My Writing Goals for 1st Quarter 2019 

 

Hello beautiful word lovers! I hope your New Year is off to a great start. I noticed a lot of people stating that 2018 was a crappy year all around. But to be honest, we tend to say that every year. But I guess it’s how you look at it right. I’ve had family members tell me that my family’s year eclipsed theirs, thus pulling them out of whatever mood they were in thinking that they had it rough. Only to have them ask, “How are you smiling?” Well, that’s because I have things that I want to achieve, and the list just keeps getting bigger.

How we get over the truly rough patches of life is by creating something to work towards. If you don’t find a way to make your situation better and work towards it, you will never make your way out of that pit of dispair. Thus you will always say that every year was just horrible. So I have both personal and writing goals, but today I will be sharing my quarterly writing goals. I mean after all, this is a writing blog.

Quarterly Break Down 

In my last blog, I promised to break down my goals, showing that it really wasn’t a small list. So here is my break down for the quarter, by month. First I will go over what I will be doing that is the same for each month.

Repeated Task/Goals: 

• I will be reading four books a month, three of those books will be pertaining to novel writing. The fourth book will be towards my goal of starting my own web writing business. 
• I will write eight blog post every month, that’s two posts a week.
• I will write four short stories a month, that’s one story a week with the word count of 2000-8000 words.
• Wild Card: I’m attempting to challenge myself by writing every day using a random writing prompt off the internet. Minimum of 500 words. (This so far…Not sure how this going to work because I’m already trying to turn every one of them into a short story, so this one might get merged with the short story goal. I’m test driving for the month of January to see if it’s doable.) 

The Hard stuff: 

• January- I will world build for one of my other stories that has been sitting on the shelf for a decade. 
• February- I will begin the editing process for my work in progress while creating the outline for the novel that I did the world building for in January.
• March- The second draft of my work in progress goes off to the first round of beta readers, while I write the first draft of the next novel.

The Juggling Act. 

 This is the habit I’m trying to create. My hope and goal is to have at least four first drafts by the end of the year. If this schedule holds up, I will have a total of five books done by the end of the year, with only one book rolling over that would need first round edits at the beginning of the next year. I plan on turning the short stories that I write into an anthology novella. 

So five books a year seems doable, right? Well, I’m at least attempting it to see if it’s doable. It’s a lot less daunting than the twelve books in twelve months challenge. But the tips given in that group challenge on how they pump out twelve books a year, are what is fueling this schedule. 

If it works, great I can do it again next year! If not, then some adjustments can be made to a doable work schedule. Looking at these goals gives me a weird mix of anxiety and excitement. On one hand I think I’ve fallen off my rocker, but on the other hand, I’m so pumped that my inside voice keeps screaming “BEEF CAKE!” like a beefed up gym rat. We will see which one is right at the end of the quarter. Well, that’s all for today word lovers!