Tag: goals

Posted in recaps

Recapping 2020

Posted on by AJ

With all of the news that came out of 2020, it’s hard to know where to start. The year has been a whirlwind of changes and tragedies. While there’s some good hope for 2021, there’s still reason to be cautious. ‘Normal’ is a long way off, and there’s still no telling how Covid-19 will continue to change and redefine what we consider ‘normal’ in the coming months.

While we can’t tell what will happen, we can still celebrate our accomplishments for this year. It’s been an incredibly tough year, one that challenged us all in many different ways.

2020 Accomplishments

150 posts written and published here on the Written Vixen

Crimson and Gold  released on Amazon in January!

Seventh released as a serial on the Written Vixen!

Patreon launched in October!

Although I’d also planned on providing a stat break down of how many words I’d written throughout the year, that ended up not happening. My agenda got lost somewhere in the moving shuffle and while I’ve got a new one, I’m still missing about four months of wordcounts.

2021 Goals

With how insane 2020 has been, very few of my goals for next year have been focused on writing. There’s a variety of reasons for that, which I’ll save for another post, largely because this post is long enough as is and because I don’t want to derail the topic. There are however, two big ones for next year that I want to work on which do tie in here.

I freely admit I forget to do header images and pictures for my posts. There’s also relatively little reason for that because I do try to give myself plenty of time between writing and posting that I could come up with something. So, for next year, the goal is to get at least one blog image for the week. Prompts won’t count for that, largely because they’re already in an image format.

Secondly, I want to start having guest writers. I have a lot of ideas for how I want that to work out, but for right now I’m not putting any concrete dates or guidelines down for it. If you’d be interested in writing a guest post here on the Written Vixen, let me know! I’d appreciate any ideas you might have for contributions as well.

That’s all I have for right now, but I’d love to hear from you!  What are your goals for the new year? What did you accomplish this last year?

Posted in General

Why Writing Resolutions Fail

Posted on by AJ

It’s that time of year where we all start looking towards what comes up next. Especially now that 2020 has finally gotten a little bit of good news. While Covid-19 is far from being under control, it’s nice to have some hope that we’re getting there now that a vaccine has been found. 2021 may not bring much in the way of change right away, but it is bringing with it hope. It’s also bringing what is perhaps the only thing that looks the same this year as it has in the past: New Years’ Resolutions.

For those of you who got bitten by the writing bug this year, you might be wondering what sort of resolution to make to keep that writing spirit going. Resolutions themselves are great, and they’re meant to improve your life. Keeping them however, isn’t easy. There’s a few reasons they may fall apart.

Vagueness. If your first instinct when trying to think of a writing related resolution is to shout ‘write a book’ this is your primary problem. A book covers a lot of ground—is it a memoir? Children’s book? Anthology? Epic fantasy saga? To avoid this trap, get specific. Include details like what kind of book and how long. Consider adding a deadline, such as having thirty-thousand words written by the end of March, or something similar.

Unmeasurable. Getting from point a to point b is a lot easier if you can see how close you are. That means using some form of measure makes it easier to achieve your goal. Try putting your goal into a measurable form, such as writing 200 words a day, or finishing one short story a week. This way you can track your progress. Making your goal measurable also makes it more manageable, which makes it easier to stay on track if you have a bad day, week or month.

Unrealistic. Often the goals we want to accomplish aren’t in line with where we are now. In some ways that’s a good thing. A goal should give you something to strive towards and work for. In other ways however, where we want to be can be a little farther than we can reasonably reach in a day, a week, a month or even a year. You’re not likely to go from rarely writing to writing a novella a week every week. Take stock of your skills and set a goal you can realistically reach.

Accountability. Having a goal is good—but having someone to cheer you on through your accomplishments and give you a pep talk when things get rough makes you much likelier to complete your goals. In fact, you’re 65% more likely to succeed if you have someone to help hold you accountable. So make sure when you’re setting your resolutions, you tell someone and buddy up if you need to.

What are some of your writing resolutions? How will you accomplish them in 2021? Let me know in the comments!

Posted in recaps

November 2020 Recap

Posted on by AJ

There are thirty-two days remaining in the year. With November now finished and out of the way, it’s time to start looking at the very end of the year. It’s been an intense and unpredictable year, but there’s still a little time left.

For those who participated in NaNoWriMo, congratulations! Even if you didn’t reach fifty-thousand, you still took a chance and gave your story and work a chance. Hopefully you at least have a chunk of a story for a start.

This year I chose to focus on my incomplete projects. I hit fifty-thousand only a few days ago. In total I finished the rough drafts of a novel and two novellas. I’d been hoping to get more done, but overall I’m happy with where things are standing now—and I’ve finally moved those projects out of the continuously unfinished pile and into the much smaller pile of things that needs editing.

December starts tomorrow, and with it, the last stretch of the year. I’m planning on getting back into edits, starting with another fairy-tale novella. It’ll also be time to revisit my yearly goals and set new ones for next year.

I’d love to hear about your November. Let me know how it went in the comments!

Posted in blogging

Checking In on Goals

Posted on by AJ

With all the insanity that comes up when moving, I feel like my entire routine has been thrown out of the window. I haven’t managed to get much sorted out for June and realized when I made Monday’s post that I’d completely forgotten to prep any prompts for this month as well.

Since I need to get back into my routine I wanted to also take a moment to reassess my organization and where I am with my goals for the year. Admittedly, it’s not looking great, which is somewhat disappointing.

I started out the year with a self-set reading challenge of twenty-four new books. Unfortunately, I haven’t been doing so great on that score. Although I’ve read around ten or eleven books, all but three have been rereads. While I could still try and rush through and finish all twenty-four by the end of the year, I don’t think that would be wise, so I’m instead opting to cut back down to a mere twelve new books.

I also wanted to publish at least two stories published this year. Crimson and Gold came out in January, and I have another project I’m looking to possibly start discussing and showing in July. For my publication goals, I’m pretty pleased with where things stand.

Also! Crimson and Gold is available through Kindle Unlimited and will also be free on July 4th and 5th.

Although I’m not meeting all of the goals I set for myself, I’m still really pleased with where things stand for right now. There’s plenty of time to wrap things up. Although I’m missing the prompts for June it’s given me a good chance to reorganize and sort out some of my older posts and plan ahead.

How are you feeling about your goals?

Posted in General

Looking at Projects

Posted on by AJ

Halfway through January and I still don’t have a main project selected for the month. Part of that is because I’ve still been heavily focused on the launch for Crimson and Gold. Writing however, is not a ‘one and done’ type of thing. There’s always something else to do, be that creating new stories or editing older ones.

So, to figure out what I’m doing next, I took a look at my project list. I always have a plethora of projects and ideas, but having them written down and organized keeps me from adding to continuously to it.

It’s already a huge list with a total of fifty-two stories in various states. Some of these are in a need of a major overhaul and rework. Others are bare-bones skeletons that I haven’t looked at in a while. Two of them spun off into serials.

As there’s no actual order to the list, that was my first step. Of those fifty-two stories, fourteen are in a rough draft. Another seventeen are in a bare bones state of what is essentially, story chunks. One is technically in that story chunk state, but as that is part of rewriting the story, that’s at the top of my list, right below the two complete and published stories. One more is in the drafting state where I’m working on strengthening the story and word choice, but not quite ready to start considering how to share it with readers.

The remaining seventeen are the basis for stories. Things like short stories that have kept growing, or a detailed idea.

Because I have so many ideas that are in the earliest stages, I’m focusing on getting those out of the early stages for now.

How do you organize your projects?