tbonejenkins: (Reading Izumi)

Now that I got my 2017 Year in Review out of the way, I thought I'd take a crack at making writer goals for 2018. Do you know the last time I ever sat down to make writer goals? 2009. So let's get cracking...

Weeping of the Willows Novel: Finish final draft by March 31; Submit it by April 30
In case you didn't see my announcement on Twitter, I finished the 3rd draft of my novel the last week of December. The 4th draft will involve cleaning it up, making it look pretty, and moving it from Scrivener to Word.

Because I want this to be a polished draft, I would like to get this done as soon as possible. So after a brief rest, I'm going to tackle it exclusively over the next few weeks. Also, I'm going to do something I haven't done in a long time: I'm setting a hard deadline, because I want this baby to be done and out the door by the end of April. I'll announce my progress on Twitter to keep myself on track and for you all to encourage, cheerlead, poke with me a stick, etc.

Write seven short stories/poetry. Have 10 stories on submission
Once Willow is out the door, I want to tackle getting some short stories done. I already have one in progress, but I want to get more written and on submission.

Read more books!
Doing the Lightspeed book reviews has re-ignited my book reading. Most fabulous! I want to keep it going by taking the Goodreads 2018 book challenge. I know in doing the books reviews, I'll be reading at least 12 books, so 20 should be a good goal.

Get back into blogging more
This I've been meaning to do for a while. Facebook has grown less and less hospitable for writers. Going through previous posts made me realized how much I've missed blogging, and how I've neglected the Café in the Woods over the past few years. Now that I have free headspace again, it's time to revive the blog.

Right now, because of the last Willow revision, I just will be posting updates like this one. After Willow is submitted, I want to do an overhaul of the website. I also want to revisit some past posts I've done.

Reconnect with YOU
If there's one thing I've learned over the past few years is that I wouldn't be a writer today without my readers. A big THANK YOU to all of those who had stuck with me this far. Once I'm done with Willow, I would like to find a way to reconnect more with readers and fans. One thing I want to look more into is Patron or maybe do something similar to the Story Calendar I did a few years back. Remember that?

There's a lot more that I want to do, but this is a good start. See you when I start the last revision of Willow!

tbonejenkins: (Default)

This morning I woke with a dull headache and a dry mouth, which I'm going to attribute to the small glass of plum wine I had last night. Still more preferable to around this time last year, when I had a throbbing right tooth that got yanked out right before I traveled to St Louis for a staff conference.

Writing wise, I had a huge publishing blitz at the beginning of the year, including a nonfiction article up at Fantasy Magazine and a reprint of Future Perfect podcasted up at Escape Pod. I also had the first ever honor of one of my short stories landing on the storySouth Million Writers Most Notable stories list of 2010.

After April, things went pretty quiet until I was chosen to attend the fifteenth class of Viable Paradise in October, the biggest highlight of the year. To raise funds for that, I wrote 12 short stories and poetry put them into a ebook collection called the Into the Mist-Stained Woods: A Calendar of Tales (more on that will be in a later post). But other than that, since the workshop, I've been writing and editing my novel, and that will be the biggest focus for 2012. But that doesn't mean putting short stories on the back burner. Viable Paradise did teach me was to churn out stories quicker and trust that they're good enough without spending months of work on them. It's just the matter of sending them out.

I went to three cons in 2011: Oddcon, Mo*Con, and Wiscon. This year will most likely be the same, but I'm also looking into going to Chicon 7, seeing that it's in Chicago and all. I hope to make it my first Worldcon attendence.

I also hope to do more blogging this year. Feels like most of my blogs are either about my own work or book reviews. I would like to change that. What would you, my dear reader, like to see more of?

June 2019

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