I have a very weird relationship with resolutions and goals. Typically, I set a lot of goals, and I very rarely accomplish them in the timeframe I give myself. I was reviewing my 2018 goals and making plans for the future and had a pretty big realization. I lack a basic skill. So, I’m going to be working on this skill during the beginning of 2019.
2017 was a crazy year in my personal life. Griffin and I bought a house, got a dog, and in general adulted to the max. 2018 has been a crazy year in my writing world. Here are the highlights:
January: Started reading and re-writing The Dragon Book.
April: Worked my last day at my office job.
May: Started writing full-time. Met my writing hero: Tamora Pierce.
August: Finished the re-write of The Dragon Book. Attended WorldCon and the Hugo Awards. Hired a writing coach.
November: Finished my 7th NaNoWriMo.
December: Exchanged favorite books with my beloved writing group.
2018 What I learned
It is difficult to quantify what I learned in 2018 because in some ways I’m still in the middle of learning it. Here are a few of the things I did come away with at the end of the year:
- I’m a pretty good writer, and I have a lot to improve before I’m an excellent writer.
- Quitting to work for myself was the best decision of the year. I can’t say it was the best decision of my life, but it ranks up there in the top ten decisions next to going on that first date with Griffin, buying a house, and getting O’Neill.
- Quality over quantity matters to me, I don’t want to produce stories, I want to produce excellent stories, so I’m taking the time to learn how to tell stories well.
- There are so many good books and so little time.
- I have a lot to learn about myself.
How I’m goal setting for 2019
I’m looking at goals a little differently for 2019. I don’t actually have any concrete writing goals. This is mostly because every year my goals has been to have a book ready to be published, and that hasn’t happened yet. Since working with a writing coach for the last quarter of 2018, I realized how much I still need to learn in order to actually write an excellent book. I want to give myself time to learn and so I actually created some five year goals, which I’m not ready to share publicly. Instead I backed off and looked at what I need to work on in the next couple of months to make the next five years successful.
What are my actual goals for the next couple of months (Jan – Mar/Apr)
- Learn how much time it actually takes me to complete things. I actually have a very skewed sense of how long it takes me to complete a project. So, I’m timing myself and for the next couple of weeks I am writing down how long it takes me to say, write a blog post, or a short story. How long it takes to transition from being on a break to getting back into writing. I say my break is fifteen minutes, but am I actually going back into writing after fifteen minutes or am I taking thirty? When I am writing the first draft of a story I can write ~1000 words in an hour if I have a plan. Sometimes faster, sometimes slower. But, I don’t know how long it takes me to create said plan, or how long it takes me to edit the first draft. All of this information should help me create a better, more realistic expectations on my own writing and productivity.
- Once I know how long it takes me to actually complete things, I will start making deadlines and schedules and I want to hit those deadlines/schedules at least 80% of the time.
- Write a weekly blog post. I enjoy the long form of dumping my brain out onto digital paper. I haven’t written a blog post in a while, mostly because I was learning so many new things, I didn’t know what I wanted to say, but I’m planning on writing a lot more consistently this year.
And that is it. I think those things should keep me busy for the next couple of weeks and months. I want to accomplish so much more, but I feel that slowing down and mastering really this very basic thing will allow me to be a lot more successful in the future.
What are you working on in the new year? Are there some basic skills that you have been ignoring that you could be working on right now?
