Looking Forward to the New Year: Writing in 2012

I have to say, I'm really excited looking towards the next year. I know, I know, it's really just an arbitrary date change, but like many people I find it useful at some point during the year to take stock, and this is as good a time as any.

A lot of changes have happened in 2011, both writing related and otherwise. They include a move, career exploration, and a huge shift in the ways that I've managed to leverage my freelance writing. Despite all of the changes, a lot of the year (like many years before) felt like a set-up for things to come in the future. I hope 2012 will be the year the wheels actually start turning.

There's mixed opinion out there as to whether it's better to share your goals or keep them to yourself (I probably mentioned this before, but it's worth repeating). Derek Sivers of TED talk fame says not to share; a host of others, among them The Change Blog and Goalmigo, have the opposite opinion. I've found both techniques to be equally useful (or useless, as the case may be), though certainly writing them down for personal use is better than leaving them to rattle around untethered in your head.

So I've decided to describe the coming year as a seer might, putting out ideas rather than hard-and-fast goals. Mmm, yes, the crystal ball is showing me something... I can see clearly now... There is another move in the near future. Writing, lots of writing. More fiction. More blogging. More connecting with writers and helping to showcase their work. More opportunities. And something else, it's not quite certain, but I'll be doing something next year that's unlike anything I've done to date.

Okay, so maybe the crystal ball was a bit of a bust. Anyway, the point is I'm excited to be going forward, and I hope that all of you are, too!

May 2011 Goals

May is here, so it's time for a new crop of goals!

1. Write at least 17 Weird Worm articles. My goal last month was to write twenty, and I managed to write thirteen. I figure seventeen articles should be a good goal this month.
2. Continue to exercise. Last month I did about twelve miles per week. I'm going to try and stick with that this month. And also, get better running shoes and stretch so I avoid IT band problems.
3. Work on writing four hours per day. This was my goal towards the end of last month, and it went okay. I'm finding that increasing things slowly over time works better than trying to take huge leaps.
4. Fully explore niche online markets. I've been working on the Best Kinect Games niche market using Squidoo and HubPages. This isn't exactly freelance writing, although it does use a lot of the same skills. Ideally, I'd fully realize a niche market with a blog that I can keyword optimize. The tricky part about this is finding a niche that's both a.) profitable and b.) something I'm interested enough in to keep up with.
5. Explore new article markets? I've been toying with this goal on and off for a while. Again, this involves finding new markets that I really want to write for; After all, I'm supposedly doing this job because I enjoy it, and if I'm going to do things I don't enjoy there are plenty of more stable and better paying opportunities out there. I'm learning that, as a freelance writer, I don't need a ton of different markets; I just need a few that I really enjoy writing for, that pay enough money to make them worth my while. I'm interested in writing for health, cooking, fitness, and travel markets: I'm also worried that the competition in these market might be fierce. I guess I just need to keep chipping away!
6. Move. My lease is up this month, so I'll be moving to a temporary location while I figure out where my next step will take me. So I'll be spending time packing, getting rid of junk, hiring a moving truck, and all of that fun stuff.

That should be enough to keep me busy for the month. If not, I'll add to the list!

Decide on Writing Fiction and Other April 2011 Goals

I've been too busy doing the things on this list to make this list, which is an improvement over being too busy slacking off! Here are my April goals:

1. Decide on where I want to go with writing fiction. I'm starting to come to the realization that my heart just hasn't been in the fiction novels I've written. It's a hard thing to come to terms with, because I want to be a fiction writer. I'm just not sure how much I want to write fiction. Or maybe I just haven't come across something that I'm passionate enough about yet. My goal as far as this goes is to gauge my enjoyment of this activity, and see if it's worth it.
2. Write Weird Worm articles. My Weird Worm articles didn't get written last month. But now that I'm used to writing 3,000 words a day, it should be a breeze. I want to get at least 20 13 done this month (7 done already!). And that will give me enough money to buy the digital camera I'm eyeing!
3. Plan for travel. I have an ambitious plan to visit my granddad in England and then my relatives in Norway in May once my lease is up. I also want to leverage this into a travel writing opportunity. I plan on tackling a bit of my huge to-do list each day. I've already started contacting travel mags and writing sample articles.
4. Keep up with exercising. I've been averaging 6.5 miles a week of jogging/walking/biking/hiking, and I want to average 10 by the end of April. So far I'm good with 20 miles this month.
5. Start a cooking blog? I'm playing with the idea of starting a cooking blog. I love to cook, I do it regularly, I love to take photos of food, and I love to blog. However, I'll have to see if I can swing it with everything else that's going on.
6. Keep improving traffic to my online articles. So far, the work I've put into my online content isn't really paying enough for the amount of time I've spent. I want to make sure that I'm using my energy in a productive manner.

That should be more than enough to keep me busy until May!

Recap of March 2011 Goals

Here's a quick recap of how my March 2011 goals went:

• Get the plan for my next novel into reasonably good shape (due March 5). Finished this on time! Whoo hoo!
• Write 50,000 words. Actually ended being about 82,000, as my mentor upped my goal!
• Write 12 articles for Weird Worm. Woefully failed at this one :(
• Approach 2 new markets. I think I need to decide exactly what I want to write before I do this.
• Publish about once a day on writing site Squidoo. I've made another important discovery, that I've written a lot that just isn't earning. To that end, I spent more time editing and deleting lenses than creating new ones.
• Do taxes. This, thankfully, I finished without too much trouble!
• Run 3 miles in 28 minutes. My time hasn't improved greatly, but I think it's better to focus just on getting my total number of miles per week up.

In the next few days, I'll post my updated April goals! Yay!

New Year, New Writing Goals

I suppose it's a little past the time for making New Year's resolutions, but these aren't exactly resolutions... they're goals. Things that I have solid plans in place for how to achieve them, that I'm reasonably certain I can stick to. Writing goals include:

1. Finishing my editing assignment. I'm working on editing an 86,000 word document as an assignment for my mentor/author friend. It's not something that's going to be published, but at least I'll know that I can edit a full length manuscript over the course of a couple of months. Deadline for this is in two weeks.
2. Writing the first draft of the first book in a series that my mentor and I are working out the details for. This will probably be done sometime in March.
3. Roughing out the plans for the rest of the books in the series, to be done by mid-April.
4. Editing the first book in the series, to be done by the end of June.
5. Submitting the book to editors and/or agents and working on sequels for the rest of the year.
6. Keeping up with writing articles for Weird Worm.
7. Possibly searching for new paying markets, depending on whether I decide to focus my free time on article writing.

At this time, I don't have plans to edit and submit Mechalarum. I'm happy that I wrote it, and I may come back to it someday, but right now I have bigger fish to fry!