Writer-In-Progress

Last week, I mentioned my goals as set with the Serious Writers for the month of March:

• finish an essay on the topic of anger to submit to a contest by March 16th
• submit 5 new query letters for freelance articles
• submit one other essay (I have several choices) for publication
• propose my freelance workshop to three potential online venues

Today’s update:

• anger essay has been finished but still needs work
• submitted one query, received a rejection a few days later with a request to resubmit the idea in six months (I’m taking that as a positive).
• have not submitted another essay yet
• have not submitted the workshop idea yet

On a different note, I decided to apply to the Kenyon Review Writer’s Workshop in June. Kenyon is near and dear to my heart–I grew up in the next town over and rode my bike to campus frequently growing up. I knew I could never afford college there and I didn’t have the grades for admission, but I loved it anyway. This summer, I want to expand myself outside of my usual writer workshop/conference comfort zone and thought Kenyon would do the trick.

And they accepted me! I got my letter yesterday before going out with friends, so I’m really thrilled to be participating in that at the end of June. Definitely put a boost in my creative step with that news.

How about you? How are your goals coming along? Feel free to post what you’d like to accomplish this week. For me, I’m going to center on sending out four queries and approaching one workshop venue. I’ll let you know how it goes…

• Comments Off
• Filed in Writer's Life

So we’re starting the third week in the new year, and it’s time to pause to take creative stock:

Where are you in your writing goals?

Are you still running whole-hog into the new year, smashing your word count goals, pushing forward your plot, adding more freelance work to your schedule? Conquering the demons of facing the blank page and finding your groove?

Or are you getting bossed around by the universe and obligations, being told what to do instead of taking the bull by the horns and moving in to claim more of your day and devote more precious time to what moves you creatively, what speaks to your soul?

You have one of two ways to spend each minute of each day: doing something you love or just wasting it away with obligations and thinking. The choice? Entirely yours.

I’ll admit that I’ve spent time between both polarities. For the first week, my writing flew off the keyboard. Every waking thought was aimed toward my goals of the year, every spare minute spent mapping out what I’d write when I got the time. My creative mind was working on all cylinders, my muse happily occupied with helping me work toward those goals. Life was started early each morning full of creativity and wordplay and meaningful creation.

And then the second week hit me like a bag of nickels. I had afterschool activities every single day, obligations that kept me away from home until 9 or 10 at night, away from paper, away from typing, away from waking early to get my writing down. My daytime free time was at a premium as well, with the end of the grading period at school, which, if you don’t teach, requires fast and furious grading sessions to get all the papers you’ve assigned for the quarter graded to enter by Friday. Only my lunch time was my own–planning period was consumed with grading and meetings and common planning. Even had I been blessed with an aha! idea, I would not have had time to even text it to myself (you do text yourself story notes, don’t you? Beats writing them down and losing the scraps of paper!). Not to mention I began both (that’s right, both–implying ‘two’) of my new graduate classes in the week, one online and one in-person.

And I paid the creative price for the frantic pace of last week’s life. I lost much of my mojo for my current WIPs. Not the vision and intention, mind you. I am excited by what I’m working on, working toward. I just lost the impetus to sit down and write. It was easier to avoid the blank page by ignoring it. Back to the old trick of knowing I needed to write but feeling like the toilets needed scrubbing more. (Don’t tell me you haven’t been there–I know the writer’s mind all too well!) Instead, I forced myself into the chair and back to the laptop to do a bit of journaling (I’ve named my journal “Sparkles” because I inevitably get a sparkle of inspiration or ideas when we work together!) and found the seed of my resistance: the big book proposal I’ve been working on is really meant to be two separate books. The ideas have some commonalities but the content is two separate entities. And one should definitely come before the other, not integrated together.

Once I discovered where my resistance came from, words flowed. I didn’t want to get up. I gave myself a renewed vision to get things back on track, to work out my writing schedule between my graduate classes and basketball games (the hubby coaches) and the start of a new nine weeks, which is always a challenge in and of itself. I am going to be modifying my morning routine until spring break, except on weekends, and am integrating more writing into my evening hours (when available) to make up for missed morning time. This time of year, sticking to 4:30 sessions is just too tough when faced with not getting into bed until between 11 and 12. I will just have to modify writing times (not writing itself) until my schedule is more my own, that’s all. A little forethought can go a long way!

This brings me to the reason for my post: What about YOU? What about your writing, your schedule, your goals for the year? How are you meeting them, and how are you quashing demons that threaten to get in your way? What have you had to change in your life to make room for writing, to make room for keeping true to your goals? Most importantly, how are you working to keep writing in your daily schedule? We’d love to know!

• 4 Comments
• Filed in Goal Setting, Writer's Life

I’d obviously hoped to do this sooner since it’s three weeks into the 10 week cycle (LOL).

The 10 Week Plan is going fairly well. I am a little behind, but that’s due to a combination of issues outside my area of control. According to this week on my big calendar, I should be doing the following:
1. Have finished my first short story of the year
2. be working on my essay for writers #2
3. Have submission #2 of 2010 ready for Sunday

In reality, I have these done:
1. Brainstorming short story
2. Tiny inkling of idea for essay #2 (wavering between two topics)
3. Have no idea of what/where submission #2 will entail. I don’t want to submit another short story to the same market–my evil plan for word domination (ha! I like that!) was to submit once a month. I want to pace myself with that market. But I do need the impetus to get in print and submission is the only way to do that…

What I need is a day off to get my head screwed on straight. THese last few weeks (and weekends, when I get a lot of writing done) have been extra busy. Busier than normal for this time of year so I’m trying to contend with that. I’d say I’m doing OK if I can get either the essay or the short story done over the weekend. I’m angling for the story–these essays are monstrous beasts that overtake days.

So where are you in your new year schedule? On-target? Slipping? Or did you already give up? I’d love to hear…commiserate with me

• Comments Off
• Filed in Writer's Life

I’m not a fan of the New Year’s Resolution craze. As a kid, I think I was sucked in to the mystical glamor of thinking that the first day of a new year is somehow more special than the remaining 364, but after numerous “resolution” failures, I adopted my dad’s favorite holiday phrase:

It’s just another day.

Now, I know that might sound a bit pessimistic, even fatalistic, but if you cut the NY stuff down to the bare bones, you’ll see what I mean. January 1st has no inherent magical qualities, no special morning fairy dust to help you achieve your goals more than, say, March 22 or August 4. Think about it: how many times have you decided to do something (stop smoking, exercise more, spend more time with someone, keep your house clean, etc.) and there’s a magical day you’ve waited for to get yourself going–only to find your energy and enthusiasm wane in the first three weeks when reality (aka LIFE) gets in the way? There’s always something that sets us back, and in lots of cases, back far enough that we never fully recover.

That’s why I don’t set resolutions on NY. Don’t get me wrong–I’m not saying I don’t plan my projects, try to improve myself and my writing, or find small ways to tweak my behavior to get more results I desire. I just don’t buy into the whole January 1st thing. I prefer more of a quarterly reflection. By the end of three months, I know whether or not my goal for writing 3,000 words a day is too lofty during the school year (it is) or if my intention of finishing the second draft of my novel in six months is too lax (it isn’t).

The way I spend the quarters of my year is very different since I’m on a school schedule (as a teacher), so to decide in January that I’m going to finish a draft of a book or project in three months, during one of the busiest times of the year for me, is foolish. Those first three months of the year are about sustaining and convincing myself to come back to the page on a daily basis when the lack of sunlight combined with the stress my students face with the constant state testing create daily train-wrecks in my working life and depress me. Once spring comes, and with it, the advent of summer vacation, my output usually doubles since I have the time and mental focus back. Moving into fall and winter bring changes, too, to my work and approach, and give me a chance to wrap things up and move on to new ones.

So if you’ve discovered that resolutions aren’t cutting it for you, slow down and think of your year in a series of related chunks of time and how that works with your process. Saying you’ll write XX words a week starting January 1st doesn’t do you any good if you’ve not realized that’s not your most creative time. If anything, treat each quarter or even each month as a new chance to set meaningful goals based on what you’ve got coming up or know about your process (and if you don’t know about your process, this is the time to think about it…take notes…reflect…). You’ll accomplish more and be less frustrated when 2011 rolls around…which, really, should be everyone’s resolution

How do you set goals and face the New Year’s Resolution bandwagon?

• Comments Off
• Filed in BethWorld, Goal Setting, Your Writing Career

Warning…very long post chronicling my adventure writing 10,000 words in one day. Be sure the caffeine is close…LOL

Earlier this week, I found a tweet at Twitter from a writer challenging herself to writing 10K words today and inviting anyone else along for the ride. Since I’m such a creative masochist, I figured what the heck. I sent her a note and told her I was up for the challenge. After all, I’ve been working with the idea for this new novel for a few weeks now. My original goal for next week was to get 30 plot cards done. Since I’m upwards of 40 now (I need about 70-80 for a single title book), I figured it was time to put up or shut up.

Yesterday instead of brainstorming, I spent my morning and mid-afternoon I fixing up the plot cards. I was amazed by how much (usable, workable, realistic, interesting) plot has come out of my brain (and how I’ve been able to corral it effectively). There were some major gaps, and as of this post, there still are, but I can work with plot gaps once the writing faucet turns on. I also told the boys they were in charge of dinner for this evening and charged up the iPod and netbook in anticipation of ending today with about 40 pages of the new novel by sundown.

Alas, ran out of fictional gas at 7,770. Being a fan of Vegas (ironically, where my conclusion takes place), I kinda like that number. My brain is literally mush, I feel as though my butt has taken on the shape of my writing chair and I believe that if I type past 8pm, my eyes will permanently cross.

But I’m not done yet. This blog post is going to count, and I’m determined to hit 10K. Setting a goal of 40 pages isn’t something I take lightly, especially when I’ve blogged, Facebooked and Twittered about it. Anyone who doesn’t use the power of social media to publicly humiliate themselves and highlight their shortcomings is not using these things correctly!

Today’s adventures in writing land come with a story all their own. Let’s start from the beginning.

Pre-Race Prep

I didn’t stress about it. I’ve managed to do 30 pages in a day before, while on deadline for a nonfiction book, so I knew it was possible. I also know that in my writing process, I will always, always give up if I don’t have something fresh to move on to when I know the muse is out of something to say regarding a certain topic. Being that I’m at the start of this new novel, and had only written four pages on it total so far was incentive to me. I hadn’t even fleshed out the most important scenes, hadn’t brought characters to life. That’s crucial to me. Had this challenge been in the middle to near-end of my book, I don’t think I could have sustained that creative push.

What I did last night was arrange my plot cards and went over each one, creating the scene in my mind. Scenes, to me, come in words and dialogue, not pictures. With several of the cards, I immediately got snippets of dialogue and scribbled some down on the back of the cards. Then I went back through the cards looking for places where two or more cards created a lengthier section of the book. Some of the cards, at this beginning stage, are stand-alone cards: I know something happens at this point of the book, know the event, but it doesn’t “connect” to either the card before or the card after it because I haven’t yet put the right plot card in that place (haven’t figured out what goes there yet!)

Here’s what that part looked like:

See the green post-its? When I discovered 2 or more plot/scene cards that naturally flowed into the next one, I marked them with the green post-it. My method was to put the green post-it directly on top of the first plot card in the sequence and write the number of cards that followed it to the end of that sequence. For example, on the very top green post-it, there’s a number 4. That means the card below it “heroine goes to professor to ask help and he dismisses her” connects directly into the next one (she goes to the garden, meets the hero) (agrees to allow niece to stay) (is relieved the niece is not the ailing nephew). I did this because I knew once I get going on a single plot event/scene, if I have the right notes, I can write all the way through because this excites me when writing.

I did this for all of the plot/scene cards I currently have lined up. I found three particular sequences that I could come to whenever I needed a new tangent to write on. I could walk into the dining room, pick the cards off the table when needed and continue writing. Major motivator for me! (and I threatened the kid within an inch of his life that if he touched the table, he’d lose fingers and/or his iPod Touch).

But–I also know that after writing a massive amount of fiction, my brain likes to wrap up things in the nonfiction realm–that is, I like to process what I’ve done by writing about it. That’s why I’m here Not sure of how far the fiction would take me, I also brainstormed a short list of nonfiction article ideas I’ve been wanting to write. As Stephen King says in his book On Writing, “Writing Begets Writing.” Once I’m going, as long as I have something to jump towards, I’ll keep going. I’d say it’s working!

The last thing I did was create a schedule. Sounds terribly formal, I know. But I also know that I’ll slavedrive myself to death and burn out faster than a match in a tornado if I don’t mentally prepare some type of break. I worked in a weight-lifting workout, a walk with the dog, lunch and an hour for my soap (Young & The Restless–must find out what Nina is up to–). Of course, I didn’t follow it to a T, but I followed it enough to get to this point, right now: 8802 words.

(and you’re still reading?) (8806)

Race Day

After brewing a cup of tea, grabbing the first two plot cards and a notepad, I headed outside to my patio. I was a little behind schedule, but that was OK. I Tweeted, got some much-needed inspiration from my fellow writers (big shout-out to @jenniholbrook for being a great writing partner and @annaDeStefano for creating #writegoals) and turned off the ‘net. It was time to write.

I picked up where my scene ended on Tuesday and ran with the second part. Two solid hours of writing and I ended up with 2700 words. (Here’s my post at the Fear of Writing 10K Challenge Blog)

Nose back to the grindstone, (writer stone as they call it there), and I checked in at 5,121 words. In time for lunch, a break and time to clean the kitchen while my son’s friends came over for a pool party.

I fidgeted in the afternoon but never really considered throwing in the towel. After all, this is MY work-in-progress and I have this block of time available. I’d discovered some amazing things about my heroine and my storyline, and I wasn’t about to stop. Can you sense my eyes starting to cross at this point?

That was my last post. At least, until I finish here. Now, I could go link to all my twitter tweets (@buckeye_bethm) but that’d be overkill. Instead, I’m sitting here on my couch, finishing what I started.

General Race Observations & Suggestions for those considering a 10K in a day themselves…

I’m a morning person. Straight out of the gate, I went hard-charge and didn’t take a breath or breather until my ideas started getting cobwebby.

Work in a workout. Moving my muscles made me feel more alive, got the blood flowing. Helped clear out the cobwebs.

Have a support system. When the DH came home, he came up to my writing room. I announced that at that point in the day, I’d finished 6550 words. He was extremely underwhelmed. I didn’t get mad, couldn’t blame him. It’s the same way I react to announcements of his golf game. Ugh. I didn’t look for motivation and support (I know he supports me as a writer, he just doesn’t get excited by the actual writing process) where I knew I wouldn’t find it–I’d connected to my network of author friends online. If I hadn’t had my friends to visit on Twitter & Facebook, I’d have let one of them know I was writing and would have set up an email exchange so that I could check in with them on occasion. Accountability makes a difference. You’ve gotta toot your own horn sometimes, and it feels good to do it.

I realize now that if I’d have signed up earlier, I could have done a series of blog posts leading up to the actual writing itself and even blogged my progress on my own site. Next time, next time. Plus, it would have been fun to have some of you wonderful, longtime readers & writers join me. Next time! (Or maybe we can throw our own 10K party here…)

Eat. I personally like this suggestion the best because I didn’t berate myself at all for scarfing down chocolate this afternoon. It’s better to have something healthy with protein to sustain your energy. Believe me–around 4pm I was seriously dragging. It’s my normal nap time, plus I was mentally worn out and a little achy from sitting so long. I got a fresh glass of water and a handful of chips to keep me going. Of course, that hunger could have been from my lunchtime fiasco. Read more about it at the bottom…

How My Story Improved

I love finding out new stuff about my story. I only find out new stuff by writing the stuff that’s already piled in my brain. Here are some of the things I now know about my story that I only learned as a result of the 10K challenge: (names changed to protect the innocent and/or currently unnamed characters)

*Baby Z dies from the same heart defect that Baby G has now.

*Baby G has a transplant–inciting incident

*F., the heroine’s niece, hates Hannah Montana.

*M., the heroine, believes F loves Hannah Montana. (plays into my theme)

*The heroine’s overarching goal is to bridge the disparity between the high achievers and low achievers in her botany class. (that’s a HUGE one)

*There’s a secretary, J., who is an absolute hoot.

*E., the heroine’s sister, isn’t as self-centered as she seems.

*F. likes to curse when she’s alone. (I like that).

*The bus driver has the best laugh!

Excuses I Thought About Using to Give Up on the Dream of 10K:

“The voices in my head have stopped. I can’t go on with reality!”

“There’s a death in the story I didn’t know about until now. I need to grieve.”

“I spilled green tea/water/root beer/Dr. Pepper on my keyboard and can’t go on.”

“I got a paper cut and it seems I’m bleeding chocolate.”

“My butt is now shaped like my writing chair. I’m headed to the ER.”

The Best Excuse I Could Have Used to Give Up on the Dream of 10K:

“The dog ate my lunch.”

Why is this the best? Because it’s true (so are the others, this one is just too funny.)

After tossing a pan of brownie batter in the oven for my son’s friends, I heated up lunch. Wasn’t hungry for anything in particular, so I grabbed a box of pizza rolls from the freezer. Dumped them out on a sheet pan and stuck them in the oven with the brownies.

When they were done, I put them on a plate with a handful of chips and escaped to my writing room upstairs, away from the raucous laughter of the teens. Just inside the writing room, I realized I’d left my drink on the bookcase in the hallway. I set my plate on the chair, retrieved my drink and returned.

Once back in the room, I noticed my dog incessantly licking her lips. She only does this when she eats something super-spicy hot. I figured the boys had given her a corner of their pizza downstairs when I spied my lunch plate, which was now suspiciously half-empty.

My dog ate my lunch. Right off the plate. Seems she likes pizza rolls as much as me. Of course, I fed her some chips to go with it. After all, no one wants to eat pizza rolls without a side of chips….*sigh* (9896)

Parting Thoughts

I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but you can see for yourself I’ve got a little more to go before the finish line…

At some point during the day, the thought crossed my mind that writing this much in one day is very similar to running a marathon. Funny, because I’ve never run a marathon. Doubly funny because I never plan to. But within the last month I’ve started jogging again, after about 13 years off, and this writing gig was, in many ways, a mirror of those first few horrendously slow runs. (Not that I’m blazing any trails with my 18:40 mile LOL).

There’s always a point in my jog (I always run the same exact path, same road every single jog. For now) when I hit a wall and feel like I can’t keep running. When I started, it was at the top of the first hill. I walked, slowed down, got my breath, quit sucking wind and picked back up with the jogging when I felt I could keep going. As I continued running 20 minutes a session, 3 times a week, I realized my “walking point” got further and further down the road. At the start, I was only able to master about 4 minutes of running before sucking wind; yesterday I only started walking at 11 minutes because I felt so good running that I was scared something bad would happen.

There are those few minutes in every run where I think I should stop. Stop running, I tell myself. You’re overweight, you come from a family of women with heavy thighs. You’ll never outrun your genetics. You’ll have to battle pumpkin pie every holiday and no one will notice that you’re slimmer through the middle. It’s not worth it.

Still, I keep going because I promised myself that I can do 20 minutes of solid, hard activity. I deserve it. I made a promise to myself (and I make fun of myself on my weight loss blog, so I need to keep running to keep the material coming) and for once, I’m going to stick with it even if I don’t know the outcome.

I had minutes…maybe a few hours…like that today. Give up, I thought. Your eyes are about to cross, your fingers are sore, the sun is gorgeous outside. You don’t need to finish all this in one day. You have more days in the summer, you need to work on your plot again before you keep writing, you don’t know the perfect first line of the scene. Give up, you worked hard. Take it easy….

Today was about ignoring that voice. I don’t have the doubting voice I used to have when I was a beginning writer–you know, the one who jabs you in the ribs and tells you you’ll never amount to anything. Being published killed that voice, but I still battle doubt. Doubt that my ideas are worthy of 90K words. Doubt that my finished book will attract an agent or editor. Doubt that I’ll ever get to the second draft.

Still, I continued writing. Why? Because I could. I had the ideas and the know-how, even had the energy. I just needed the discipline. While I grew physically weary, the words still kept coming (as you can tell, if you’re still awake at this point LOL). Who am I to shut them off, close them down, tell them to turn around a go home? I invited them here, I may as well hold up my end of the bargain.

Same thing with running. I invited running into my life. Maybe not as willingly as I invited writing, but I did. Though it’s tempting at times to stop writing and jogging, I won’t give in. I write because I have to and I now run because I have to. Running brings energy to my life, writing is how I interpret that life. It’s a good combination and an excellent synergistic relationship. I run because I can and I write because I can. That’s all I need to know!

Woohoo! I made it! That brings me to 10,574 words for one day of work. I’m tempted to keep going to hit 11,000 but I’ve got to get up and jog tomorrow to burn off all the junk I ate today. Can’t wait til the next 10K word challenge! I’d love for you to join me (don’t worry, I won’t make you jog!)

Happy writing & jogging,

Beth

(10, 642!)

• 7 Comments
• Filed in BethWorld, Writer's Life

Because behind every writer is an impressive set of goals…

Make a writing plan for the upcoming week. Take into account your schedule and obligations. How many words or pages will you finish?
Share your goals as comments so we can cheer you on. You can do it!

• 2 Comments
• Filed in Goal Setting, WIP Tip

Because behind every writer is an impressive set of goals…

Make a writing plan for the upcoming week. Take into account your schedule and obligations. How many words or pages will you finish?

Share your goals as comments so we can cheer you on. You can do it!

• 1 Comment
• Filed in Goal Setting, WIP Tip, Your Writing Career

Because behind every writer is an impressive set of goals…

Make a writing plan for the upcoming week. Take into account your schedule and obligations. How many words or pages will you finish?

Share your goals as comments so we can cheer you on. You can do it!

• Comments Off
• Filed in Goal Setting, WIP Tip, Your Writing Career

One of my favorite writing soapbox issues happens to be goal setting. I’m a huge proponent of thinking through what you want to achieve as the first step in the process toward success.

As I talk to writers about the whole goal-setting/achievement/reflection/resetting process, interesting themes come up in goal conversation: how to reward yourself, how to change goals when the ones you’ve set aren’t working, when to throw in the towel and start fresh, how to keep writing despite life obstacles…the list goes on and on.  One of these related topics I’ve struggled with on and off over the course of writing–and one shared with me in recent conversation with an author friend–is one you may have met yourself along the way: the approach of goal setting.

Boiled down to basics, the approach is the actual way you go about setting your goals. Not to be confused with the type of goal (set number of pages, length of time spent writing, amount of finished edited work), your approach is the venue in which you actually set your goals.  Four of the most common types are:

1. Personal goal setting: you are accountable to you and you alone. Personal writing goals aren’t goals you share with anyone. You may journal them but don’t share them publicly.

2. Partner goal setting: Fairly obvious–you work with a trusted writing partner and share your goals to make you accountable to someone outside yourself. This requires both partners to share their goals openly.

3. Communal goal setting: Maybe you’re a part of a writer’s group or a blogging group who meets regularly to account, reassess and reset the goals you’re working toward. Communal goal setting groups are larger than partner goal setting and have a different interactional dynamic than individuals or partners.

4. Interactive goal setting: Interactive goal setting can actually integrate itself into the other three types of goal setting as a means of accountability. Interactive goal setting involves using some type of online or electronic goal setting program, service, website or reminder system to keep you moving forward.

As our careers change, our goal setting approaches are bound to change. Goals have a way of becoming far more rushed and less a leisure activity once we’re at the publishing level of our careers. Likewise, we don’t set all our goals with the same approach. Much of my freelance writing goals are individual, though I will set broad goals with my communal writing group, such as a specific number of query letters I want to get in the mail or number of new publications I want to research. My creative output goals are normally set with the SeriousWriters; my daily page count and weekly list of accomplishments are individual. I have tried working with a partner in the past, both as a creative partner and as an editing peer, and neither worked for me. Luckily, I worked with two wonderful ladies who understood that hard, fast deadlines and set number of chapters per week don’t work for me.

There are lots of online places where you can set goals and reminders to be sent to you on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. I’m just discovering those now and will share them in afuture post. Regardless of the approach you use to setting your goals, all of your goals need the same elements to help you prosper:

–accountability on an ongoing basis (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly)

–reward and recognition, even if it’s just a cup of coffee at your favorite coffee place

–reflection and evaluation to weed out what isn’t working and to put the growing light on what is working

Getting into the goal setting process can be a challenge at first, but with constant nurturing, reflecting and observation of what works for you in your individual career, it will evenutally pay off and serve you well.

What approach works best for your writing? Which one doesn’t? Share with fellow writers and give us something to chew on for future reference!

• Comments Off
• Filed in Goal Setting

And I’m not referring to the NHL game I went to this week!

I’ve a new goal post (not “goalpost”) in the works to hopefully be up this weekend, but in the meantime, how are your goals coming? You know, those elusive little dream nuggets that keep you moving from tiny idea to big dream on a daily basis?

We’re officially 1/4 of the way through 2009…where do you stand in terms of accomplishments, tasks finished, plans made and all that other good goal-related stuff? If you haven’t poured yourself a cup of coffee and looked over your accomplishments thus far, do it soon. If you have, what are your big plans for the next few months?

I’ll be back in the next day or two with a handful of helpful links on goal reviewing & setting as well as questions to help you figure out where you’ve been, where you are…and where you hope to be going with your writing.

In the meantime, take an assessment of where you stand. What can you do to make 2009 the best writing year yet?

• Comments Off
• Filed in Goal Setting