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Friday, January 01, 2010

2010: Looking Back and Looking Forward (Resolutions)

Well, it's the New Year, and things are gearing up to be rather exciting for 2010. I'm going to be changing a lot of things (on this blog, in my writing life, and in my personal life), for one, and, as I mentioned here, I'm going to be quite busy. But, a good way to look forward is to start by looking back, which is exactly what I'm going to do here.

Last year I set several goals for myself in the form of a resolution. How did I do? Well, let's see:
  1. Write 200,000 words -- 153,424. I didn't quite make it, obviously.
  2. Edit 200,000 words -- 124,461. Again, didn't make it.
  3. Submit 26 new short stories by Dec. 31 -- Well, I only have eighteen stories submitted right now, and a few of those were submitted during 2008. Still, it's not like I didn't try. I have at least six stories in the final edit phase and another twenty nearly done. So, I was close.
  4. Reach a total of 20 stories in the submission queue -- I think I actually hit this at one point. I have a couple stories that I have since put to the side because I don't feel comfortable with them being out there at the moment.
  5. Get published -- I actually came close. I received a rewrite request not too long ago and all I'm doing now is waiting for the specifics. So, technically if I rewrite the piece and it gets accepted, it will happen in 2010, but it was a process that began in 2009. I've also had a bunch of near misses this year. So close.
This year, my resolutions are going to be a big different:
  1. Write 150,000 words
  2. Finish either 20 new short stories OR one of my science fiction novels-in-progress
  3. Read at least a book a week (not for school)
That's it. I want 2010 to be fairly simple. No unreasonable goals. No crazy things that can get in the way of my academic work (I'm trying to build a career, after all). Three very simple, hopefully easy writing/reading goals.

What about you? What are your writing/reading resolutions for 2010?

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Posted by Unknown at 6:50 PM Labels: ,

6 comments:

  1. Anonymous8:05 PM

    Very productive year. I'm totally going to do a post like this that won't be nearly as impressive!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Unknown8:16 PM

    Oh, and I forgot to talk about all my rejections :(. I had a lot this year. I'll have to do an addendum post...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Harry Markov5:31 AM

    My goals are a bit larger than yours, but I am not thinking much about the big picture. But if I even get to the half I would have shown imminent growth compared to 2009.

    1. Write 300,000 [1K every day]

    2. Produce a short story every 2 weeks or a larger small project every three weeks.

    3. read 6 books per month

    ReplyDelete
  4. Unknown12:41 PM

    Oh, definitely bigger goals than myself, Harry. I just don't have the time (or the mental fortitude) to do that much writing and reading on top of all my academic work (and my job as a teacher). I think 411 words a day is good enough :).

    ReplyDelete
  5. Memory5:47 PM

    Good luck with all your goals! I hope I can finally started querying agents in 2010. I know the book is pretty well there, aside from some tweaks I want to make before I start submitting, but I'm far less optimistic about my query letter.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Unknown6:06 PM

    Memory: Oh, good luck with that! That's tough stuff right there!

    ReplyDelete

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