Hello, New Year

This year, instead of making resolutions, I’ve made a plan. Heading into the second half of December, holiday and family obligations avalanched and, as usual, my writing ground to a halt. Instead of feeling bad about this (like I do every year), I spent those last couple weeks creating a plan for 2015.

A plan that includes not only weekends off, but writing vacations. I’m building in two weeks off at the end of December, one week in June (when school ends for my girls), and I’m keeping one vacation week in reserve to be slotted in as needed (spontaneous road trip, anyone?).

Over the last couple years I’ve established a daily writing habit and I have a good idea of how many words I can write in a typical day and how much I can accomplish in a day, a week, a month.

The plan has me drafting, revising, and finishing:

6 flash fiction stories

4 short stories (3,000 – 5,000 words)

2 novellas

1 novel

2014 was the year when a lot of my short stories grew into something longer and I ended the year with a lot of open projects as I learn to manage longer forms, both in terms of writing skills and writing time. The flash and short stories will be new. The novel and novellas are projects started in 2014 that I will finish this year.

I’m budgeting two weeks for short stories, a month for the novellas, and six months for the novel, which is really a guess. This is the novel I began late last year, so a lot of the preliminary work is complete. 

The closest thing to a resolution I have is that I intend to track my daily work in a log book. An actual paper journal, because I’m old fashioned that way. At the end of this year I will have better data to further refine and improve my process.

A Story a Week in 2013

Not every story will be a butterfly, so write more stories!

I have my ongoing writing goals and a queue of story ideas waiting to be written so I was debating wheather to come up actual resolutions this year. But the fact is, I kinda like making resolutions, even if only 10% stick, I figure I'm still in the black. Then I read Chuck Wendig's post pooh poohing the anti-New Year's resolutioners:

"This is of course the time of the year when frowny-faced naysayers tell you your resolutions are stupid and why are you waiting till today to make them and keep them, as if your today must conform to their today, as if your decision to evolve or change or Do Something is somehow offensive to them. It’s the same cynical thing you hear at Valentine’s Day — “I don’t need a day to buy flowers for my wife,” they say, which is true, but of course they probably don’t buy flowers for their wives on any other day anyway."

And that sealed it!

Not only am I going to make resolutions. I'll tell you about them so that you, fair reader, can hold me accountable. First, be sure to read the rest of Wendig's short, inspiring rant here.

Then on New Year's day, I stumbled upon Jay Lake's great essay where he gives his own four rules of writing:

1) Write a story every week.

2) Finish everything you start.

3) Don't self-critique while you're writing

4) Work on one thing at a time.

I think I'm ready to step up my game to produce a story a week, so I've decided to participate in Write 1 Sub 1 This year.

I am modifying this challenge since while I think writing a story a week is achievable, I agree with Lake that not all those stories will be keepers. So, I am resolving to write (i.e. finish) one story a week and to submit two stories per month allowing for a 50% success/failure rate. It will just about double my submission numbers which were closer to one per month last year. I like how Lake looks at his stories as inventory with the point being that you want lots of inventory.

I'm going to keep up with my daily freewriting with a timed piece of true free writing and a timed piece that is a story exercise from one my my many prompt books, games, apps, etc. This represents about 20 - 40 minutes of warm up activity - what any good athlete or musician puts in.

I will still be blogging every Thursday and might even post a flash story or three. 

Resolute

Onward, to the future.

 I like the idea of resolutions, although I suspect it's just a subcategory of my love of lists. I've decided to take a little different tack this year. Here's a version of what I wrote in my Journal on January 1st.

• I resolve to accomplish more this year than last year, BUT not astronomically more.
• I resolve to stop dictating unreachable goals and impossible schedules to myself. You know the ones that only serve to discourage and scuttle any chance of accomplishing anything. (I think it is reasonable to write and submit one story a month this year which fits nicely with Write 1 Sub 1's monthly challenge.)
• I resolve to LEARN my own habits by observing and recording my work patterns in a writing calendar. I'll do this in order to discover my own best method for bringing work from idea to draft, through revision and critique, and into to publishable form.
• I resolve to stop saying, I will "FIND" time to write, and only say, I will "MAKE" time to write as I have NEVER found any time laying around.
• I resolve to conquer that short but challenging walk to my work space: To say YES  to the work. 
• I resolve to forgive myself for the days where writing doesn't happen, and to move on without guilt.
• I resolve to to recognize my loving obligations to my family, and to use the time I DO make for writing well.
• I resolve to always do my best work, and to make my writing better through practice.
• I resolve to be more open and free, to cherish and grow new ideas by saying YES to the world even if saying yes makes me feel vunerable or awkward or means that I might risk embarrassment.
• I will put my work out there by submitting at least 12 stories this year.
• I resolve procrastinate LESS (not that I will no longer procrastinate, baby steps).
• I resolve to reach out to my fellow travelers, specifically via this blog, and by regularly attending my local writers' group.
• I resolve to look up and meet this curious world's gaze.
• It's going to be a good year.