Writing Goals for 2014: Building a Sustainable Writing Life

My goals for 2014 keep me company at work

Each January I try to set goals for myself for the coming year. Writing down my goals helps me visualize the smaller steps I need to take to meet those targets. As suggested by countless other writers, I try to keep my goals focused on actions I can control - numbers of submissions instead of acceptances.

So! Before I set my goals for 2014, I checked in on my goals for 2013 to see which ones I met and where I might have fallen a little short.

Goals for 2013 Check-in

• Complete the first draft of one novel
• I did not meet this goal, so I'm carrying it over to 2014. 

• Attend a residential writing workshop
• Check! I attended the Beginning Novel Writers Workshop held at the University of Kansas, hosted by the Center for the Study of Science Fiction, taught by the amazing Kij Johnson and Barbara Webb. It was a great experience, and helped me find the right path for my novel. 

• Keep my current stories in the submission/ revision queue until they sell or I run out of suitable markets.
• Check! My stories have been on a steady submission regimen. I've been pretty good at sticking with the "send it out to a new market as soon as you receive a rejection" strategy. 

• Write 3 new stories and submit them. 
• I've not stuck with this one as closely as I should have. However, I have done serious revisions on a few stories I have faith in and have submitted them. I'm going to carry this goal on to 2014 and try to write fresh stories and work less on the revisions. 

• Experiment with storytelling in different genres (like visual narratives and non-fiction). 
• I didn't meet this goal either. I'd still like to write a graphic narrative and write non-fiction, but I'm not adding them to my goal list for 2014 at the moment. I want to wait until I have a specific idea for each of these projects so that I can have a more concrete goal. 

Goals for 2014

Looking at the goals I set for myself in 2013, I think I need to hold myself accountable for more writerly development, interactions with other writers, and set hard goals for activities I've had on my idea back burner for a while.

I've divided my goals for 2014 into different categories. My big idea, right at the top of my goal list, is to build a sustainable writing life. I'm not sure what this means yet. Ultimately, I'd like for it to mean a pleasant, steady job that gives me enough money and time to work on my writing life, which includes writing, attending workshops and conventions, and teaching writing to others. Until I can find a job that fulfills all of those needs, I'll try building sustainability daily in small ways.

What are your goals for 2014? How are you stretching yourself from last year?

Staying Sane

Two weeks ago life came to a full stop. For two days during the weekend, I was by myself with no means of transportation. I hadn't planned to take that kind of break from life. I was going to distract myself with movies at the theater and family, but my family was busy, bad weather shortened our time together, and I wasn't able to drive to the movie theater. I was stuck with myself and my two cats and an empty-feeling apartment.

You know in cartoons when someone is running really fast and they don't realize they're headed for the edge of a ravine until they're right up on it? Then when they put on the breaks they keep skidding a little until their toes are curling over the edge? That's what that weekend and the week after felt like. 

In the middle of the weekend, I started reading a book that my boyfriend had checked out of the library, Philippa Perry's How to Stay Sane. Kismet, maybe. It was the book I needed during that long weekend. 

It's a slim, easy to read book that feels much more like a gentle conversation than a condescending how-to book. 

There were two exercises that I've heard before, but Perry convinced me to try again. I think they've been really helpful for me as I try to strike a new balance between my writing life, my work life, and my personal life. 

1. Keeping a Diary

Sometimes I feel like all writing has to be productive writing. If I'm going to spend half an hour writing, shouldn't I spend that time revising a short story or working on a novel? But Perry makes an excellent case for the benefits of keeping a daily journal, including a longer life. I've been writing in a journal for the last two weeks. Not every day, but most days. And I cannot tell you how much it helps to rearrange my brain so that there's nothing left on my shoulders for the next day. 

I have to make sure I don't leave the journal writing to the last minute, however. Journal writing in bed right before going to sleep leaves me with half-hearted scrawls on paper and waking up ten minutes later with a pen still in my hand. Journal writing fits, for me, into that awkward night space where I start to worry about the next day. Filling this time with journal writing helps me focus, keep positive, and use the rest of my evening time well. 

2. Circles of Increasing Challenges

The other exercise I found most helpful in this book is to draw a diagram of your personal boundaries and work on pushing through them one level at a time. An easy example of this is social interaction. In the center circle, you would write what kinds of social interaction are 100% ok with you. Like, staying at home watching Star Trek with your SO. Around that circle, you would draw a larger one, with interactions that are still doable, but maybe a little bit less comfortable, like going to a group event for a few hours. The idea of this exercise is to keep drawing larger rings around the original circle, filling each level with boundaries you would like to push past. Perry urges you to keep checking on your progress, pushing yourself bit by bit past your comfort zone, so that the leap to the person you want to be is instead a series of small steps. 

Perry also states that being mindful of pushing your boundaries is important to avoid slipping back into your shell of comfortable habits. Last year I made interacting with fellow writers and geeks regularly part of my writing goals, and I attended more events than I normally would have. I strengthened friendships, met new people, and was more productive as a writer. This year I didn't include those interactions in my goals, thinking that I'd naturally keep up those habits. But they've fallen by the wayside, and I'm revising my goals to include conventions and crit groups both local and out of state this year.

There are many more exercises and great examples in this book, and I would highly recommend reading it, especially to writers. Not only for developing needs and obstacles for characters, but for working through your own as well.

Do you have favorite resources or personal exercises for staying sane as a writer? How do you balance writerly needs and ambitions with everyday life? 

Australian Women Writers Challenge

This year I'm challenging myself to read more books by Australian women authors as part of the Australian Women Writers Challenge.

My specific self-challenge is to read six books by Australian women authors in 2013.

Here are two of the books I'm planning to read this year:

The Brides of Rollrock Island by Margo Lanagan
Selkies and witches and Lanagan's brilliant prose. I've heard murmurs of greatness about this book, but I've not listened too closely for fear of having the details spoiled. And the details in Lanagan's writing are so wonderful. I bought this book when it first came out and I've been holding onto it, waiting for a time when life quiets down so I can make sure real life doesn't interfere with my reading. Maybe I just need to go ahead and start reading and then real life will have to make room.

The Sinkings by Amanda Curtin
I recently reviewed Curtin's short story collection Inherited for the journal Antipodes. I had agreed to do a book review for the journal, but had no idea which book I would get. As soon as I started reading Inherited, I knew it had been the perfect choice for me. Her stories are gorgeous, and play with magical realism in ways I haven't seen before. And the structure of the collection as a whole is also a wonderful experience. As a short story writer who is beginning to write novels, I'm very interested to read a novel by a writer whose short stories I adore.

The other four books I will read as part of my self-challenge I'm leaving open for now, but I'm going to try to read other genres in addition to fiction - one poetry and one non-fiction at least.

Do you have any suggestions of great Australian women writers I should read?

Want to Participate?

• If you want to take part in the challenge, sign up here.

• There are some wonderful recommendations on this post on short stories and poetry, and the blog is continually updated with reading recommendations.

Goals for 2013: Looking Back and Moving Forward

I recently looked at the goals that I set for myself for 2012, and I'm really pleased at how many of them I've met.

Here were my goals for 2012 and my assessment of whether I met them: 

• Finish my MFA thesis - Check! My MFA thesis is completed, turned in, defended, I graduated!, and I now have the bound copy on my bookshelf. 
• Submit these stories until they are published or I run out of suitable markets - Check! While I haven't found a home for all of my thesis stories yet, they're all on a healthy regimen of submission and revision. This is going to be an ongoing project, but I'm actively pursuing it so I'm calling it a goal met. 

• Learn more about writing novels 
• Begin writing a novel - Check! I particpated in NaNoWriMo this year, and while I didn't complete a novel I did begin one. Actually, I started several. 
• Workshop the first 5,000 words of a novel and the novel outline at DeepSouthCon - Check! Had a great workshop, got my butt kicked into gear, and met many lovely people. 

• Attend at least one big convention (AWP & World Fantasy Convention are my top choices) - Check! I attended AWP and it was excellent. 

• Continue to workshop stories with my Clarion West classmates - Check! 

• Read more & seek out new authors - Check! I've been reading many more novels this year, especially YA, to get myself back into the groove of how a novel feels. I've started following YA review blogs, so that I have a better sense of which books will speak to me before I seek them out. 

• Be more involved with my local geek community: writing, sci-fi, gaming - Check! I joined my local chapter of StarFleet and have attended events with my group, attended Con*Stellation, and participated in the Science Fiction Writers and Cake Appreciation Society reading this year at Con*Stellation.  

Shadow taking a rest after going for a walk

So what are my goals for 2013? 

• Complete the first draft of one novel. 
• Attend a residential novel writing workshop.
• Keep my current stories in the submission/ revision queue until they sell or I run out of suitable markets. 
• Write 3 new stories and submit them. 
• Experiment with storytelling in different genres (like visual narratives and non-fiction)

My main goal for 2013 is to complete a novel. I still want to write a few new short stories and keep my finished stories out on submission, but I think that writing a novel is the next big step I need to take as a writer. Even if this one is a learning novel, it will help me get to the next novel, and the next. 

2013 is my year of the novel, and I'm going to tailor my goals to that end as I go along. What are your goals for the new year? 

Big Ideas and Permissions

“Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. 

 You can only see as far as your headlights, 

but you can make the whole trip that way.” 

- E. L. Doctorow

I'm slowly growing more comfortable with the idea of stepping into a novel without a detailed outline. I've tried making an outline using the feminine journey in the back of 45 Master Characters, but I always get hung up. Why? Because I haven't spent enough time with my characters and their story to know who they are.

I've got three novel ideas, and I keep switching back and forth between them, unable to commit to pursuing just one. NaNoWriMo is about to start, and the days between me and the 10,000 word goal by November 15th are steadily disappearing. I'm kind of in novel freak out mode.

I have two wonderful writing friends to thank for pulling me out of my pre-novel funk.

Alisa Alering sent me a wonderful article by Bruce Holland Rogers about deciding on your Big Picture: why you are writing this novel. Each of my novel ideas has a different practical and creative purpose in my writerly big picture. One is a YA, one is literary/ experimental, one has a good feeling of forward motion. The YA would be writing for a great audience that I am eager to connect with, and would give me the satisfaction of finishing a story that I've been writing on and off for years. The literary one might never see the light of day, but it would give me the opportunity to unlock some stories and language I've been keeping stowed away. And the one with a good feeling of forward motion feels like one I could finish, that would prove to myself that I can write a novel, and would have enough of a structure to not melt into disparate parts after draft zero is done.

So what is most important to me in this first novel attempt?

My guideposts

With these in mind, my choice of which novel to write is much easier. I'm going to write the one with the sense of forward momentum, the short story idea my thesis advisor asked me about three years after it was workshopped in her class, about a body-modified raven and a lost girl searching for something that others are trying to hide.

The second writer push that happened this week was that Ashley Cowger gave me permission to write a crappy first draft. I'm constantly trying to persuade myself that it is ok to just write, get that first draft on paper, because I know I'm going to revise the story twenty or more times before I ever submit it anywhere. But the impact of having an accomplished writer whose work ethic and creative work I deeply admire tell me that it's ok to just follow the story where it wants to go the first time through is amazing. I really feel like a giant weight has been lifted off of my chest.

After all, one of my guideposts is to prove to myself that I can write a novel. It doesn't have to be the best novel in the world on the first draft, but it does need to be done. And if I'm not judging my writing every step of the way, then done is a goal I can accomplish.

So I'm going to pass this writing gift on to you, one day before the start of NaNoWriMo, in the almost November time when everyone's itching to write a long story.

It's okay to write a crappy first draft. 

I'm going to do it. Lots of writers do it. 

You have our permission. 

Now start writing. 

Novel Buddies & Goal Charts

Novel Buddies

My MFA friend, Ashley Cowger, and I have decided to become novel writing buddies this year. She's written a few novels before, and this is my first one. We're going to set word goals and hold each other accountable. Not in a threatening way, just in an "I know what your goals are - how's it coming along?" kind of way.

I've always kind of felt like writers go to some remote, secret space when they embark on a novel. So it's nice to have this mutual word playground. We're building our own castles, but we can talk to each other while we pat the sand into shape.


Commonplace Book

I still have my lovely notebook for keeping ideas, random journal entries, and bits of inspiration. But I wanted to get a notebook specific to my novel project. And I needed for it to be light, so that I would actually carry it around with me. I can't really take my laptop to work and write on my novel during my lunch break (I tried - too stressful). But I want this novel to be a part of my life for the time I'm working on it. I want to fall into the story and then write my way out.

So I did some browsing and found a great little journal :

         

It was super cheap ($3), has tight binding, good paper quality, and is small - not quite as wide as the tip of my forefinger. I can throw it in the back pocket of my purse and have it with me if inspiration strikes.

Here is my prediction: novels are like people. The more time you spend just hanging around, just being with them, the better you get to know them. Listening to their story before you tell yours is how you make a friend.

Taking this commonplace book with me reminds me to listen:

Researching, bringing words and themes from different sources together

Goal Charts
Here's our goal: 10,000 words by November 15th. I started out with a daily word goal of 150. I kept it up for two days.

Goal chart for the novel project's first deadline

But even though I stopped writing words on paper, I didn't stop writing. I've been twisting the story this way and that in my head, trying to find the angles that catch the most light. At one point I became so frustrated that I swore off this novel idea, started working on something else, and that's when the lightbulbs started going off.

All of those little X marks where I didn't write, they still kept my mind tethered to the story. And they made me honestly evaluate how I've been spending my time.

My daily word goal is up to 210. I'm getting a really good feel for how not terrifying writing a novel can be, at least, drafting a novel. And while I can't allow myself too many reverie breaks, I feel more centered and motivated now that I know my novel a little better.

Organization: Submission Board

When I have writer's block, I organize. 

Sometimes it's furniture, sometimes wall decorations, but often my organizing has to do with my writing. Organizing helps me stay up to date on my projects, reminds me of goals I've set, and unearths old stories I once thought were rubbish but now think are quite ok.

My latest organization project is a submission board. 

Submission Zone, still in progress

Separating the Creative Self from the Business Self

I've been having a lot of writing anxiety lately - just completely unable to get a first draft done. Today I remembered the advice to separate the creative writer from the business writer. The creative writer writes the stories; the business writer sells them.

I've had my submission sheets taped to the wall behind my laptop for the past few weeks, and today I decided to move them - to create two different spaces. One for the creative writer and one for the business writer.

I'm making my desk space, where I create, free of clutter and surrounded by inspiration and encouragement. On the other side of the room is a small bookcase. Inside the bookcase are short story journals that I love to read (both SFF and literary) as well as my rejectomancy and acceptance boxes. Above the bookcase are my submission boards.

I have a few genre stories on submission at the moment, and I'm gearing up for a big submission push once the literary journals open back up in the fall.

Since I'm submitting to both genre and literary magazines, I needed to make two separate systems.

My Genre Submission Board

Genre magazines usually do not allow simultaneous submissions. They have a faster turnaround (some as fast as two days) and usually ask that you do not submit to the magazine again for a certain period of time after being rejected (usually a week or two).

So I need to make sure that I don't submit multiple stories to one magazine at the same time and also respect the magazine's guidelines for waiting to submit again.

My SFF submission board is organized by the name of the magazine. I put the names of the stories I'm submitting on post it notes and move them around the board.

There are more genre magazines than I could fit on a wall, but for the purpose of this board I'm sticking with journals that are SFWA qualifying markets (Pro markets), pay at least a token amount, or have an aesthetic similar to my own. I've narrowed my initial submissions to magazines that I love to read and where I think my stories would fit.

If I've been rejected from a magazine that has a courtesy period, then I put a different colored post it with the date rejected or the date when I can submit again.

I can also use the post its to mark when a magazine is closed to submissions, so I don't waste time wondering if a story is a good fit.

Submission Board for SFF Stories

This tactic is working really well for me so far. I can see where my stories are at a glance, and it also reminds me of all of the magazines where I'd love to be published. This makes me consider which of my stories might be a good fit for those markets, and encourages me to send them out.

My Literary Submission Board

The submission board for literary stories is a bit different.

Literary magazines usually encourage simultaneous submissions, as the turnaround time can take up to a year. Like genre magazines, multiple submissions to the same magazine are not allowed.

With my literary stories, I need to make sure that I've got each story out at several different journals for consideration at any given time. This way they have the best chance of finding the right reader at the right market.

My literary submission board is organized based on the stories that I currently have on submission.

Each sticky note has the name of a journal, with a little "E" or "P" at the bottom to designate whether I submitted electronically or through the post, and therefore where I should be on a lookout for a response.

I've also got several journal sticky notes that have a star in the corner, to indicate that the last time I submitted to the magazine I received a "please send us more" or similar encouragement.

I like to think of these submission boards as the volume control. If there aren't any bars beneath a story title, then it's too quiet. I need to find some new markets for the story and send it out.

Submission Board for Lit Stories

My submission board is pretty cheap - just printed pieces of paper and post it notes. But one day I might upgrade to a dry erase board or cork board.

I prefer to keep my own submission board low tech, but I bet this would work really well on Kanbanpad or in a simple spreadsheet.

I'm hoping that these submission boards and the separated spaces will help me push through my block. From my desk I can look over my shoulder and see by the colors on my submission board that my stories are out in the world, doing their work. Then I can turn back to my computer and be the creative self who worries about the story at hand.

Write-a-thon Goals and Moving Forward

I got an envelope from Clarion West in the mail today, which always makes me happy. Inside were two pieces of paper: a flyer for the instructor reading series and an invitation to the Friday night parties.

This year's Clarion West Readings and Parties

I can't show you the second piece of paper in detail because the parties are often held at supporters' homes, and the residential addresses are listed. But it's amazingly cool - if I could travel to Seattle, I could pop into these parties.

Who is going to be at these parties? In addition to the awesome people who make up Seattle's SF community and the Clarion West class of 2012, each week's instructor will be there: Mary Rosenblum, Stephen Graham Jones, George R.R. Martin, Connie Willis, Kelly Link & Gavin Grant, and Chuck Palahniuk.

This time last year, I was beginning to freak out big time about attending Clarion West. Mostly, I was afraid of letting my fears get in the way of the workshop experience. I was afraid I would be too shy to talk to anyone, and too afraid to step out of my writing comfort zone. Sometimes I failed on both of these counts. But mostly, I was able to close my eyes and push myself forward. And my workshop experience was better for it.

I also had to move forward with my writing. At Clarion West, I had to write five fresh stories. We were encouraged to bring ideas for stories as back up, but not use them. When I moved from Alaska, I had a bunch of stories that I hated. I had spent so much time working on them that I felt weighted down by my responsibility to make them the best they could be. It was so freeing, and so healing for my writing psyche, to go to Clarion West and be made to write completely new stories.

They were shitty first drafts. But they were new, and that made them wonderful. My stories got better from week to week, and all of the advice I'd gotten over the years began to make sense.

Ultimately, three of the stories I wrote at Clarion West as well as my Clarion West submission story ended up in my masters thesis. After the workshop, when I went back to my pre-workshop stories, I zipped through revising them. I wasn't frustrated with them anymore, because I knew that they weren't the only stories I'd ever write. I could work to make them better, but I wouldn't let them haunt me forever.

Clarion West is starting in two weeks. I can visit Seattle and go to the parties, but I can't go back to the workshop. So instead, I'm taking part in the Clarion West Write-a-thon.

My original goal was to revise each of the stories I wrote at Clarion West and submit it. But I've already been revising and submitting my Clarion West stories, perhaps too much, and I need to move forward. So I'm going to return to the concept that made Clarion West so helpful for me the first time around and write a fresh story, every week from June 17 - July 27.

This summer I'm putting my old writing in a drawer so I can explore the rest of the house. I know there have to be some secret balconies here, somewhere.

Want to know more about the Clarion West Write-a-thon? Here are the details:
If you're looking for a challenge this summer, joining the Write-a-thon could be a great option. You'll be part of an amazing community of writers and you'll be helping to raise money for the workshop. You don't have to be an alumni to participate. 

• My Write-a-thon page
• Go here to sign-up to take part in the write-a-thon, make a donation, and see individual author pages of those participating.

To Teach, or Not to Teach

"Don't feel like you have to be in a rush to prove yourself now that you've graduated," my sister told me over the phone last night.

But I do feel like I need to start accumulating more publications, and fast. Not only so that I avoid the post-MFA writing slump, but also so that I can build my resume.

I've been applying to jobs in two specific areas: teaching and as an administrative assistant. My feelings on the perfect job are ambivalent. Part of me wants a job I can leave at the office, with steady hours that won't drain my writing brain so that I can come home to my own stories. The other part wants a job that I will be proud of, one that makes me feel like I'm making a difference, even if it leaves less time for my personal writing.

But in the midst of sending out my resume and CV, I'm trying to keep a handle on the difference between wanting to teach because it is something I enjoy and wanting to teach because it can make me feel like a writer even when I'm not publishing any stories.

My CV for teaching prominently features my short story publications. While I was at UAF, two of our professors held a workshop and shared their CVs with us. For a teaching resume/ CV, your creative writing publications become an important credential. I think this document has bled its way into my mind, tricking me into thinking that landing a teaching job will validate me as a writer.

So I am trying to remind myself: That is one thing, but this is another. It's a phrase from a clipping that I taped inside one of my notebooks years ago and just recently rediscovered:

How do you find a job that doesn't drain the essential energies that you bring to participate in the creative act? How do you maintain those energies when you're a mother? How do you maintain them when you're a father? I mean, this is always the question. No matter what we do or how we live. How do you nourish those energies and live in life? 

We have to make a living. We want to be in the world -- to be engaged with other people. One has to know one's own temperament. I think of someone like Liz Rosenberg, a strong poet, and it's impossible to imagine her not teaching. She is so gifted at it. And she seems to be able to write her wonderful poems, and her energy is unabated. But there are the great writers who couldn't teach. Bishop, famously, was a terrible teacher. I always want to say to the young writers I work with, you can be an artist without teaching. You are an artist. You don't need an academy to tell you what you are. Whitman didn't teach. Emily Dickinson didn't teach. John Keats didn't teach. Rilke didn't teach. Let's go on and on. Let's make a list of all the writers who we read who didn't teach. Teaching is great but let's not put the equal sign between them. That is one thing, but this is another. 

                           -- Marie Howe, The Writer's Chronicle, May/ Summer 2010. (9).


Last week my grandmother pulled out a family photograph. "She was a teacher, and so was she, and so was she," my grandmother said as her finger hovered over the faces of great aunts and cousins. My mother, also a teacher, stood beside me as I looked at all of the teachers in my family.

I'd always vowed not to teach. I was going to buck that family inheritance. But then I went to graduate school, and I had a teaching assistantship to pay my tuition and help me live. And I developed a teaching persona, a person more self-confident and commanding than my every day self, the introvert writer. I loved learning from my students, and seeing texts through their eyes. It was the most rewarding work I've ever done.

When I'm gone, and someone in my family is saying my name as they point out the faces in a photograph, I want them to call me a writer. But after that, I'd like to be called a teacher, too.

Resistance Manifesto

As I prepare for my thesis defense, I'm going back through my materials from the classes I took at UAF. In particular, I'm reading through my binder from Forms of Fiction, taught by the amazing David Crouse.

David assigned a writing project during this course that I particularly loved. We each had to write a resistance manifesto. In writing, you're defined not only by the writing styles and ideals that you embrace, but also by those that you reject.

I took Forms of Fiction in the spring of my first year as a graduate student. The first semester of grad school is hell. It's wonderful in many ways, too. But it is an overwhelming load of coursework, learning to teach, and trying to write. The first semester breaks you down and makes you realize that you're going to have to work at writing if you really want to write well.

Then after that first stretch, you begin to rebuild your writing self.

This exercise was very cathartic at that stage of my writing development, but I believe it can be useful anytime you're feeling lost in the crowd of writers. Define who you are, and who you are not as a writer, and keep steering by that star.

RESISTANCE MANIFESTO

I do not want to have my work described as "good writing." Fuck that.

I do not want to be any part of literary snobbery that denies entrance to form or genre.

I will not pass through the charnel houses just to be published.

I will not camouflage myself in the gristle and shards of "good writing" to earn any position or award.

Fuck that.

I resist the urge to retreat into the safe arms of academia and forgo the world of the real.

I resist the urge to forget my childhood, the Southern strangeness that is part of my story.

I defy the division of images and text.

Booyeah.

I support the proliferation of writing through public forms. I will write and share my writing through unfamiliar means.

Saddle-stiched. Hand threaded spine. A copy machine mage.

I will share my life with my family and friends through zines full of images and words.

I will write as well as I can, changing the lens until I get the correct prescription.

I will structure these lenses in thick black frames and blue striped socks.

I am not writing for an editor. I am not writing for a magazine.

I am not writing to be entombed in a print quarterly.

I am writing to be found on a bus seat, a chance library sale find, on a table in a cafe. 

I am writing for the girl in the closet who speaks to her sister through the walls while her parents rage outside.

I am writing for the boy with long hair who lives in a house full of doors that are always closed. 

Tools & Talismans for 2012

 My writing goals for 2012 include a few tasks that I've been shirking on, and several new endeavors that will throw me out of my comfort zone:

• Finish my MFA thesis
• Submit these stories until they are published or I run out of suitable markets
• Learn more about writing novels
• Begin writing a novel
• Workshop the first 5,000 words of a novel and the novel outline at DeepSouthCon
• Attend at least one big convention (AWP & World Fantasy Convention are my top choices)
• Continue to workshop stories with my Clarion West classmates
• Read more & seek out new authors
• Be more involved with my local geek community: writing, sci-fi, gaming 

In order to reach these goals, I've got a few tools that I found in 2011 that I will carry into the new year:

• Book: The Productive Writer: Tips & Tools to Help You Write More, Stress Less, & Create Success by Sage Cohen - I love this book. It isn't a craft manual. There aren't essays on how to strengthen your characters or structure your story. Instead, Cohen has written a guide on how to structure your life so that you have the time to write, and gives you advice on how to focus that time. One of my favorite lines: "I have come to appreciate schedules as little maps of the possible to guide us in the deep and sometimes overwhelming waters of time."  

• Podcast: Writing Excuses - 15 mins of fun and inspiration with working authors. It's kind of like eating a quick snack with a bunch of writers at a workshop. I've been listening to an episode before I settle down to write. 

• Magazine: "The New Year's Guide to an Inspired Writing Life." Poets & Writers Magazine, Jan/ Feb 2012 Issue - I admit that I do not always read the articles in Poets & Writers, but the current issue has several articles that I have found very helpful. From revision, to making a reading list, to having a distraction-free workplace, this issue has helped me look at my daily writing tasks in a new light. "It's true that the longest distance in the universe is from the mind to the tips of your fingers" (from Jeremiah Chamberlin's article "Inspired Revision: Writing as an Act of Discovery"). 

• Online Resource: "How to Steal Like an Artist and 9 Other Things No One Told Me" by Austin Kleon - A beautiful, inspiring essay that I return to often. Mind blowing moment: "1+1 = 3" (There's an ad at the top of this page for a book version, but scroll down to read it for free.) 

• Online Image: "You just gotta fight" quote by Ira Glass - I printed this quote, taped it to the front of my notebook, and took it with me to Clarion West. A great reminder that working your way towards your best creativity takes time, so keep making things even if they don't live up to your expectations just yet.

• Writing Groups:  Setting goals means much more to me when I have people waiting on me to reach them. So in 2012 I'm going to make an effort to be more involved with my online and local writing groups. I'll have to have finished stories to show to these groups, and knowing that others will be reading/ hearing my work will encourage me to make sure that work is tight and well-written. 

As for talismans, I've got my Clarion West certificate beside my desk, reminding me that I've reached one goal, and that I can reach others.

What resources are you using to meet your writing goals this year? I'd love to hear about them. :)