Welcome 2011

"Well the years start coming and they don't stop coming..." - All Star, Smash mouth

Happy New Year everyone,

It's January 3rd and 2011 is now properly upon us. All the stock-taking has been done, all the resolutions have been made and now it's time to get down to it. I've got to say, I've never been one for resolutions - they always seemed too binding to me. Now, however, as I move onto the downward slope of life while trying to build my writing career, I find that resolutions are too vague.

How many of you have made resolutions to exercise more or to write more or to eat healthy? Now ask yourself what exactly does that resolution mean? How will you go about accomplishing it?

Booklife

In the middle of last year, I read 'Booklife' by Jeff Vandermeer and it changed the way I think about resolutions and goals. Importantly, it made me see the futility of vague goals. eg. I want to be published in 5 years. Fine. How are you going to do that, just write? How much? Do you think the first book will be published? What about managing your career or creating a portfolio or awareness of your 'brand'? What about learning the industry? And what about all the other activities in your life that distract from writing, how will you manage them?

In 'Booklife' Jeff shows how to set your long term goals and then break them into medium and short-term goals that will actually allow you to accomplish what you want. This is an important step as it makes you think hard about how you're going to accomplish your task: Finish the book - by when? How many words a day/week? How long for revision? How and who will you send it too? What about the other distractions: exercise (important for a writer), family duties, website (crucial for writers these days:companies no longer do most of the marketing), e-mail, blog, social networking? How and when to fit these in? What about that trip to the spa or learning a new skill? I'm sure everyone notices the same thing I have: as you get older, you get busier. That's why it's even more important to set goals: long-term, and specific short-term goals.

My Goals

So, like many writers, my long-term goal is to be published in 5 years. If I'm not, I have a few options. (1) decide that I'm just not a writer and move on to something else, (2) believe the market isn't interested in what I want to say (no matter how well said) and self-publish, (3) keep writing and modify that goal.

My medium term goals, then, are to complete one book a year and two short stories. The short stories, I will send out to do the rounds (and build my cv) instead of just sitting on the computer. However, since my interest lay more in novels, I intend to write short stories that tie in to the novels. As for one novel a year, this is only a matter of discipline, since I already have a half-dozen novels in various stages of outline at the moment (and several started).

Short term goals are where the resistance comes: 'I can't commit to that...I don't know what's going to happen...' True, but they are the necessary guidelines you make to gauge your progress toward what's necessary to accomplish your long-term goals. It's important to realize you will fail some of them, especially until you come to know yourself and your practical abilities better.

My short term goals are to:

(1) revise my current novel at a rate of about 5 pages/day (to finish by June)--this is no easy task since I wrote the original during a NaNoWriMo and I'm now re-envisioning most of it.

(2) I'm also aiming to finish and submit a script to the BBC by the end of March, which means completing it by the end of January (at an average of 2 pages/day. In this case I will take two weeks for research and then write at about 4 pages/day, as script-writing tends to be much faster than novel writing.

(3) I've already picked the short stories I want to finish for this year and both are partially written. I intend to finish one each 6 months, although the first will start after the script is sent. I haven't yet planned firm short-term goals for writing the short stories yet.

I'm curious whether this sounds like a lot, or a too little, to most of you. For me it's sounding a little daunting, when factoring in my other goals (health, family and recreation), but do-able if I get myself back into a good routine).

Well, that's my new years res...goals. How about you? Have you set any goals for this year? Do you have a plan for accomplishing them? I'm sure you'll succeed if you set your mind to it.

All the best to everyone in the new year,

Edwin