Writing Goals for 2009
I believe in setting goals for my writing. This is an important part of a writer’s life – and for almost every other pursuit in life.
Short term, regular Goals
On a regular basis I set daily, weekly, monthly and annual goals for my writing. These include:
- setting goals for the number of words written
- setting goals for the number of hours of writing
- setting goals for inservice training such as attending conferences, workshops, reading and other forms of self education.
- setting target dates for the submission of manuscripts.
- setting minimum number of posts on my blogs
Long term goals
Late last year I took some time to map out some longer term goals for my writing career. I set some goals for each year for the next five years. This may seem a long view of things but it helped me to clarify where I am heading with my writing. These goals included such things as the number of publications I would like to accomplish as well as some projected – and hopefully realistic – income goals over the next five years. All these goals are flexible and wil be adapted to suit changing circumstances.
My specific goals for 2009
It is always good to set some specific goals for the immediate future. Some of my goals for this year include:
- Completing my Master of Arts in Creative Writing – this is well under way with one year to go. I should be finished by this time next year.
- Writing a 40,000 word novel – this will be my thesis paper for my degree. The novel must be of a publishable standard. That’s my big challenge this year.
- Submissions to publishers of manuscripts written during my course last year. This includes several picture books, a short novel for young children, dozens of poems and several short stories.
- Continued posting of articles on my three blogs (see the links in the sidebar).
- Averaging 1000 words per day for the whole year (up from 700 per day achieved last year).
- Averaging 5 hours per day on my writing, a target I achieved last year. This might not seem much until you try – to average 5 hours per day I actually had to do many days over 10 hours to achieve the average. There will always be days when no writing is achieved due to illness, holidays, family responsibilities and so on.
I can see that it will be a busy year – again.
Good writing.
Write what you love
“You’ve got to love libraries. You’ve got to love books. You’ve got to love poetry. You’ve got to love everything about literature. Then, you can pick the one thing you love most and write about it.” Ray Bradbury
I love libraries – all those books on all those different topics, all those wonderful adventures to be enjoyed and pictures to be enjoyed. In fact, I love libraries so much that in another life I was a librarian for about eight years. I loved buying new books for the library – especially seeing it wasn’t my money buying the books!
I love books too. I have a huge collection of books. I can’t bear to get rid of any books. Throwing out a book is akin to loosing a child. Talking of children, I love visiting my adult children, especially my daughter, so that I can become reacquainted with a part of my library. To be fair, some of her books grace my library shelves – only on a temporary basis of course – until I’ve read them.
I always loved poetry too and I’ve written my fair share of poems, from the slightly ridiculous, to the positively banal and some that are absolutely brilliant (IMHO). This year my skills at writing poetry have had a great boost while doing my Master of Arts in Creative Writing course.
But back to the quote from Bradbury.
Writers must be readers. Read widely and voraciously. Love and cherish books. Get your hands on as many as you can; read, read, read, devouring books in numbers.
Then you can pick the one genre or form or discipline you love most, and then write what you love.
Good reading and writing.
To be a writer you need to go shopping
Before Christmas I took my wife shopping. Nothing unusual about that; we often go shopping together. The major target of our shopping was clothing. While I was waiting for her to try on some clothes – I’d already bought all that I needed – I wandered out into the mall near in front of the shop. I found a seat and did some research for my writing.
I had a small notebook in my pocket but I didn’t get it out. In retrospect I should have started jotting down a few sentences. You see, I had an intensive half hour of writing research right there in that mall. I was endlessly fascinated by the passing parade of people. People watching is essential research for writers of fiction in particular.
I saw fat people, skinny people, people of all ages, tall people, short people, people with fair skin, people with dark skin and some whose skin was so dark it glowed in the sunlight. I saw fair hair, red hair, curly hair and some with no hair. I saw elderly people leaning on each others’ arms for support, I saw people in wheelchairs loaded up with Christmas presents, I saw babies in arms, one in a papoose carrier and more in prams and pushers. One baby leaning over his mother’s shoulder gave me the most heart warming smile. This pleased me; babies usually burst into tears after just one look at me.
I saw people dressed up like they were on their way to church while others looked like they had come straight from the beach – it was less than a mile to the beach so that’s no surprise. I saw security guards in uniform, a cleaner emptying rubbish bins, couriers loaded down with parcels and gangs of teenagers wandering without purpose now that school had finished for the year. One young girl was chastised by her mother for buying an icecream while toddlers whined impatiently wanting to go home. I even saw Father Christmas riding a suitably decorated golf buggy.
What a fascinating collection of people. What a rich vein of writing gold just waiting for my mind and my pen to dig into.
When you want to find an interesting character for your story – go shopping. If you open your eyes you’ll find enough material for a dozen stories.
Good writing.
Happy New Year
Adelaide International Rose Garden
Happy New Year to all of my readers.
I hope that the coming year will see you have much success with you writing endeavours. I am looking forward to completing my Master of Arts in Creative writing this year. My thesis will be a 40,000 word novel for children – stay tuned for the process I go through to complete this major undertaking. I also plan to send off many manuscripts written over the last year to publishers.
Good writing.
Adelaide International Rose Garden
Should I write a musical?
No Comments »29th December, 2008; Category: The Writer's Life
Many years ago I co-wrote a musical for the children in my class. I wrote the script and a colleague wrote the songs. Together our classes performed the musical to the rest of the school and to the parents. Highlights of the play were shown on a national children’s television programme. Later the script was published in an Education Department booklet. It was subsequently performed in other schools.
A few days ago I had the brilliant idea for another musical. It would be based on the lives of a small group of hoon drivers who fight against an invading army using their high volume car stereo systems as a weapon. Eventually they are forced to head over the mountains to escape.
I’m thinking of calling this play The Pound of Music.