Goal setting is incredibly important for a writer. You need to have clear, concise goals that are achievable, and you need to know how to reach those goals, and make each step its own miniature goal.
Personally I've got a couple Big Goals which are more long-term and several smaller goals which mostly build towards reaching those Big Goals. For example, one of my Big Goals is to finish the rough draft of one of the books in the Jihad series by January 1st, 2010. Smaller goals reaching towards that include worldbuilding, character building and outlining.
Here are my writing goals for September:
1. Blog consistently (at least every other day)
2. Get the poem count for Bleed up to 40 (I'm at 23 right now I believe)
3. Edit The Beginning myth for the Jihad world
4. Write 5 pages background notes on the original formation of Appollinia (a kingdom for Jihad)
5. Write 5 pages background notes on the old Elvish kingdom (Elwin's time and his son's time)
6. Write up a 3-page character bio for Elwin, the first Elvish king.
7. Write up 3 pages about the Phoenix (an old Goddess who is found in very early Elvish myth)
8. Write up 3 pages about the Demon (later named Elric; the main evil God)
9. Write up 3 pages about the Fatalis Intarnati (can't really explain these guys here)
10. Brainstorm possible plots in the Jihad world
11. Flesh out one of the adopted plots stolen from the Nano forums.
12. Write one chapter of A Cutter's Journey.
In order to reach all of these goals, I am enforcing a minimum productivity level of one worldbuilding page per day.
Also... I've decided to, at least for the moment, abandon Eternia Falling. Why? Because although I'm familiar with the characters and the world, I'm more familiar with the world 10, 000 years after the fact. I'm not very familiar with the world during Eternia's time. I need to do some mapping, some culture-building for the time period, things like that, before I can properly write the novel. So I'm abandoning that project for the moment, leaving me with more free time to accomplish other goals. Worldbuilding for that will begin again December first.
What are your writing goals for September?
Anyone who commented on the posts I've made over the last few days will notice that their comments are now being responded to-and thanks to everyone who's been reading-as I am back from the cottage.
I had a great time. I did pretty much everything I wanted to do in terms of writing except outlining the pre-Nano course I have planned. I went swimming twice every day except yesterday, when I only got down to the beach once (I wish I could've gone twice though). I watched the sun rise and set on the beach, and we had lots of fun with fire.
Today I have to catch up on my Augnowrimo. For the end of this week my goal is/was 45K, and I'm currently at 37K. I hope to write 3-5K tonight and finish the rest tomorrow.
I'm also working on Bleed, the poetry collection. I'm hoping to have 30-40 poems in it by my birthday because I would like to submit it to the Youthful Wisdom Press. Having an actual publisher behind my work will help a lot with marketing it, so hopefully I'll sell a lot more copies. Due to the sensitive nature of Bleed's content, I don't intend to announce it to my friends or most of my family, but if I do sign up with Youthful Wisdom Press I will have to get my mother to sign the contract for me.
Once I've hit 50K, which I'm actually hoping to do Monday, I will be starting work on A Cutter's Journey good and proper. It's going to be research intensive, mostly finding websites that I had bookmarked on another computer but don't currently have any real access to.
Tonight I'll be posting the Sunrise on the Beach exercise. I did get pictures of the sunset, but not the sunrise; I'm going to wait until the pictures are sent to me to post my other exercises because they'll be so much better with the pictures.
I had a lot of fun, I'm so glad that I got out of the city for once, and I feel a lot better and more at peace with everything. You can expect more posting later.
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