Writing Goals for 2013

First, I guess I should revisit my 2012 writing goals:

Goal 1: 1hr creative writing 5x/week.

First two-thirds of the year: #fail. However, I turned this around in the last third of the year. In September, I did the TC Mini-Nano. In October, I did the 250 words a day challenge. In November, I did NaNo—I didn’t “win” but I wrote a lot. In December, I started the 500 words a day challenge and my final word count for the month was almost 19k.

Goal 2: draft of dissertation by end of year.

Argh, no. But I have made a lot of progress since September. I still hope/plan to have the thing done in 2013.

Goal 3: blog 3x/week.

Yes, check. Ok, so it wasn’t a nice M-W-F three times a week, but I posted 165! times in 2012, which works out to an average of 3.17 times / week. I’ll call this one a #win.

Goal 4: 366 project.

366 terrible haiku written. Check. And blargh. Never again.

I guess I did learn something (didn’t I already know this?): every day for a month = fun challenge. Every day for a year = enough already. My attention span rebels at the year-long challenge.

Also in 2012:

I wrote 4 articles + 2 editorials + 2 reviews for TC:

I finally bought my own domain. Professionalism!

I entered a writing contest. (I wrote something! I submitted it! #win)

I read a bunch of books. It was a pretty good reading year with only one real clunker (I’m looking at you, King of Torts). Best fiction: Ayiti. Best nonfiction: Quiet.

Onward.

Susannah Conway suggests selecting a word to represent the upcoming year. Sure, why not? So my word is…

ALOHA

Haha! Expecting something else, were you?

Aloha because it means both goodbye and hello and 2013 is a year I hope to say goodbye to some things (The Dissertation) and hello to some new things.

Aloha because it also means (amongst other things): love, affection, compassion, mercy, sympathy, kindness, grace, charity. And we could all use more loving-kindness in our lives.

And aloha because Hawaii is going to be my reward to myself for finishing The Dissertation. (I have one vote for Kauai—anyone else care to weigh in?)

2013 Writing (+ Reading) Goals

  • continue with 500 words a day challenge (see sidebar)
  • write at least one essay + submit it
  • read more books, especially fiction (b/c reading novels makes me happy)
    • read some of these books + write reviews and/or interview authors
    • read some new-to-me books on writing + write an article
    • read some of these books (eventually all, but not all this year or the dissertation will never get done)
  • keep a reading journal (i.e. jot down notes/page numbers while reading so it’s easier to write about them afterward. efficiency ftw.)
  • keep on top of my book posts!
  • blog better (i.e. more posts other people might actually be interested in reading)
  • tweet about new blog posts (i.e. get over my squeamishness about self-promo)
  • work on a business plan
  • start a sketchbook
  • snail mail (admit it. you’d love to get a letter, a card, a postcard.)
  • finish The Dissertation
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6 thoughts on “Writing Goals for 2013”

  1. kingmidget

    Like your word choice. You’re also right about the difference between an every day for a month challenge versus an every day for a year challenge. Which, of course, explains your 500 words a day for a year challenge. 🙂
    And snail mail … you’re on to something.

    1. Theryn Post author

      Ah, but if you look closely, it’s not every day, it’s 6 days a week. And it’s “try.” It’s the writing equivalent of “try to go for a run or do yoga 6 days a week.” That’s what I try to do, but if I miss a day now and then or turn into a slug for a week when I’m on vacation, no big deal. Also, it’s write anything, not write the same thing day after day after day…

      If you email me your snail mail address, I’ll send you something. Postcards from Canada 😉

      1. kingmidget

        Messaged you on TC. I’d offer postcards from Sacramento, but you deserve better than that. Good luck with your six days a week challenge. I’m trying something along those lines as well. Only thing for me is that I don’t count blogging … to me it has to be on my fiction or on the script.

          1. kingmidget

            I consider blogging to be a distraction from my fiction writing, which is what I “should” be doing. Yes, it’s writing, but it’s not … trying to come up with the right word for this … meaningful. That’s the wrong word, because everything doesn’t have to be meaningful and on some level, over the course of months and years, a blog becomes a record of where I was each time I blogged. So, it could be meaningful. So … let’s see … I’ll go back to my first comment … blogging just seems to be a distraction.

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