No matter how hard one tries to avoid it, this is the time of year when one can’t help but look back on the year that has gone and reflect, and make plans and resolutions for the one to come. At the start of last year (and it is scary to call it last year!) I listed some of my goals and, while I didn’t achieve all of them, I feel like I did have a red hot crack. While on a personal level it has been an up and down year, and went pretty pear shaped right at the end, when it comes to my writing I can look back with a degree of satisfaction. Amongst the highlights were:
- Attending three conventions, Swancon, Continuum and Conflux
- Collaborating on a story with Brendan Duffy
- Getting to write a story featuring the Lone Ranger
- My first Australian sale
- Starting a blogging series on New who with Tehani and Tansy
- Completing NaNoWriMo
While the writing achievements have been wonderful, it has been the people I have met and been able to spend time with that have made it a year to remember. I am continually amazed and overwhelmed by the support and generosity shown by the people in the Australian spec fic community. I (like many writers) am a little shy and find it hard to mix in new circles, so it has been incredible how welcomed I have been made to feel by people.
And, on the writing side of things, I can definitely see real development in my craft. That has been a result of some excellent critiquing by people like the SuperNOVA writers group and Steve Cameron (amongst many others) who have continually pushed me to improve, plus a lot of writing and rewriting. Hopefully I will see the same rate of improvement in the coming year.
When I look back at the goals I set last year, it is a bit of mixed bag. That’s okay, I did set some pretty lofty goals and there are only one or two that I feel that i left myself down on, rather than it being outside my control. For example, I was disappointed with not keeping up with my blogging better than I did, which is my fault, while not making a pro sale is a little harder to make happen. So, for this year my goals are (as a minimum):
- 15,000 new words a month
- Attend two conventions
- Two pro sales
- Regular blogging
- Sell at least one non fiction piece to a major media outlet
- Get the draft of my novel to a submissable state
- Participate in the Australian Women Writers 2012 Reading and Reviewing Challenge
Bring it on!
I think your writing goal of 15,000 words per month is a good one. One blogger I’ve been following wants to write 10,000 words per week. Another is trying for 1.1 million words over the course of the year.
My goals are a little lower. 10,000 words a month, at least 100 rejections. Those should be achievable, especially if I keep submitting to Clarkesworld.
Tobias Buckell has an interesting blurb about goals and milestones on his blog. I’m not sure if I’d shared this with you before.
http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2011/08/25/writers-and-pellets/
Good luck and keep at it!
Wow, they are pretty ambitious goals! If they can acheive that my hat is off to them, but personally I struggled to handle NaNoWriMo (I will be blogging about that soon) let alone even more, and every month.
I think that your ones are very acheivable…good luck! But why not go with 100 acceptances? 😛 Is Clarkesworld your personal grail? I think we all have a market which we would love to be published in above all others.
I saw that article (thank goodness for Google Reader) and found it pretty interesting. In my own mind I try very hard to make sure I keep the controllables and the uncontrollables seperate. When I don’t acheive the uncontrollables I am disappointed, not crushed. It is when I don’t achieve the controllables that I feel I have let myself down.
Thanks for popping by again…happy writing! 🙂
I thought Buckell’s post was pretty interesting. The bit about rejectomancy was great. Most of my rejections are low-tier form letters. It’s hard to practice rejectomancy with no data.
Clarkesworld isn’t my grail–it’s just another pro market with kickass rates. One thing I like (and hate) about them is their blazing-fast turnaround time on rejections. My longest waiting period for a Clarkesworld rejection was something like 6 or 7 days. The shortest rejection was under 24 hours, which is pretty amazing.
Submitting to Clarkesworld is basically a great way to get rejections. If I ever find myself low on rejections, I know that I can submit to them and be summarily booted without a second glance.
I don’t really have a grail, but if I could publish a story anywhere, I’d want to be in The Magazine of F&SF. What’s your grail?
Catch you later.