I’ve had a lot of time to think about my goals for this year, partly because that’s what people do this time of year and because I’ve been snowed in every other weekend and have had lots of time to mull things over.
I’ve been going over my notes from last year to see how well my 2013 plans panned out. Some of them were surprisingly prescient (I had one page in my notebook title ‘James White Award- aka let’s get published in Interzone’) while other goals fell by the wayside way too early (‘The Alan Turing play- how?’). There were a few pages dedicated to me panicking over Duotrope closing and oh my god, what am I going to do? (Answer: I made a list of my favourite markets and kept on chugging. The Submisson Grinder has also been a godsend).
For the most part in 2013 I made the same resolutions I’ve made the last few years- Write Every Day, Participate in Write 1 Sub 1, Send Something to F&SF Each Month, Apply to Clarion, Do NaNoWriMo and WIN. This year I’m making a lot of the same promises anew, though others I’m shedding.
Write 1, Sub1 has been a good guideline for me the past two years. Basically you challenge yourself to write one story a month and submit it in the same month (there’s a weekly challenge for keeners). There’s a few blogs out there chronicling it, though my home base is the W1S1 forums on Absolute Write. I’m going to keep on that this year. I’m also going to write every day (so far this year, so good! Only 363 days to go!).
F&SF is still one of my favourite markets to send stories too (I don’t mind sending them postal subs- I like getting mail) but I’m not going to beat myself up if I don’t have a story to send them each month. I’ll probably do NaNo (maybe even Camp NaNo) again, though right now I’m still trying to come up with a novel-length idea.
Applying to Clarion is one 2013 resolution I’m most iffy on repeating. I’ve got big plans for the future, and to get there I need to save up as much cash as I can. Given the choice of either spending it to go to Clarion or to do this thing (move to a foreign country), I’d rather follow through on my dream. I can’t guarantee me getting into Clarion, but I do have control over this.
So, to boil it down:
Write every day
Write and submit a short story each month
Aside from writing, my main goal for 2014 is to be more informed about the world. This means not only paying more attention to the news, but being discerning and questioning what the media is telling me. It also means boning up on history and geography so I have a better understand the context of current events. Last year my main goal was to read more fiction by women authors. I’m pretty pleased with how much I read last year, including all the new women authors I discovered. This year my goal is to read more non-fiction, though I will still seek out women authors (as well as people of colour and non-western viewpoints). right now I’m halfway through ‘Reading Lolita in Tehran’, a Christmas gift from my brother (takes a while to getting going, but once it does it takes off running. A good book to start the year off).
The snow is still coming down (Blizzard warning in effect). According to Facebook most of the local businesses downtown are closed. Will I be snowed in again today? I hope not. I don’t know how much more of this ‘thinking about the future’ I can take.
Tags: Writing