A belated Happy New Year to you!
Browsing the interwebs to see what I've missed in the last few months that I've been away from blogging generally I came across John Scalzi's 2010 post Writing: find the time or don't - the thrust of the post being that if you really want to write (as opposed to wanting to have written) then you'll make the time, even if it's just 100 words a day. The article's well worth a read, it says a lot that's been said before but as people frequently ask 'how do you find the time to do...' or 'I'd do 'y' if I had the time' then it obviously bears repeating.
Favourite quote from the post: "By not trying, I'm not even achieving failure."
Why mention it? Well, it spurred me to do my minimum wordcount (that I was four days behind on) and it got me back on track for this year. Following advice from paperback writer I write a business plan each year and 2011 is no exception and part of that plan includes minimum daily goals. Now in the past I've gone overboard, trying to match or keep up with other people's goals and schedules, but I can only be myself so I lowered my target to something achievable for me and the time in which I write and if I go over that each day then that's a bonus. I've also done a (brief) five year plan after having read Jeff Vandermeer's Booklife just so that I have some long-term milestones to measure against. I use targets, milestones and goals in my day-job (boy, do I ever) so why not in my writing life? In my day-job I have someone to say to me 'that's probably too much to do in a year/ six months' or 'you could do a bit more there, couldn't you?' but in my writing life I don't have that so I have to make sure that I police myself and not make commitments that I know I can't keep--that way lies despair, self-loathing and cake when targets are not met.
So, the plan:
A daily goal of a minimum of 2.5 pages of new material (about 625 words) --> this is something I can do in my lunchbreak and if the writing is flowing well I may be able to round it off at about 1K. At weekends I should be able to do more but by setting an attainable minimum I'm aiming for success rather than failure.
If all goes well this should give me a weekly count of 17.5 pages of new material (minimum) and I'll be doing other writing related stuff as well (e.g. submitting & re-submitting shorts among other things.)
My new endeavour goal this year is to try my hand at writing a short film script. I tried spec fic haiku a couple of years ago and that worked well and was interesting to do, so this year is scriptwriting and I'll use a story that has been giving me the finger for a few years and see if it works any better that way. Or not.
So the metrics:
New words since 01-01-11: 2,573
Total words on YA UF: 94,249
How about you - any plans (rather than resolutions) made?