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Finish THE NOVEL: My Writing Goal for 2019

Writing Goals 2019

As arbitrary as the start of a new year is, I enjoy goal setting and, really, I just love making lists. So, I’ve done many kinds of resolution and goal setting over the years — I’ve kept it (fairly) simple, and I’ve made massive lists of ALL the things. Each of these has met with mixed results, although I’ve found in general that a simple set of concrete goals usually works best.

This year, my goal making boils down to one thing:

Finish THE NOVEL

In some scope or another, THE NOVEL is always present in my mind. It haunts me that I have never even completed a full draft that can be properly shared. So, it was quite a shock a few months ago when I realized that the brief break I took in working on THE NOVEL had turned into almost five years.

I kept telling myself that I would get to it — I need to finish this thing here, so I can get back to THE NOVEL. I’ll start work on THE NOVEL next month. No, the next after that.  — and then time passes, because that’s what time does. In some form or another, I’ve been putting Finish THE NOVEL on my annual goals for the past five or six years.

I’m tired of this pattern. So, this year, I have one goal — Finish THE NOVEL. That’s it.

I’ve set out a plan for doing the work and have even switched around my day job schedule a a bit to provide more dedicated time to writing. It means that I’ll probably have to say no to some of the kinds of collaborative work I’ve been doing in the past year.

BLOG BADGE 2019 Poetry Blogging NetworkIt also means that some of my shorter projects will be back-burnered.  Even though there are other things I’d like to get done in 2019 — Finish any or all of the short stories and poetry projects I have “in progress,” Blog at least once per week at part of the Poetry Blogging Network, Attend a reading or open mic at least once a month, Return to a regular running routine, etc. — all of these things by necessity will need to be secondary to may main task for the year — working on THE NOVEL.

This is an achievable goal. All it requires is the focus and effort to make it happen.

The Year of Finishing THE NOVEL is officially underway.

What are your goals for 2019?

A Footnote on Bullet Journaling: Last year I tried out Bullet Journaling as a means to help me stay organized and focused. I always meant to provide a follow up on how that went, but never got around to it. I dove fully into it at the start of the year and found it extremely helpful toward my productivity. It let me calendars and lists that suited me (I may have mentioned that I love lists). 

However, about mid year, the benefits of the Bullet Journal (creating your own calendar) became the struggle. Around that time, I started to feel too overwhelmed with keeping up with the weekly or even monthly layouts, so I slowly stopped doing them at all. 

So, I would say that I found Bullet Journaling to be a bit of a mixed bag. It was useful when I had the focus to use it, less useful when I was too overwhelmed to keep it going.

That said, I’m putting starting off the year with a Bullet Journal again — this time will an even simpler design. Hopefully that will help me keep the journal going, and in turn, help provide me with the focused tasks to meet my goal of finishing THE NOVEL.

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Goals for 2018

new year meme

During the month of December, I had a vast number of projects and deadlines going at once. What kept me from collapsing into a quivering mess from being so overwhelmed was taking out my physical notebook and writing down every necessary item that needed to be completed that month. That list, which I was able to return to daily, helped me focus my attention in order to actually get things done — not to mention the absolute pleasure of scratching a line through an item once it was accomplished.

This experience has prompted me to try out a Bullet Journal, essentially a system of tracking and planning one’s daily life in a way that’s entirely adaptable to one’s specific needs. There are hundreds of tutorials and inspiration posts about bullet journaling throughout the internet, all with their own unique way of approaching the system. If you bullet journal, I would love to know about your process too.

I’m not starting fresh with a shiny new book the way most people do. First, because I hate leaving a notebook only partially filled (it makes me twitch). Second, because this is kind of an experiment and I want to see how effective it will be for me.

Essentially, I’m hoping it will help me with the tracking of my goals throughout the year, as well as with breaking down the bigger goals into bit sized bits for progress on a day to day basis. So far it’s going well, which brings me to:

My Goals for 2018

1. Clear My Schedule Enough to Be Able to Focus on THE NOVEL – I would love to be able to put “Finish the Novel” on here, but I know down in the depths of my wailing heart that would not be practical. I can’t seem to focus on the novel, while I have a number of projects going that need my attention right now. The plan is to clear the handful of things that are most important to me, with the aim of launching into novel revisions by July 1st.  These things include:

  • A Kickstarter project to create a chapbook of erasure poetry that I’m launching this month.
  • Finish story/chap based on the 12 Dancing Princesses fairy tale
  • Write all of the episodes of a webseries that I’m working on with some filmmaking buddies (probably most important on this list since it involves obligations and deadlines and other good things like that)
  • Finish and submit various poem and story things (though some of these could be put on hold once the noveling recommences)
  • Prepwork for the novel (a bit of research, outlining, and so on that will be helpful when I get to the editing)

The trick is going to be not piling on more projects in the meantime, which is going to take some self control.

2. Return to THE NOVEL – Assuming all goes well, I’ll spend the second half of the year focusing on the novel. Just doing that — digging into the work and making progress — would be amazing.

3. Run a Half Marathon – This has definitely been on my list for a couple of years, and I refuse to give it up. I’ve run 10K races before, so running a half marathon should be doable. The key is sticking to a running schedule (4 times per week) that allows me to accomplish training goals.

4. Blog At Least Once a Week – Donna Vorreyer and Kelli Russell Agodon have started up a blogging challenge for poets for the year, in which every participating poet agrees to post something about poetry (craft posts, reviews, interviews, etc.) at least once a week. Since I’m always trying to make sure this blog stays active, I jumped on board. If you want to keep up with my posts without having to think about it, you can subscribe in the sidebar. The list of participating poets is here. 

5. Other Goals:

  • Attend an open mic or author reading at least once a month
  • Obtain 100 Rejections – in other words, send out oodles of submissions
  • Sketch, poem, and/or journal daily
  • Bring journal everywhere (because it doesn’t help me if it’s sitting on the couch)
  • Meditate every night (10 minute min.)
  • No hitting the snooze button (which is how I get more time in the day to accomplish all the things here)

I have a tendency to want to go very detailed on my goals for the year, and this seems like plenty… and fairly achievable.

What goals or resolutions have you set for yourself? What are you hoping to achieve this year?

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For Joy!

It’s been a lovely week all around, with plenty of time hanging out with family and friends, talking and being silly and ridiculous.

I attended the Cito.FAME.us Love is in the Air open mic and Valentines Day party, which was amazing. I love these artists and seeing what they can do and how they open up and grow.

I’ve taken some more organizational steps, switching over my 2014 files to 2015 and getting stuff laid out to do my taxes. While taking a look at my files, I noticed that what really needs organizational work is my creative files — my poetry, fiction, notes, etc. I need to figure out to have each poem and story right where I want it when I need to put together a submission packet. I also need to keep more accurate record of drafts, making it clear the most recent versions in both print and on my computer. I would love to hear suggestions in this regard.

What I’m Reading

Almost finished with The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I’m not normally into military stories, but this is compulsively compelling and a fast read with really interesting ideas.

Next up will be Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. I previously read Robinson’s 2312, which was good but was highly focused on the technical aspects of each world visited and I didn’t quite connect with it. I’m guessing that Red Mars will be similar, but since it will be focused on a single world instead of many, I’m hoping I’ll enjoy it more. It’s also research, as Robinson will be a guest speaker at FogCon 2015, which I will be attending in March.

What I’m Writing

Chapter/poem two of the novel is poems has been completed! Progress has been far slower than I’d like it to be, in part because I need to re-prioritize my time. But still, progress, huzzah!

I completed one other poem last week, a Valentines Day poem, which I read at the fantastically fun Love is in the Air party last week.

Accepted! Nonbinary Review has accepted my poem “Eve and Pandora” for their upcoming issue #4, focused on Bulfinch’s Mythology. Eeeeeee!

Goal(s) for this week: Get my printer set up. Finish chapter three. Put a submission packet together.

What’s Inspiring Me Right Now

I’m having a hard time naming something specific this week. I feel a general sense of momentum, of engagement, partly because I’m working to submit work on a regular basis and partly because I’m actively connecting with artist and writer community in person and online.

My main feeling at this moment is to not let hesitation or fear herd me into poor use of time. It’s all well and good to watch TV/movies and play video games, but it needs to come after making myself and my creative work a priority.

Linky Goodness

My friend, Laura Ayer, pointed out Bullet Journal, which is a method using the traditional paper and pen method to plan and manage one’s monthly tasks (I recommend watching the introductory video). I love the idea of this, but don’t know if it’s for me. I’m kind of all over the place when it comes to paper, though having a clear method would like this could be a good solution.

If any one has done the Bullet Journal method or something similar, I would love to hear about your experience.