As part of my plan to get back to actually writing something, it seemed it might be appropriate to clear up (for me, at least, and possibly for others) what exactly that entails. Therefore:

Works in progress, or works that should or could be in progress:

• Magic Conspiracy story - Tried this one first during a 25,000 word competition I did one summer with a group of folks; it was/is about a girl who discovers her mother is a magician when the mother becomes jealous of her competence at playing piano and turns to magical sabotage. This leads to the daughter working her way through and around a corrupt national (and world) structure of magicians as part of her own learning process as a magician (and ultimately to clear up the mess).
• NaNoWriMo 2006 - Otherwise known as “The Music Magic Story” - this one was a fairly standard fantasy story (quest, coming of age, magical prodigy, so forth) in a world including several varieties of magic, the most interesting being music-based magic taught at a small, secluded school in the mountains.
• NaNoWriMo 2007 - The Island Fantasy story - On a whim, I decided to attempt to write fantasy in a Caribbean-island sort of setting; plot-wise the story is a generic clearing-up of some particularly nasty magical corruption in the world. Other interesting ideas (at least within my own writing) include some romantic elements and more evenly important major characters.

Other than the obvious generalities of “Write more!” and “Work on the above Works in progress!,” here are some more specific goals:

• 20,000 words of fiction or other non-school-related writing per month (along with several other writerly folks) - this comes out to a bit under 700 per day, which is quite doable. During NaNoWriMo, of course, I’ll do the usual 50,000 or more (tradition must be followed!)
• Besides just working on the novel ideas above, I’d like to write a few short stories per month. Therefore, I will allocate at least 5,000 words per month (of the 20,000 mentioned above) to short stories, but no more than 15,000 (unless, of course, I go over 20,000 - the point is, at least 5,000 words in each area each month)
• Since I should be writing one or two short stories a month, I’d like to set a goal of submitting at least one story per two months (acceptance, naturally, I won’t worry about)
• Critique: 2 week turnaround time. This should not be any sort of issue, so I’m declaring it no longer is. If any of you writers want something critiqued, pass it this way. In the same vein, I’ll hopefully be asking for more critique of my own pretty soon - the same sort of turnaround would be appreciated when I do!

I’ll try to post at least once a month about my progress; if I don’t, somebody bother me about it. I can use bothering!

Categories: writing | Tags: goals, nanowrimo, writing //