writing goals Archives - Annie Bellet

Posts Tagged ‘writing goals’

Three Years

Tomorrow is the 3 year anniversary of my writing journey. It’s been a crazy ride so far. When I first decided to quit my job and get serious about writing, my plan involved something like “write a novel every year for ten years” while submitting short stories and hoping for a book deal.

How things change, eh? I discovered Heinlein’s Rules, attended a bunch of workshops including Clarion, and the self-publishing/e-book world came into being. Now my plan is more like “write ten novels worth of new material every year”, I’m hardly writing short stories at all this year, and I have quit submitting queries for books (for the moment). In these last three years, I’ve written over a million words, sold ten short stories, and self-published over twenty novels, novellas, and short stories.

I have seven years left in my ten year plan (I made a deal with my husband that I would be making a living from my fiction in ten years or I’d go get a different day job). I’ve learned so much, tried a lot of different things, put in a lot of work, over the last three years. I can only imagine where my skills will be in seven more years.

So I start my fourth year as a writer with a lot of optimism and a lot of hope. Also, because hey, this is still me, a lot of experiments planned. I’ve been absent from the blog because of one of these experiments. The novellas are going well and are a ton of fun to write, but also take a lot of writing time and energy. So the serial novel and the neo-pro interviews are on the back burner until March. I’ll probably be pretty scarce here for another month or so.

Three years. Feels like twenty sometimes and like a couple months others. I have a long way to go and a lot more to learn, but this is still the best job I’ve ever had. Here’s to seven more years of awesome (and hopefully another few decades beyond that).

Cha-cha-changes

I’m working on compiling the data and figuring out how to make nice graphs and stuff for a year-end wrap-up post. Meanwhile, I figured I’d post about the changes that will happen here on this blog for 2012.

First, I won’t be posting monthly ebook and writing stats. The numbers I’ve been posting aren’t the final numbers anyway since Smashwords doesn’t report montly for places like Apple, Sony, etc. I’m going to switch to posting the ebook sales stats on a quarterly basis so that I can post the real numbers and have 3 months of data available to talk about.

I won’t be posting the writing stats because 1) I get too much flak for my word counts and 2) I’m switching to project goals more than word count goals. I’ll post when I have projects completed, though most of what I’m planning to write next year won’t be under this pen name. I’m also going to try to put together some coherent thoughts about writing series. But no word counts except in the “writing goals and progress bar” section, which I’ll update at the completion of each project. That section will also only have final wordcounts. No more counting words I write and then discard or delete. I’ve fallen into some bad habits with second-guessing myself and throwing out whole unfinished manuscripts and it has to stop. I’m aiming for consistent, completed work next year.

The serialization of my cyberpunk thriller Casimir Hypogean will resume in January on Mondays. I am also resuming the Neo-pro Interview series on Thursdays.

So to sum up: no word counts here (maybe on twitter), quarterly sales updates, and both the novel serial and the interviews will resume in January.

In other news, I sent in my final Writers of the Future entry. Pro-ing out is bittersweet. While I can hope for a Hollywood ending where I magically win my final quarter of eligibility, I’m betting on an Honorable Mention. It would be a humorous end to my WotF stint.

Goals for the New Year (2012)

It’s that time of year again, I guess. I’ll be doing a summary of this past year around the 30th or so, along with a look back at least year’s goals and how I did.

But as the year draws to a close, I am looking forward and planning what I want to do next year. This last year has seen a lot of changes in my life, in my writing, and in how I am approaching my career. My goals for next year reflect those changes, I think.

One of the shifts is going to be away from sending novels to publishers. I’ve decided to not send anything this next year and instead focus on publishing my work myself. My preliminary experiments with self-publishing this year have been pretty good (much better than the nothing I expected) and I want to see what happens when I make it a focus. I’ll be continuing experimentation, of course, including putting up a few things in the new KDP Select program. I also have some genre and length experiments planned.

Another shift is going to be toward longer work and away from short fiction. This doesn’t mean I won’t write short stories, but many of the ones I have planned this year will go up as ebooks instead of out to markets. I do have a challenge planned for May which is all short fiction. I’ll get into that later. While it is cool to be eligible for SFWA and nice to collect the checks that come with selling short stories, I don’t see them paying my rent. My goal for the new year is to keep 10 stories on the market at all times, a big drop from my submitting high of nearly 40. I figure 10 is enough to stay visible and keep up the habit of sending work out without requiring much time or upkeep on my part.

So here are the writing goals:

Novels: Five crime novels (Books 2 and 3 of one series, Books 1-3 of another), one fantasy novel (Remy Pigeon book 1), and books 2 and 3 of the Lorian Archive (Casimir series). I will also finish serializing the first Lorian novel (Casimir Hypogean). I’ve got a cool surprise planned with those and the full series should be published by June.

Novellas: Four YA romances and seven adult contemporary romances.

Short stories: 50 total short stories written. 31 of these will be during the month of May. In May I turn 31, May has 31 days, so it is fate, really. I’m going to write 31 in 31 for my 31st b-day. Sounds fun! These stories will be a mix of SF/F which I will submit to markets and romance/erotica which will go straight to ebook.

That’s it. Much of this will be under pen names, of course. Officially, Annie Bellet is only writing maybe 25-30 short stories and 3 novels this year. It’s fun running multiple careers, if a little crazy-making at times. Thank god for spreadsheets!

The crime novels will run between 65k and 75k words each. The Remy novel will be about 80k words. The Lorian books will be between 80k and 90k. With the novellas, I’m aiming for 25k to 30k words apiece. Short stories will count as long as they are over 2k words minimum and under 15k maximum (anything over 15k will get put up as an ebook novella).

Total predicted word count: 1,112,000 words.

Which looks terrifying. It isn’t. Let me break it down. I write about 1,000 to 1,200 words per 45 minute session (if you don’t know what I’m talking about with the sessions, see my post on productivity here). My word count goal for 2012 works out to about 700 hours of work. Not insignificant, but not terribly much, either. For perspective, if I worked 40 hours a week, it would take 18 weeks or so to finish those 700 hours of work (yep, people with a full-time job work more than 700 hours every 5 months).

But I’m lazy. I love to read, play videogames, hang out with friends, and I tend to need time to myself to let writing stuff sort its self out. I don’t want to work 40 hours a week. I don’t want to work everyday either. So I made a plan which allows for over two months off. I’m planning to write 290 days out of the next 366 (woo, leap year!). I’m allowing myself plenty of days to be stressed out, for life shit to happen, for me to get sick or get stuck (though that rarely happens when I’m working on multiple projects).

So how hard will I have to work on those 290 days I do choose to show up to my job? I’ll need to average about 3900 words a day. That’s 3 hours of work (4 “sessions” with my hourglass) most days, maybe a little more if I’m starting something new or going through a tough spot in the murky middle of a novel.

There is my plan. I debated taking a picture of my calendar (I print off calendar pages and do a color-coded goals thing for each month so I can visually see when stuff is due), but I don’t think I could get the whole thing into a frame. Probably for the best, too, since while I’m fairly sure I’ll finish the things I want to finish, I want the freedom to move projects around if I get stuck on something or if something cool happens.

2010 Recap

This is the obligatory post where I look at my goals from last year and then see where I stand on them now, a year later.

Goal 1. Write 4 novels and submit them
Well, I have three submitted. So that’s not a total fail. I’m short one novel, but will have it ready by Feb.

Goal 2. Have at least 30 short stories in my folders and keep them out on markets until they sell or have nowhere to go
This is a win. I have over 30 short stories in my folders and have been pretty good about keeping them out until they sell (and some have even sold, crazy!).

Goal 3. Finish everything I start
This is a fail for a couple reasons. I started a Middle Grade novel back in June, got about 12k words into it, and quit. I don’t know if I’ll return to it because I just wasn’t feeling the love with the story. I mean, I like the story, but I wasn’t so keen on that whole “middle grade” thing and kept wanting to do horrible things that young people probably don’t want to read about. So it might turn into a weird novella for e-publishing.
I also decided to work on beginnings this fall and toward that end started a bunch of short stories without finishing them. I will finish them at some point (probably during the story a week challenge next year).

Goal 4. Submit everything I finish
Win. I’ve been crazy good about getting stuff into the mail.

Goal 5. Keep track of receipts and other things for taxes (I was abominable about it this last year, sigh)
Mostly a win. I know I’ve lost track of some receipts and I wasn’t sure about what counted or not for others, but I’ve done a pretty good job of keeping track of the big stuff (putting it all into a spreadsheet soon is going to be scary. I don’t want to think about how much money I’ve spent at the post office and on workshops etc…).

Goal 6. Try writing at least three things outside my genre comforts (mystery, horror, erotica, something…)
Win. I wrote an entire mystery novel, I’ve been messing around with erotica, and I’m about to start a romance novel. I’ve definitely been writing outside the comfort zone.

Goal 7. Keep going, never look back, never surrender and all that
Well, I haven’t given up yet 🙂

Basically, I did pretty well this year. I sold three short stories, got a Semi-finalist in the Writers of the Future contest, learned how to put stuff up on Kindle, and wrote almost 350,000 words. I missed my word count goal by about 100,000 but I ran into snags this year that I couldn’t foresee, so I don’t feel that annoyed. I got a lot done, by any measure. And next year is going to be even bigger. I’m just getting warmed up.

2011 Goals (The Work)

So last goal post I did the numbers. The sheer word counts I hope to hit. Now I’m going to break it down a little more specifically.

This year (2010) I focused on just learning and getting more work out. Coming into this year I’d written one novel and only a few short stories that I considered possibly publishable. 2010 was the year I decided I needed to step up production and see what I could do.

2011 is the year to put the writing car in overdrive. I want to be more consistent with my output and to finally get to some of the hundreds of ideas I’ve got bumping around. This is also the year in which I intend to explore e-publishing options while keeping things in the mail to the traditional side of things.

So here’s how that 900,000 words is going to (hopefully) break down:

I’ve been playing around with writing romance because I love to read romance and want to make sure I’m covering my genre bases. I’ve got a Regency romance novel outlined that I’ll be writing in January for traditional publishers, which will put my novels out to publishers count at four, in four different genres. I’m aiming for 75-85k words on that book.

For e-publishing I want to write my favorite lengths, which is shorter. I have a few series romance ideas outlined for this. So my goal is to write seven books in one series (or nine, depending), three books in another, and three in another. Each of these will be about 25k words. So thirteen novellas at 25k words should work out to about 325k total. I’ll be writing one or two of these a month and putting them up online as soon as they are copyedited and formatted. I’ll also being doing omnibus versions and making those available in print as well.

I’ve also got four Pyrrh books planned (am finishing the first one now, in fact) which will be about 50k words each. Those will be available in print as well, and I’ll probably make an omnibus version (I have eight books for that series planned in total, releasing four a year).

I also want to write at least one more novel for traditional publishing (to bring my year end total up to 5 or 6 depending). And if by the end of next year a couple of my novels that are out now don’t sell and have gotten more than 25 rejections, I think I’ll probably just write the sequels (one is a duology, one is a trilogy) and put them up for sale electronically and in print. It’s my goal, however, to keep at least four or five novels out to traditional publishers each year so that I don’t let that side of things slide.

On the short story side of things, I’ve enlisted to write a short story a week and mail it. So that’s 52 short stories to write next year. But, because I don’t want to neglect the e-pub side of things, I also have ideas for four collections. Each collection would deal with the same characters and have about ten stories in it. I intend to write these stories solely for the collections (though I might mail them a few places first while I’m working on getting the full ten). I’ll also put up one of the stories from each collection at .99 to be a sample for the rest. I’m going to make print versions also for all these. So that’s actually about 92 short stories total written next year, 52 for traditional publishing and 40 for my e-pub collections.

So, to sum up. 13 romance novellas (7 contemporary romances, 3 nerd romances, 3 paranormal romances), 4 fantasy/mystery novels, 2 novels for traditional publishing, and 92 short stories. Which should work out to around 900,000 words next year, or 2500 words written per day if I write every day or 3500 words per day if I write only on week days. So between 2 and 4 hours of work. Not so bad.

As for how I’ll do money-wise, I have no idea. I might sell nothing. But that’s why this is a goals post, not a dreams post. I don’t have any control over what I sell or not, only what I write and how much I work on my craft and on telling stories. My dream is to make six figures a year at my writing. My goal is to write stories that people can’t put down. I can’t control the dream, but I hope that if I can someday learn enough and practice enough to get good at meeting my goal, the dream will follow.

2011 Goals (The Numbers)

Yeah, yeah. It’s only December, which is pretty early to be making a goals post for the new year. But I’m a rebel or something. And I’ve been looking back on this year and then looking ahead and figuring out what I want to accomplish. So this post will be purely the numbers without specifics. I’ll do another post on the specifics (things to work on, etc) at a more traditional time (like say, January 1st?).

This last year was all about building up my magic bakery and figuring out a lot of things about my writing style and working modes. I’ll do a full summary post about how this year went sometime this month. But the short version is that by February I’ll have four novels out to traditional publishers in four different genres. That’s a decent start to my bakery. I’ll also have about 25-35 short stories out to markets (depending on many factors like hopefully sales). That’s a good start, too.

2011 is going to be all about taking it up a notch and all about dipping my feet (and legs and body) into the e-publishing world. I’m going to be writing novels and novellas almost exclusively for e-publishing next year while I continue to shop around those four novels with trad publishers. I’m not ruling out writing a novel or two for trad publishing next year, but it won’t be my focus (unless I get a contract and have to write a sequel or something. But that’s the sort of hiccup in a plan you hope for, not count on).

Besides getting my feet wet with e-publishing, my main goal this year is to get more consistent with my writing. I’m a bit of a binge writer and I’d like to stop being so all or nothing and work more on just getting *something* done most days of the week. I’m a generally competitive person, so to further this goal I’ve undertaken a couple of challenges that will hopefully (and are so far) spur me to get just more done in general.

The first challenge is with a friend of mine and the goal is to write 100,000 words a month. That’s about 5k words a day, 5 days a week. So about 4-6 hours of work, 5 days a week. I tried this in November but got derailed at the halfway mark due to wrist pain and some other health issues, but I’ve adjusted my workspace and am working on the other things, so hopefully that will no longer stand in my way. However, I’m still not sure that, as a naturally shorter length writer, I can quite manage 100k words a month. So I’ll probably just owe her a lot of dinners since I’m setting my goal at about 75,000 words, which works out to 2500 words a day, 30 days out of the month, or 3750 words if I only work 5 days a week. Which is 2-4 hours of writing a day, and completely doable even with wrist issues because I can break it down with lots of rest periods.

The second challenge is the story a week challenge. Ray Bradbury did this, writing one story and submitting it each week. We all know how well that worked out for him. Some other writers I know have started the challenge and are calling it the “Write 1 Sub 1” challenge. The title there will link to the website detailing the challenge. With short stories I’ll be sending them to all the pro-paying magazines first before putting together any collections for e-publication. I intend to bring back my old “Short Story Monday” thing for this, so that each Monday will be dedicated to writing a short story and submitting it by Friday.

Ideally, over all, my goals break down thusly:

900,000 words total by end of December 2011.

240,000 words of full length novels for e-pub or trad pub.

200,000 words of shorter novels for e-pub.

300,000 words of novellas for e-pub.

160,000 words of short fiction for pro-paying magazines and/or e-pub.

That’s the numbers for 2011. It looks like a lot, but it breaks down to under 3 hours of writing a day, which really isn’t that much. Writing is my job and I damn well better be willing to put at least 2-3 hours a day of work into my job. Fortunately, having to do only 3 hours or so of writing a day means I’ll have plenty of time to put in the hours for the things that aren’t writing, like formatting, editing, wasting time online (ahem, I mean…researching!), reading, playing videogames, etc. What? Videogames are totally integral to my job. Really. Seriously. It’s…uh… consumption of story! Vital. Totally vital.

Failure, Rejection, Depression, and Sundry

This post will likely be rambling and a little ranty. (And apparently sappy at the end) You have been warned.

As of Saturday to be on target for my goals this month I needed 21,000 words done. As of Saturday, I had just shy of 9,000. Writing for the last few months has been very difficult for me, like pulling teeth to get any words out at all (which is why that last novel took four months when it should have taken two at most). I’ve engaged a friend in a challenge (with whole dinners on the line!) for monthly word count goals in the hopes that I can shove past whatever is blocking me. Last week, not so much with the shoving, obviously.

Alas, what’s blocking me is… me. Or more specifically my brain chemicals. Lots of quote “creative types” deal with depression and other issues, and I’m no exception unfortunately. I struggle with life-long insomnia issues among other things (which is how I read so damn much, it’s easy to find time to read when you only sleep 2-5 hours a day). Sometimes the writing process just stutters and stops. I think this is one reason I’ve always been a “binge” writer. When I’m running well I have to do as much as I can as fast as I can because I don’t know when suddenly the images will stop forming up right in my head and the mental white noise will start to take over.

The other thing blocking me is my old friend self-doubt. Writing is easy. Writing for a living, not so easy. Especially in the stage I’m in, where I’m starting to break out a bit and hopefully learning my to cross my Ps and dot my Is. Sales are wonderful motivators, but fear of success can be just as deadly as fear of failure. Things are tight right now in my home life because of the sacrifices we’ve made so I can pursue my dream and my goals and now, a year and a half into the ten year plan, the reality of the situation has definitely sunk in. We’re fine, we’re making it work, but as always I can’t help but put pressure on myself to write, do more, learn more, be more. Thinking long-term is good, but it doesn’t necessarily help the short-term panic attacks.

I almost broke my number of rejections in one week record this week, which of course doesn’t help either. I don’t even know what my rejection total is up to, though if I had to guess I’d say over 200 easily. In less than two years. What that number should (and does, when I’m thinking rationally) say to me is that hey, I’m producing and sending out lots of work. But sometimes I stare at yet another “this was well-written but no thanks” or “this was fun, but ultimately we decided not to publish it” etc and think “so they don’t like fun, well-written work. What the hell should I be writing?”. It’s a war inside between the rational/business brain telling me that it isn’t personal (because it really, really isn’t) and that I just need to take a deep breath and put the story back in the mail, and the irrational side of my brain “zomg u suckzorz and r gettin wurse. stUpid RITUR.”

What does this all really mean? Basically…nothing. So I’m 12,000 words behind where I needed to be. Over the next few weeks I can easily find another 12-15 hours somewhere in there to catch myself up. It’s adding an hour a day to a couple weeks of work. Rationally not a big deal. What does the rejection mean? Again, not much (beyond the fact that hey, apparently I write fun, well-written stories and stuff). But the depression, the sleeplessness, the slog, it all combines to make my life not peachy at the moment. I’ll catch up though (so stop planning your sushi outing, Amanda…) because I hate to lose a bet for one, and because any job has bad days, and any job I have is one that gets affected by my depression/insomnia issues, and in the end, I get to sit on my ass and make shit up and people have paid me (and will pay me in the future damnit!) to do this. Which is still awesome, any way you look at it.

So for anyone who is struggling this month (and let’s face it, November ain’t a great month. I didn’t like it before my brother died during it and I sure don’t care for it afterward either), you’re okay. Everything will work out. If you are doing NaNoWriMo and you fail one day, or one week, no need to stress. It’s cool. Think about it this way: if you fall short by 10 or 20 or even 30k words, you’ve still written 40 or 30 or 20k words more than you would have if you hadn’t even tried at all. And for all the writers in my shoes, us neo-pros who see more no than yes still, it’ll get better. We’re just getting started. Sure, we take a few on the chin during the opening round, but really, we’re just lulling our opponents into a false sense of superiority. The next story we write? It’s going to KO some editor, somewhere, sometime. As long as we don’t throw in the towel, as long as we keep sitting on our asses and making shit up and sticking it in the mail. Because that’s what counts and that’s the only score worth keeping.

It never ends.

Clarifying Myself, Again

Wow, I didn’t realize that my musings on whether or not to apply to Clarion/Clarion West would stir up the pot so much. Heh. I guess it’s like writing anything, you never know when something will strike a chord or a nerve. (Some of this post is also in response to some private conversations, so don’t think I’m necessarily replying here to any one person, I’m not).

So, to clarify, because clearly some misunderstandings about what/why I’m debating applying/going.

First, for the people who’ve just found this blog and haven’t read any of my older posts where I try to explain my process/speed/goals etc… I recommend this post. And again the caveat, everything I say here applies only to me. It might resonate with others, but I’m just talking about my experiences, my thoughts, and my writing life as it applies to myself.

My last post was just me wondering about Clarion and if it is what I need right now in my writing life. That was it. I asked for experiences/thoughts from those who had gone (or even just applied, I’m always happy to hear other people’s reasons for things) so that I could figure out for myself what I want to do. I would never apply to Clarion without planning what might happen if I got in, that’s just silly to me. One, it would be a waste of the application fee if I decided not to go and got in, and two, it would be poor planning in general (it’s six weeks! Even self-employed as I am, taking six weeks off/away from home isn’t simple). So if I do apply, you’d better believe I’ll have sorted out how to afford it and if I want to go or not. Hence my wondering aloud about whether it is what I need right now (or really, almost a year from now).

And, frankly, I don’t think that Clarion is for everyone. It isn’t just a matter of being able to do the work (one story a week? Read the goals/speed post. I’m really not worried about the work load). I’ve talked to a double handful of people who’ve been through one of the Clarions now and while some rave about it, some don’t. And I don’t know if it is right for me. That’s all I’m debating. No value judgments here, just personal musings.

My reservations about applying/going: one, the round-robin critique style. I’ve done it, lots. I don’t really enjoy it anymore. I think, personally, that it is too easy to get hung up on minor things because you are “critiquing” and therefore have to find something wrong, and I think it is easy for a writer (especially a beginning writer) to try to take everyone’s suggestions and possibly re-write their story into mush. This has been my experience with round-robin style. Feedback is good (I have a couple groups of first readers, whom I treasure and love (when I don’t want to kill them) and should probably bake cookies for more often). Too much feedback just for the sake of having to say something, not so good. I’ve also got my editing cycle down to a science that works for me. It’s a quick cycle, and while I learn from feedback, I don’t re-write in the traditional sense anymore. Ever. If a story is so broken that I’d have to do a major edit, I start over. I’m a learn by doing sort, and doing for me is writing, not rewriting.

Second, six weeks is a huge time commitment. It’s also something I’d have to plan my writing goals around. I don’t write nearly as consistently when I’m not in my home space, so I’d have to try to adjust for that. I’m also an introvert, and social situations drain me, so that is also something for me to consider. While I’d be getting a story a week done at the least, as I said in my last post, I’d be experimenting a lot (after all, isn’t that what workshops are about? Stretching yourself?) and don’t know how much of that writing would be in the “do over” category. Next year my plan is to write four novels for e-books and four for traditional submission. Losing six weeks means a bit of a time crunch. It’s doable, but I’m lazy, remember? So I’d definitely need to plan (and being an introvert, honestly I’d probably lose more like eight weeks- the one before Clarion and the one after on recovery). Clarion/CW’s focus is on short fiction, and while I’m still writing some short fiction (goal is to keep 40-50 shorts out at a time, writing to replace the ones that sell), I’ve transitioned to novels because my goal is to make a living and novels are good for that (and I like writing them).

So yeah, those are my current thoughts. I know that I’d learn a lot and meet many interesting people if I applied/went. I don’t doubt that for many people, Clarion/CW is a great stepping stone in their writer journey and that the experience is amazing. These are things I’m considering and weighing against my other thoughts. Basically, it boils down to this:

Do I want to go to Clarion or Clarion West? Yes. Can I afford to go money-wise? Maybe (I could figure it out). Can I afford to go time-wise? Maybe (again, I could figure it out). Do I need to go in order to have a career as a writer? No. Is Clarion/CW the best use of my time and resources for my writing/career goals right now in my life? I don’t know. And that final question is all I’m trying to answer here.

Hopefully that clarifies things.

Now, to put down the blog (and Starcraft 2), and go finish this novel.

O Munde, hodie aliquid vincam!

Getting Over Lazy

I’ve been writing a fair amount in the last month, but when I looked at the results in terms of finishing projects, it doesn’t look so good. I’ve finished two things in the last month. Two. Not exactly on target with where I want to be by the end of the year. It’s time to quit being lazy and work on the second of Heinlein’s Rules: finish what you write.

It’s easy for me to finish short stories generally. Once I’m writing one, I tend to just get it done (usually within one or two sittings). Novels are tougher to finish, though the endings so far of them are a lot easier than the beginnings and middles. I’ve been tinkering between two novels lately, getting some done on each but not really making huge progress with either. Part of this is fear. Once I’m done, I have to send it out. I’ve worked out a way to overcome that fear by putting together the package for each novel before I finish, so at least that part of the work will be done so I can just focus on getting the book done.

The other part of this is just sheer laziness. I like to work in bursts, when stuff “comes” to me because I’m lazy and making my brain focus and compose is annoying if I’m not in the mood. Yep, just lazy. I know it is laziness because if I have deadlines (real or imagined), I have no problem dumping the “must be in the mood” and getting the work done. I think I can combat my current lazy with some good old habit-forming. I like to take days off writing, but for the next while, I’m not going to. I think I need to build up a nice streak, get in the habit of not letting myself take days off (usually I justify days off because I know I *can* write 10k words in a day to catch up if I have to). So starting today, I’m going to get in at least 3,900 words of fiction a day at least 6 days a week, with the seventh day goal being 1,250 words. At that pace I should be able to finish everything I want to finish by the end of the year. It really doesn’t help that I keep adding things I’d like to finish to my project list.

When I started out this year, I was thinking I’d write four novels and get to 30 or so short stories out to markets. Then I kept having novel ideas, so it turned into five novels. Then because of a conversation at one of the workshops, I decided I was going to aim for 80 short stories on top of that. I’ve since revised that down to 40 or so shorts, not because I don’t think I could write 80, but because at 27 I’m already a little sick of the admin work of keeping track of them so I don’t accidentally sim-sub or something that I think 40-50 will be the max I want to track at a time (and it’ll be a level that, god forbid, if I start selling some, I can replace them). And on top of that, the novel ideas just keep pouring in. I’ve shunted four over to next year already. I’m aiming at seven this year (two of which are shorter, one 50k, one 65-75k). Frankly, I’d love to slow down, but my brain won’t let me. See why I can’t afford to continue being fearful and lazy? I don’t have time! At the least I’ll be getting a lot of practice in and hopefully improving.

Current projects and current word count:

MG novel- ~12k

Suspense/Crime novel- ~8k

Sci/fi novel- ~7k

Sekrit Experiment project- ~1k

Paranormal Mystery, Horror Western, Irish Historical, and Regency Romance- no words yet

Also have one novella that stands at ~1300 words and another that had nearly 5k on it (which I haven’t touched in a year since I really need to redraft the whole beginning, grr).

So… plenty to finish. I should get on that.

From Short to Long

I seriously need to stop writing short stories for the moment and get some real work done on my novels. I’ve been poking at the novels a little, 500 words here, 1000 words there. That would be fine if I wanted to write one or two books a year. But I don’t. I intend to write five.

Short stories are so satisfying, however. I can start and end in the same sitting and have a finished product in relatively few hours. Writing a novel takes more time, a lot more. Even at my fastest typing speed while composing new words (I think I’ve written about 1500 words in an hour before), I couldn’t write a novel in a day, much less in the 4-7 hours a short story generally takes me. I think if I absolutely had to, I could write a novel in about 7-8 days (novel here being defined as at least 85-90k words). I’ve written 13k words in a day before, but my hands and tendons were not my biggest fan afterward.

I’ve been trying to write short stories and novels at the same time, and really, I just end up doing short stories because it still counts as writing in my brain and they are much more satisfying in the short run. But the novels have to get done for me to stay on goal this year (and on goal for my career plans). So after this week (because I have three story ideas that HAVE to get done right now according to my brain), I’m done with short fiction until a couple of those novels get out the door. Three more stories will put my total up to 29 on submission, which is respectable I think.

Then, longer stuff. I think I can finish my middle grade novel by the end of may if I buckle down next week. After that I’ll have five or six weeks to finish my thriller novel before I leave on vacation in July. Then I plan to use July as a break month and write a more short stories before August when I’ll hopefully complete another (shortish) novel. I figure Sept and October I can get another novel done, leaving Nov and Dec to finish the fifth novel, as well as more short stories. Looking at the numbers and knowing I need to get novel writing done, I’m thinking I won’t hit 80 short stories out by the end of the year. But five novels will make me happy and I think I can still manage to get 50 or so shorts out by January.

Of course, in the middle of this I’ve decided to take on another project that will be a giant experiment (and I’m not going to jinx myself by talking about it too much here). I will say that I’ve been doing a lot of research into getting multiple streams of income going and have an idea for something that might or might not pay off. But it will be awesome to write, so that’s a perk already.

Ok, time to get some words done on a short story or my middle grade. I have the sneaking suspicion that two out of the three stories I want to write this week will end up being 7-12k words long. I’m going to try really hard to keep them under 10k so as not to limit my markets too much, but in the end the story will be as long as it requires.

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