Leta’s Book Lists: New Year’s Goals: Writing

After not succeeding in my writing goals for the last few years and knowing that I will have less time in the future to spend on them, this year I’m going to put more time and effort into those goals. This won’t be a long post, but I still want to state it for myself and those of you who read this post.

My main goal, as always, is to finish my novel. I’m going to do this by setting two goals to start. I want to finish the first draft of my novel by June 1st, 2022. This means a copy that is fully written and ready to go through major and minor rewrites. The second goal is to do those major and minor rewrites and have a second draft finished by September 1st, 2022. I believe that I can do it in less time, but I don’t want to give myself too much pressure because that’s what stopped me in the past. If and when I achieve these two goals, I’ll create more goals for the next steps in getting my manuscript ready.

Secondly, I want to write outside of my novel and actually finish projects. I want to write and revise 2-6 solid short stories/novellas. This harkens back to my education and will help to remind me of the basic of writing characters without the pressure of an entire novel’s plot.

This year, I’m going to enter at least one writing contest. This will help me to achieve the goal of writing a story while getting my name out there into the wider world of writers. Whether I win or not doesn’t matter. I just need to start somewhere.

My final writing goal is actually a reading goal as well. I will read at least one “how to write” type of book this year. I have one that I’ve been told to read in order to help build my novel called From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction by Robert Olen Butler, edited and with an introduction by Janet Burroway. My writing professor recommended it to me, and the editor, Janet Burroway, wrote the textbook that we used in the creative writing classes. It’s called Writing Fiction and I highly recommend it. It’s a great resource and I find myself returning to my eBook copy of it over and over again.

What are your writing goals? How are you planning to up your writing game this year?