Your 2014 Writing Goals

[bmcox]

My goal this year is just to balance my writing with my teaching. This past year I let my teaching eat up all my available time. I have a couple novelettes to finish, a play to work on and a novel to start and hopefully finish.

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by James_Wilde

Are you sure about that Feb 28th date, VydorScope? I looked at your thread in here about this, and the closing date there is December 13th.

That was for the second anthology, there are three total planned. The second one had submissions closed already and has been released (including my first ever short story, "The Faceless Ones"). The third and final anthology is the one I was talking about here. I plan to start a new thread for it to ease the confusion.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by kennyc

I did not complete the novel I had on my goals and may or may not do it in 2014....I'm not yet convinced I can write novels though I've written about 3 really bad ones some time ago. I have a couple of ideas that I think would make great mainstream novels, but we'll see when I do my formal goals, which I'll post here.

I believe you have to write several bad books before you can write a good one. The danger is stopping. If you keep doing a little regularly, before you know it you will have accumulated a great deal of words. Good luck.

[kennyc]

I agree passion, persistence and practice....one must write a million words...and all that, but there are very different forms of writing. Novels are very different than short stories or essays or articles or poetry or marketing copy.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by bmcox

My goal this year is just to balance my writing with my teaching. This past year I let my teaching eat up all my available time. I have a couple novelettes to finish, a play to work on and a novel to start and hopefully finish.

Good Luck Brian! I find this balancing to be one of my biggest issues. I tend to focus almost obsessively on one area of creativity at a time and often have a hard time compartmentalizing .... art, writing (essay, poetry, fiction), etc.

[James_Wilde]

Is the stuff that pays the bills also writing, Lemurion?

[James_Wilde]

Originally Posted by Rizla

Good luck everyone.

You, too, Rizla

[jojoba]

My goals right now are to have two journal articles published by May, and a book chapter finished by August. Then something else will be lined up for the fall, but I'm not sure what that is yet.

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by James_Wilde

Is the stuff that pays the bills also writing, Lemurion?

Yes, it's not fiction, but it keeps everyone fed.

I'm also looking at releasing a short collection to drive novel sales. This is the year I'm going to put some effort into getting indie books out.

[kennyc]

I've not detailed my 2014 goals, but I have been writing a few poems which is a relief after a drought of a couple of months. I'm trying to take a bit of a different approach in letting the ideas slip, slide and flow between poetry, fiction, and essays and see if that helps (or hurts). So far it seems to help and has at least somewhat broken through the block.

I've taken a story that I've been working but have not completed to my satisfaction and turned it into a poem, have also taken a couple of ideas that would probably fall into the story or novel category and written them as poems. It seems fruitful so far.

One definite goal is to release a new book of poetry.
Possibly another book of science essays (several are already written)
And hopefully complete several short stories.
non-writing-wise I want to do at least several pencil drawings.

I guess my main goal is to make it through the year without having to go back to work for The Man and hopefully be able to file for early retirement next year in order to continue the creative pursuits.

[Marseille]

Originally Posted by kennyc

I guess my main goal is to make it through the year without having to go back to work for The Man and hopefully be able to file for early retirement next year in order to continue the creative pursuits.

Good luck, Kenny Rage against the machine!

[kennyc]

Thanks David, I wouldn't call it rage so much, I appreciate all that I've been able to gain from my technical training and employment and that it has allowed me to chase this dream (both earlier for a short period of years) and for now!

Thanks for the good wishes! I'll try to make you proud.

[James_Wilde]

Four things I've added to my list, none of them likely to be income-producing, but then, neither are the items already on the list.

I'm dusting off a screenplay I wrote about five years ago, and hopefully sending it away in a month or so.

I've just written most of a short in a couple of days (first draft, of course) which shows that I still can!

I've restarted my blog now I have moved our website from .com to .se. Some heavy stuff in there, rather dystropic for the most part, but I'll see if I can lighten it up now and again.

And finally, I've moved a section of the website dealing with how easy it is to encrypt email to much nearer completion. Hopefully before the month is out...

[kennyc]

Excellent on the short!

[James_Wilde]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Excellent on the short!

Thanks, Kenny. Although 'short' seems to be something of a dubious name for it. I'm up around 12000 words already, which must be near the boundary of a novella.

Still it is a first draft. If I remove two of every three words, maybe it'll do. But I am worried about VydorScope's competition. I can't ever see me writing anything under 1000 words, unless I copy the ten commandments!

Maybe I should join one of those committees in the European Union, you know, the ones that need 40000 words to describe an EU approved strawberry.

Anyway, what have you got against movie scripts, blogs and detailed instructions for encrypting you email. Well, perhaps I can understand your aversion to blogs, but I only use it to get the writing muscle going for the day, rather like John Steinbeck's 'Diary of a Novel'.