In January 2020 I set myself some writing writing goals. Let’s look at how I was doing on those before, you know, that thing happened.
Reading:
Open my Kindle app every day – I lost this for a while during the pandemic, but in general, I open my Kindle more days in a week than I don’t, which is good enough.
Read one craft book – Read Story Genius by Lisa Cron. Wrote this analysis of Frozen 2 using the principles from it. Definitely planning to use some of these techniques in my next novel.
Read one collection of short stories by a classic author – Done. See my review of Ray Bradbury’s story stories.
Read three comp titles and three context titles – I wanted to read some time travel novels because my next novel idea is “Harry Potter, but it’s about the Weasleys and it’s a time travel school.” Well, the only one I’ve gotten to is Here and Now and Then by Mike Chen. I’ve got Recursion by Blake Crouch and The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz on the docket. I’m also making my way through Writers of the Future (Vol 36) for some context on what’s being written now by new writers.
Writing:
Write 500 words a day – My writing goals kind of got smashed to smithereens by the pandemic. But now I’m back on track writing 444 words a day on 4thewords (review here).
Write 5 short stories – I got 2 stories written before the pandemic storm hit.
Write another novel in spring – Yeah, not so much.
Community:
Actively workshop pieces and read others’ pieces in the Reading Excuses group – I had a lot of fun workshopping writing by other authors in December-February, but this was one of the first things out the window when things got messy.
Attend at least one local writing event – The pandemic actually helped me with this one. I attended a Clarion West workshop on world building with James Sutter and was able to do it without leaving home! It was an intense 6 hours of video conferencing, but I felt like it helped a lot with many of the world building problems my NaNo novel had. I went to another Clarion event for their summer write-a-thon which didn’t work for me as much, but I was glad that I could go without having to find someone to watch the kids.
Overall, I’m pretty happy with how my goals went, given the world. There are things I could have done better, but I’m pulling myself back on track.
Now to set some writing goals for the second half of the year. Things are going to be a little different from last year: not only will all my kids be at home during the day, but we are home schooling in order to avoid all the remote public school mess. I’ve gotten myself excited about all the books I’m going to be reading with the kids, but I really have no concept of how long or short our days will be and how much this will impact my writing time. So I’m trying to set reasonable, achievable goals that I can go beyond if time and energy allows.
Reading:
Atomic Habit: Read at lunch and after dinner – I have a bad habit of drifting off onto social media during these downtimes, even though I generally keep up on it during the day so there’s nothing new. I’ve found myself reading the same 12 Facebook posts up to five times in a day. (Please say it’s not just me.) So I’m trying to set a new habit of reading instead, specifically in these two slots. This might also help me break down the block in my head that says I need large chunks of time in order to read, which a stay-at-home mom never has.
Writing:
Atomic Habit: Continue 4thewords streak writing 500 words a day – This is working for me. I’d love to see how large I can make that streak number grow. Though I give myself permission to buy off Sundays occasionally.
Continue writing about Mormons and speculative fiction – I was asked to revive an old paper for the Association for Mormon Letters blog, and it’s turned into a whole series of posts. These have been a blast to write and reminded me how much I enjoy this subject. As far as I can tell (still need to do more research), there aren’t a lot of other people writing in this space, so it could be fun to make this niche mine. Once the series is finished, I plan to continue with some original analysis on Brandon Sanderson stuff in preparation for the Rhythm of War release in November. I may then move on to other Mormon SFF authors, which will overflow into my reading as well.
Work on brainstorming and building the Time Travel School novel – I’m having good success doing world building by free-writing on 4thewords, so I’m going to continue that to see where it leads me. I will probably also pull in the techniques I learned in Story Genius and maybe even write a short story of the core of the book.
Evaluate doing NaNoWriMo after September – I really want to do NaNo again this year, but it just may not be realistic. But then again, if I’m already writing 500 words a day, it shouldn’t be that big of a push (should it?). I’ll evaluate after our first month of homeschooling to decide whether to gear up in October or just slowly build the novel over a year for next NaNo.
Community:
Write a blog post a week – I want to keep talking to other writers and I find the way I do that best is by blogging. I can commit one of my writing days a week to getting something together. I’m shooting for Thursdays.
Try out American Night Writers Association for a new writing community – I enjoyed Reading Excuses but I want to see what else is out there.
How have your goals changed as the world has changed? Are you getting back on top of it?
