My Goals for 2012
I won't say that I made new year's resolutions, per se, because I always make vague generalities and then break them within a few weeks.
What I did was set specific goals. Some of those goals are personal, some are related to writing. So! Here are my writing goals for 2012:
General writing Goal: To write at lest 500 words a day on something. Anything. Just to do it. And to keep myself honest, I'm going to post before I go to bed, every day, with how many words I actually managed to get written.
Fandom
1. Finish Friends with Benefits (charity fic for Apples). You'd think this one would be easy. I've written the beginning and the ending and the middle bits are all tangled up. It's sitting at about 5K and my final goal for this fic is between 10-15K. The word count will be the easy part. There's still plenty of story left to tell. The hard part is focusing.
2. Finish One Hundred and One Little Complications. This fic is only a few chapters from the end. I have the rest of the action outlined and mapped out. The issue I'm having at the moment is making the next bit believable. Both the jump from point A to point B and the action itself. Sadly, I will never be an action writer. I am hoping to improve, but I haven't quite gotten there yet.
3. Finish Beautiful Pretender (charity fic for Shi). Not that I think she'd notice if I did or didn't - Woman, get back on LJ! - but of my charity fics, it's my favorite. I have no idea why it stalled out except that my beta accidentally packed my muses in her suitcase when she moved across the country and has been too busy to mail them back.
4. Finish The Guardians (charity fic for prkjae). It took me forever to get started on this one at all. I had a very general idea of what I wanted to do, but couldn't quite figure out how I wanted to do it. I'm a little worried about probable action sequences, but I think I can skim over that a little. We'll see.
5. Write at least two prompts from my drabble post a month.
6. Write another Big Bang length Merlin fic. I've decided to limit the amount of writing I do in Merlin to this. In a way, I think this keeps me from completely abandoning my other fandoms. I've had dozens and dozens of Merlin fic ideas that I've squashed rather firmly with the reminder that I will only write Merlin fic for the Big Bang or from my prompts list.
7. Re-write my old Harry Potter fic. They were all written under a different pseudonym, so I wouldn't expect many of you to know them. I quite liked the ideas. Looking back at them recently, I had to cringe, though. Prime examples of 'good idea, poor execution'. I think I'm a much better writer than I was back then. We won't even talk about my pre-HP fic. *winces* I don't think all the re-writing and editing in the world could make those any good.
8. Finish at least one of my DBSK or Suju WiPs. Or at least update something. I don't like abandoning stories - don't look at me that way, C-Bear, just because I've done it doesn't mean I liked doing it - and I know that a lot of the people who watch this journal came here for my DBSK fics. Changmin and Yunho did a pretty good job of reminding me why I love them at KPop Masters. I spent most of December re-reading all my old fic and I think I can start working on them again. Of course, I can't promise that something like say... Dance me a Dream might not end up with a more heavy leaning of MinHo instead of JaeHo. Or, more likely, that it'll be all love-triangly or something. Dunno... we'll see.
Non-Fandom
1. Get over my natural tendency towards pessimism and actually finish and submit some of the original short stories I've been working on recently. I've been reading books on writing (largely to improve my world-building skills) and a few of them have included submission stuffs. I've no desire to throw myself on the mercy of a book publisher (nor the confidence that I could actually finish a novel length original story worth publishing) but I hadn't realized that there were places - magazines and the like - where you could submit short stories.
I know I have quite a few writing goals, but if I keep up with the 500words a day goal, then I should theoretically be able to handle all of them and then some.
Of course, the problem with all of this is that I work best with what Mr. Orson Scott Card calls a 'Smart Reader' and most big bang communities call a 'cheerleader'.
Basically, someone I can bounce ideas off of, someone who can read over things and either reassure me before I worry myself into a panic or else cut the panic off and tell me it doesn't make sense and needs to be re-written, someone I can have read something and then barrage them with questions about it so that I can get a feel of what I did right and what I did wrong. I had that before, but as much as she doesn't want to admit it, RL and school means that C-Bear can't really provide that on any kind of regular basis anymore. I don't like bothering her about it when I know she doesn't have a lot of free time. It's probably one of the biggest reasons that my writing dropped off so dramatically last year.
I expect it will remain so until I find a new 'smart reader'/'cheerleader'.
Anyone interested should have some form of instant messenger or be willing to maintain regular email/PM contact. You should be open to multiple fandoms (or original work) and ideas. You should be willing to be brutally honest without being mean. If you can't be honest without being mean, you should be prepared to have a flailing, wailing, gibbering mess of a writer on your hands. You should be accepting of the fact that half of what you read will never see the light of day or be completed - for every posted fic, I have five that only my 'smart reader' and beta ever see.
Whaddya think? Any takers?
What I did was set specific goals. Some of those goals are personal, some are related to writing. So! Here are my writing goals for 2012:
General writing Goal: To write at lest 500 words a day on something. Anything. Just to do it. And to keep myself honest, I'm going to post before I go to bed, every day, with how many words I actually managed to get written.
Fandom
1. Finish Friends with Benefits (charity fic for Apples). You'd think this one would be easy. I've written the beginning and the ending and the middle bits are all tangled up. It's sitting at about 5K and my final goal for this fic is between 10-15K. The word count will be the easy part. There's still plenty of story left to tell. The hard part is focusing.
2. Finish One Hundred and One Little Complications. This fic is only a few chapters from the end. I have the rest of the action outlined and mapped out. The issue I'm having at the moment is making the next bit believable. Both the jump from point A to point B and the action itself. Sadly, I will never be an action writer. I am hoping to improve, but I haven't quite gotten there yet.
3. Finish Beautiful Pretender (charity fic for Shi). Not that I think she'd notice if I did or didn't - Woman, get back on LJ! - but of my charity fics, it's my favorite. I have no idea why it stalled out except that my beta accidentally packed my muses in her suitcase when she moved across the country and has been too busy to mail them back.
4. Finish The Guardians (charity fic for prkjae). It took me forever to get started on this one at all. I had a very general idea of what I wanted to do, but couldn't quite figure out how I wanted to do it. I'm a little worried about probable action sequences, but I think I can skim over that a little. We'll see.
5. Write at least two prompts from my drabble post a month.
6. Write another Big Bang length Merlin fic. I've decided to limit the amount of writing I do in Merlin to this. In a way, I think this keeps me from completely abandoning my other fandoms. I've had dozens and dozens of Merlin fic ideas that I've squashed rather firmly with the reminder that I will only write Merlin fic for the Big Bang or from my prompts list.
7. Re-write my old Harry Potter fic. They were all written under a different pseudonym, so I wouldn't expect many of you to know them. I quite liked the ideas. Looking back at them recently, I had to cringe, though. Prime examples of 'good idea, poor execution'. I think I'm a much better writer than I was back then. We won't even talk about my pre-HP fic. *winces* I don't think all the re-writing and editing in the world could make those any good.
8. Finish at least one of my DBSK or Suju WiPs. Or at least update something. I don't like abandoning stories - don't look at me that way, C-Bear, just because I've done it doesn't mean I liked doing it - and I know that a lot of the people who watch this journal came here for my DBSK fics. Changmin and Yunho did a pretty good job of reminding me why I love them at KPop Masters. I spent most of December re-reading all my old fic and I think I can start working on them again. Of course, I can't promise that something like say... Dance me a Dream might not end up with a more heavy leaning of MinHo instead of JaeHo. Or, more likely, that it'll be all love-triangly or something. Dunno... we'll see.
Non-Fandom
1. Get over my natural tendency towards pessimism and actually finish and submit some of the original short stories I've been working on recently. I've been reading books on writing (largely to improve my world-building skills) and a few of them have included submission stuffs. I've no desire to throw myself on the mercy of a book publisher (nor the confidence that I could actually finish a novel length original story worth publishing) but I hadn't realized that there were places - magazines and the like - where you could submit short stories.
I know I have quite a few writing goals, but if I keep up with the 500words a day goal, then I should theoretically be able to handle all of them and then some.
Of course, the problem with all of this is that I work best with what Mr. Orson Scott Card calls a 'Smart Reader' and most big bang communities call a 'cheerleader'.
Basically, someone I can bounce ideas off of, someone who can read over things and either reassure me before I worry myself into a panic or else cut the panic off and tell me it doesn't make sense and needs to be re-written, someone I can have read something and then barrage them with questions about it so that I can get a feel of what I did right and what I did wrong. I had that before, but as much as she doesn't want to admit it, RL and school means that C-Bear can't really provide that on any kind of regular basis anymore. I don't like bothering her about it when I know she doesn't have a lot of free time. It's probably one of the biggest reasons that my writing dropped off so dramatically last year.
I expect it will remain so until I find a new 'smart reader'/'cheerleader'.
Anyone interested should have some form of instant messenger or be willing to maintain regular email/PM contact. You should be open to multiple fandoms (or original work) and ideas. You should be willing to be brutally honest without being mean. If you can't be honest without being mean, you should be prepared to have a flailing, wailing, gibbering mess of a writer on your hands. You should be accepting of the fact that half of what you read will never see the light of day or be completed - for every posted fic, I have five that only my 'smart reader' and beta ever see.
Whaddya think? Any takers?