Tag: Writing goals

Writing Journal 1.19.2022: Ugh (not a horrible week, but I got behind)

Making this really quick. Even though I have not had a horrific week of writing last week, I am a little behind the pace and I want to pick it up this week.

I was 600 words off-pace last week… not a good place to be, even though I was meeting writing goals 5 out of 7 times due to my revisions. Not enough for me. Now that I have a goal to match, I don’t want to miss it.

One bit of good news is that last weekend, I received an award from my writing group, the Iowa Writers’ Corner. I had been getting the monthly trophy for the highest word count in the “weekend warrior” category (for writers like me who are not writing full-time). Due to my word count for the year, I have this now to keep.

It does look nice.

However, I’m not going to be just satisfied with that. I want to bump up my game. And I’m starting this week.

Anyway, here’s the stats. I’m going to get to work on some fiction projects and hopefully more blogs this week (haha). Cheers.

Writing statistics for the week ending 1.15.2022:
+3,276 words written.
Days writing: 4 of 7.
Days revising/planning: 3 of 7 for 75 total minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 5 of 7 days.
Yearly totals:
GOAL: 200,000
Weekly average (Approx): 3,850
Monthly average (Approx): 16,667
So far: 7,157
Percentage of daily quota to meet: 70 percent

Writing Journal 1.12.2022: Sticking to my writing goals… for now

These posts are getting a bit repetitive… but it’s interesting now that I have a target.

For the past few years, I have kept to daily writing goals. I have often fell short of them, but sometimes matched or exceeded them. Before now, however, I didn’t really have a target total that I wanted to reach. Since I have all this data from the past few years, I felt more comfortable shooting for a yearly total, and it is a total that I have communicated with my writing group Iowa Writers Corner.

These will be my goals for this year:

200,000 words in a year

Meeting my daily quota at least 70 percent of the time (an average of about five out of every seven days in a week)

Liegois

That will wind up being about 3,850 words per week – slightly over a “quota” week of 3,500. However, I think it is attainable, and I want to challenge myself. As a result, I’m going to add some additional points to the weekly totals to show where I’m at and do the countdown on a running basis.

Obviously, the question is “How do we know that you’re not just making up the numbers?” Reader, you really don’t know that, it is true. I will say, however, that if I wanted to make up numbers, they would be a lot more impressive than some of them I have posted over the past four-plus years on this site. Just look up the category “Journal” on this blog and take a look for yourself.

Anyway, as always, here are the numbers – with some of the format alterations I mentioned. Enjoy and I’ll eventually write something more than journal posts soon.

Writing statistics for the week ending 1.8.2022:
+3,881 words written.
Days writing: 5 of 7.
Days revising/planning: 1 of 7 for 30 total minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 5 of 7 days.
Yearly totals:
GOAL: 200,000
Weekly average (Approx): 3,850
Monthly average (Approx): 16,667
So far: 3,881
Percentage of daily quota to meet: 70 percent

A Writer’s Biography, Volume III, Part 6: The importance of writing groups

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What I’m Working On Now, June 2019 Edition

A while ago, pretty shortly after I started this blog, I let readers know some of the bare-bones basics regarding some of the projects that I wanted to work on and that I was working on. I thought now might be a good time to update that, just to keep myself, much less any readers, in the loop about what’s coming down the development pipeline.

I’ve mentioned these projects before in some of my writing journals, but to keep from being too repetitive, I decided to put them all in one place as a reference. I’m not going to mention working titles or big details about plots, etc. However, I think you will get an idea of what the gist of each of the projects are below.

I also think, looking at some of the items on this list, that you’ll see that I’ve been bouncing around with several different genres and subjects. I appreciate writers who want to stick to one thing, but I enjoyed too many different styles and genres of writing to stay in one wheelhouse. I want to create and I want to spread my work to others – that’s basically my life goals regarding writing.

And Now, The Projects

  • Project A: This is a book about a young man who is a football player and the son of a famous college football coach who is also obsessed with soccer. I first got the idea to write about what I thought the first American Lionel Messi might be like and it turned into one of the richest characters I’ve ever written about.
  • Project B: This is a short novel about a young teen who shoots two of his classmates during a psychotic break. After five years imprisonment, he is looking to rebuild his life with the help of his brother, but former high school classmates start turning up dead around him…
    A former NaNoWriMo project, this is one of the shortest books I’ve written, around 50,000 words. I want to make this one nice and tight, not much longer than it is now, which I think will be a good plan for a thriller.
  • Project C: For someone who never messed around with poetry, the idea of me putting together a poetry collection is a real trip. The poetry enthusiasts of Writers On The Avenue in Muscatine were so much into poetry that I decided, starting around 2010 or so, to give it a whirl as well.
    However, I think this is some of the most interesting stuff I’ve written, and a way for me to connect to where I grew up. A big theme in this collection is the Mississippi River, how I’ve experienced it, and what it means to me. I first got the idea of this project well before I knew I was going to eventually leave the Mississippi River area, but I think it’s been a good reflection of what I will be leaving behind. (People leaving their homes for various reasons appears to be a reoccurring theme in a lot of my work).
    I had originally decided to try to put this out as a whole project, but some recent advice from a poet I’ve met has convinced me to try and get some of these out individually. So I’m going to start looking into those markets, with the intention of getting those poems published and thus generating interest in the larger collection.
  • Project F: This is the fantasy project I was inspired to write based on my Game of Thrones obsession. The basic theme that I’ve been playing around with is this: So, I started thinking of a scenario, of a new fantasy world, where civilizations representing the concepts of magic, chivalry, and science and progress would clash and face each other. The more that I’ve watched Game of Thrones and what they’ve done right and wrong, the more this idea of writing fantasy intrigues me. I’ve started to look over fantasy map building sites and think about what these civilizations would be like.
  • Project S: What started out as the idea for an analysis of one Game of Thrones character has now turned into an epilogue for the series that is running over 27,000 words as of this writing. Obviously I have no interest in monetizing this whatsoever. I’m going it as an exercise and as a way to get over how ridiculous the last season was.

Also, there are the following projects that might get letter designations as well, to help keep them straight.

  • Project R: A story of a fictional indie rock band and its history from the early 1980’s to the early/mid-1990’s, my love letter, so to speak, of the indie rock that caught my ear so many years ago. This will likely turn out to be a trilogy.
  • Project W: A thriller, just the germ of an idea. But, it’s pretty intense, pretty heavy material. This might wind up simmering for a while.

As part of my greater efforts to keep myself publicly accountable for my writing successes and failures, I also want to list when I am planning to get these projects done. So, feel free to cheer me on or have a laugh at me, depending on my successes and failures. Putting my goals in print makes them more real for me.

  • So, here are the current projected deadlines for those projects:
  • Project A, begin querying agents and publishers: Sometime in early-mid summer 2019.
  • Project B, finish major redrafting of the rough draft (more of a second rough draft rather than a more focused revision): End of summer 2019.
  • Project C, finishing creating rough draft poems: End of 2019.
  • Project F: None at this time, but I would like planning for the project to be well underway by the end of 2019.
  • Project S: Maybe posted by the end of the month (tentative)
  • Project R: None at this time
  • Project W: None at this time

Finally, don’t forget my first published project, The Holy Fool: A Journalist’s Revolt. That project was years in the making and getting it out this year was a major life accomplishment for me. Get to the My Work page on this blog for all of the links if you want to find out more about it and (possibly?) buy it. But, there’s other ways you can support it, too.

Anyway, that’s what I’m working on. If you’ve got any questions or comments, leave them here and I’ll be glad to answer them.

Writing Journal 3.17.2019: Getting back to it and on with it

So, I had a little bit better luck with writing this week. There was one time this week I was at a friend’s house to see one of the presidential candidates that swarm through Iowa every four years. I was trapped in a kitchen nook by the swarm of people and national media, and I heard him speak, but I didn’t see him. I wound up polishing off two poems while I was standing around there, so that was a success.

Here’s the stats for people who care:

+1,526 words written.

Days writing: 3 of 7.

Days revising: 5 of 7 for 135 total minutes.

Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of revisions): 5 of 7 days.

I’ve got some appearances coming up if you want to see me out and about and talking about writing and my book, The Holy Fool, so don’t forget those. I’ll probably send out some additional reminders on my Facebook and Twitter pages, too.

OK, a quick briefing on what I’ve got going on:

  • Project A: Not really anything in the realm of revisions. The subscription to Writer’s Market might be around $39.95 or something annually, but I’m going to have to think about that. There are many different sources out there for finding agents and publishers, so I’ll have to do a bit of searching around. If anyone wants to mention any resources to me in the comments or to me directly, I’d love to hear it.
  • Project B: Maybe moving forward in this, totally recreating a scene for the book. Now that I think about it, I will be reviewing and cutting out so much of this rough draft that I have to properly call this the second rough draft of the project. Whatever it is, I think I will still be on track for this.
  • Project C: Probably made the most progress on this one. I created two new poems this week and have already finished typing out all but the most recently created ones. I honestly think I have a long way to go with this – I’ll likely need twice as many poems that I have on hand currently. However, I’m feeling ambitious.

And, for myself and for the readers, I’m putting my current deadlines for all of these projects here to keep both me and you in the loop.

  • Project A, begin querying agents and publishers: Sometime in early-mid summer 2019.
  • Project B, finish major redrafting of the rough draft (more of a second rough draft rather than a more focused revision): End of summer 2019.
  • Project C, finishing creating rough draft poems: End of 2019.

That’s all for now. Not sure if I will have a midweek post, but I am sneaking up on the 200th post on this blog, so I’ll likely do a special one for that when it comes along.

[PHOTO NOTE: We had one (last?) snow of the season, so I figured I’d document it.]

How Many Books Are in Me? A Speculation.

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Writing Journal/Random Notes 1.21.2018: It’s getting a little better

And just when you thought I didn’t have any writing goals… here are some from tonight:

img_5253

See, I told you. (Check with me next week to see if I actually fulfilled any of them.)

Also, off to the totals. The verdict: An improvement over last week, but not where I want to be.

+1,916 words written.

Days writing: 5 out of 7.

Daily writing goals met (500+ words): 2 out of 7 days.

Ahahah, this is going to go out a lot later than I expected. The notes for this week:

  1. From all of the advice I received from the writing groups (which I just spent 15 minutes checking them out before getting my focus back), I have decided that keeping track of how I revise should be done on a time-based system rather than by word count.
    With that, I decided on a daily count of 60 minutes per day on the days that I am revising. I think that I will alternate between writing and revising pretty soon, with some weeks being heavier than others, depending on where I am on projects.
  2. How I monitor that time will be interesting. I will have to have a set up where I track the time that I totally focus on revising. It may come in fits and starts, but that will be OK.
  3. I used to like the computer app Freedom, but now they’ve moved it to a subscription service. If I had an alternative I’d definitely consider it.
  4. OK, I will run another post tomorrow and maybe, finally, get a midweek post again. You know what I want to talk about next.

More later.

Writing Journal, 9/10/2017 (Seeing results)

Well, everyone… I wondered whether setting a daily writing goal and powering through would make a difference in my writing results. Shall we go to the tote board, fine people of the online world?

+4,559 words written.

+4,338 words reviewed for revision.

Days writing: 7 out of 7.

Daily writing goals met (500 words per day): 5 out of 7 days.

If I could have consistent weeks like this, week in and week out… I think that my concerns about not being productive enough will be a thing of the past.

New goal.

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