Tag: goals

Writing Goals for the 2023 Summer Season

Because I’m a teacher, summer has always been my chance to get some solid writing done. Every year, I set myself a bunch of writing goals. Last year was a wash, sadly, because I spent the summer recovering from a somewhat substantial surgery and lacked the energy to do much of anything. This summer, though. This summer I am healthy and ready to go. Also, I just found out that I’ve been accepted into the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Associations Mentoring Initiative Program for the June 10th–September 10th session.

So yeah, this summer is going to be all about writing, and identifying my writing goals is a way to help me stay on task and not waste time. Therefore, in the spirit of making the most of the next twelve weeks, here are my writing goals for this summer:

Goal #1: Short Story Revisions

I’ve got two short stories that I need to rework and revise. They’ve both been workshopped by my amazing writing group gals and have been sitting, waiting for my attention. I want to shape them into something good and get them out on submission (since I’ve been having some recent luck in that department). One is a fairytale style romance, very uncharacteristic for me. The other is a dystopian science fiction thriller in the same vein as The Manchurian Candidate. Currently, it’s a mess. It might not be sellable, but I need to at least try to turn it into something submittable.

Goal #2: Write a Bunch of New Flash Stories

I’m very new to writing flash fiction. Prior to this year I’d have laughed at anyone who suggested I try my hand at writing a complete story in under 1,000 words. Uh, do you know me? I’m normally the “why use one word when ten will do” kind of writer.

But in early January, the online writing community I’m a member of–The Codex Writers–announced that their annual winter flash fiction challenge would be starting soon. I hadn’t done much writing since early November and was both hating on myself for it and also unable to climb out of the pit of lassitude I’d fallen into, so I thought I’d give the flash fiction thing a try. Why not? It’d get me writing, and it’d push me outside my comfort zone and challenge my skills as a writer.

It was awesome.

Luckily for me, Codex runs a summer flash challenge as well. It’s a bit less intense in terms of pacing and word count limits (I can hardly believe I now think 1000 words is luxurious). It runs for three weeks, and we get seven whole days to write and submit each time! More time, more words, I’m 100% doing it.

I also recently found out about s second flash fiction challenge hosted by Clarion West that’s happening this summer. This one has a participation fee associated with it ($25). It’s actually a fundraiser that supports Clarion West’s programs for emerging and underrepresented writers. Registration opens on June 12th. Sounds awesome. I’m doing it.

So, between those two community hosted events, I should end up with a bunch of new flash stories.

Goal #3: Finish a Rough Draft of a Novel-in-Progress

Okay, I might be biting off more than I can chew here. Of course I am. I’m a Try Hard, YOLO, overachieving Extra by nature. Do all the things! All of them!! In that spirit, I’ve got a half-finished draft of a middle grade adventure story that I really want to finish writing, and I really want it to be good, not sucky. Rather than discovery write my way into 70,000 words of bloated rambling nothingness (which has been my failed strategy with my last two novels), I need a plan. I need to actually map out the story before I write it. Unfortunately, I suck at plot structure. Fortunately, I’ll have a SFWA mentor who will be able to help me out with tips and tricks and regular check-ins to keep me honest.

So those are my goals for this coming summer. Write, write, and write some more. I’m sure I’ll also want to spend time with the fam and do some gardening and hiking and beaching, etc. Are you a writer or creative artist? Do you have a “season of productivity” like I do? If so, how do you keep yourself on track and productive so you don’t lose time and opportunity?

Thanks for stopping by, and as always, happy writing!

June 12, 2023
Three Times the Publishing Charm!

I’ve been grinning a lot these days. It’s been hard not to. I had a big publishing milestone this past April when I received my first story acceptance at MetaStellar Magazine. For someone who has dreamed of being a published author since childhood, that first acceptance really is a very big deal. It comes with thoughts of, I did it! I finally did it! and a sense of unbridled joy and satisfaction that only comes when something you’ve been working at for ages finally happens.

I remember spending the summer of my 11th year trying to hit a baseball all the way across my yard from between the two peach trees to under the outer most bows of the white pine. In truth, it wasn’t a far distance, but to 11-year-old me it was grand slam material, and I wanted to be able to hit a ball that far so badly. So every day I went out and swung and hit and swung and hit until I was dripping sweat and had to stop. I remember the day the ball soared up in a high and perfect arc, came down within spitting distance of the target. I will never forget the feeling of victory, of bone deep pride and satisfaction that exploded inside of me when I saw that ball vanish into the bows of that pine tree. After weeks of swinging and coming up short over and over again I did it!

That’s how it felt when I got that email from MetaStellar. I f**king did it.

Once is a Fluke, Twice is a Stroke of Luck

Funny thing, though. A couple of weeks went by and I found myself mentally minimizing my publishing success, doubting it. Once is a fluke, I thought. Once doesn’t mean anything. But then it happened again. Another acceptance showed up in my inbox in early May, this time from Metaphorosis Magazine. It’s been an amazing spring season. I mean, to get even one story published was amazing, but two? And so close to one another. The acceptances at least; the first one’s coming out in mid-July. I don’t yet know when the second story will be published. Still, that little voice has been nagging at me. What if this second sale was just a stroke of dumb luck?

Three Times is the Charm!

Two weeks ago, my spouse and I went to an art opening at the Salem Art Association in Salem Massachusetts. He’s a member and had/still has art in the show. I was still glowing from news of my second story sale, but when Lover introduced me to someone and called me an “author,” I immediately felt compelled to clarify that I was a teacher, not an author. Calling myself an author felt hubristic. After all, I’d only had two stories accepted for publication, and neither of them have even come out yet.

But this past Tuesday I got a third acceptance email! A cozy sci-fi story I wrote back in February is going to be published in Uncharted Magazine!! I can’t believe it. Maybe the next time my spouse introduces me to someone as an “author” I won’t feel the need to demur.

In the meantime, I’ve got a story I need to get back to and do some work on, then send it out on submission, see if I can ride this recent wave of publishing success. But I had to take a quick moment and share the news.

Thanks for stopping by, and as always, happy writing!

June 2, 2023
Write in the Morning to Maximize Productivity

Every morning, I wake up, get the coffee beans ground, get the water heating, and then I sit down and write for an hour. At the end of that session, I check my “session target” bar in Scrivener, and a satisfied warmth suffuses my brain. I’ve discovered a couple of things about writing first thing in the morning. 1) It’s getting easier. 2) It seems to lead to more productive writing in the afternoon.

Becoming a Morning Person

I don’t particularly enjoy getting up at 5 AM every day. It’s a new habit I’m trying to cultivate as part of a synergistic new year resolution I made with my spouse. Get up early, engage in some form of exercise for 20 or 30 minutes, then write for an hour. That’s the goal, and so far I’ve succeeded with only a couple of slip-ups (one of which I fully blame on the Bombogenesis of 2018).

The actual getting up part of this is, slowly, getting easier for me due to some tremendous positive reinforcement (I’ll get to that later). The exercise part of things… ummm, yeah. No. I’m not. I should. But I’m not. Do I feel bad about that? Yep. Am I going to build the working out part back into my morning routine? One day, yes. That day is not close, though.

Regarding physically getting up and getting my day going, though? That’s getting easier.

The neuroscientists reading my blog (hey, they could be) are nodding their heads. There’s plenty of science to back up what I’m experiencing: doing something over and over makes it easier to do. Charles Duhigg wrote a book about it called The Power of Habit. I haven’t read it, but I did read this NPR article: Habits: How They Form and How to Break Them that shilled for his book. I’m glad I did because it made me realize that I’ve accidentally included something into my morning routine that’s pretty clutch when it comes to habit formation: CONCRETE AND IMMEDIATE REWARDS.

In my earlier post, Writing is Like Baseball: You Gotta Swing for the Fences, I talked about the fact that I’m trying to write an entire first draft of a novel by April 9th. Scrivener has allowed me to set a deadline date and a word count goal. As I write, Scrivener calculates how many words I need to write every day to meet my deadline. This, friends, is where I have accidentally been rewarding myself.

Session Targets are My Friend

Take a look at that picture over there on the left. That green bar is pretty, isn’t it? That was my session target bar at 4:23 PM yesterday afternoon. Not too shabby. I try to make sure that I’ve hit my daily word count goal before I head on home to my family after work because when I get home, writing gets really difficult.

Anyway, I have always, always responded well to extrinsic feedback and rewards. I’m terrible at doing things for myself, but I am great at doing them for someone (or something) else. Scrivener is my external motivator. I will write that session target into the green and love every minute of it.

If I’m slogging along in a scene and the words aren’t coming quickly and I feel tempted to just close up shop for the day and quit, I can open up that session target and get re-motivated to push for those last couple hundred words. It works every single time. I’m not saying the words are fabulous. I’m just saying this feature helps keep me writing when I might otherwise stop.

In the mornings, I’ve been writing forward in my current novel project. It’s only an hour, and this is right after I’ve gotten up, remember. I’m not breaking any productivity records here. But check it out: when 6:30 AM rolls around (I have a timer to make sure I don’t fall into the page and get lost), I open up my “Session Target” bar and have a little peek to see how I did.

The kids aren’t even up yet, and I’m halfway done!

That sight, that glorious yellow bar reaching more than halfway across the screen, well it just makes me smile. Seriously, I close up my computer and finish my 5:00 AM writing session feeling like a character from the LEGO Movie (everything is awesome!) The kids aren’t even up yet, and I’m already halfway toward achieving my daily word count goal.

If that isn’t a concrete and immediate reward, I don’t know what is.

Write Earlier to Write More Later

Something else happens when I knock off 300 to 400 words first thing. In addition to flooding my brain with dopamine like some literary addict, I also prime my imaginative pump and set myself up for my afternoon writing session.

All day long, I find myself thinking about my story and wanting to get back to it. My morning session takes my project and moves it to the front burner of my mind. Come afternoon, I’m more than ready to sit down and dive back in, and I think that those afternoon sessions are becoming more productive, too. There’s probably some science to support that observation, but I don’t know what it is. I could Google it, I suppose, but really, this post is eating up too much of my time already. It’s 3:15 PM. I’ve got an itch that needs scratching. It’s time to knock out those remaining 332 words and fill that bar with glorious, goal-oriented green.

This whole get-up-early-and-write thing seems to be working out for me so far.

Do you write in the mornings? Have you always? If not, would you ever give it a try?

January 23, 2018