after last year’s results.

So…I’m upping the ante over my previous ante upping:

I’m shooting for 64% AND I’m increasing my word count goals by 50%. That should challenge me.

How about you? Have you changed your goals already?