Welcome to the Serious Writers’ Accountability Group!
Post your goals for this month and let us know how you got on with last month’s goals.
Leave a comment below telling us how you got on last month, and what you plan to do next month, then check back in on the first of each month, to see how everyoneâs doing.
(It doesnât have to be fiction. Feel free to use this group to push you in whatever creative direction you need.)
Did you live up to your commitment from last month? Don’t remember what you promised to do? Check out the comments from last month.
And donât forget to celebrate with/encourage your fellow SWAGr-ers on their progress!
Download your SWAGr Tracking Sheet now, to keep track of your commitments this month
****
Examples of Goals Set By SWAGr-ers in previous months
- Finish first draft of story and write 3 articles for my school paper. – Courtney
- Write on seven days this month – Clare
- Extend my reading and to read with a âwriters eyeâ- Wendy
- write 10,000 words – Mary Lou
So, what will you accomplish this month? Leave your comment below (use the drop-down option to subscribe to the comments and receive lovely, encouraging notifications from fellow StADa SWAGr-ers!)
(Next check-in, 1st of the month. Tell your friends!)
I am new to Story a day. I have not written in a few years. So I’d like to determine with this challenge if the passion and ability is still there.
My goal is to write a story a day for the month of May.
This is my first time ever doing Story A Day and I’m really excited. My goal is to write one complete story every day for the month of May. That’s it – I figured I would keep it simple!
During the month of May, I plan to use the story a day prompts as inspiration to write a scene/chapter (one and the same for me) every day for my mystery novel-in-progress, no matter how unrelated the prompt appears to be.
Oops, I thought I accidentally deleted my comment below before I posted it.
During the month of May, I plan to use the story a day prompts as inspiration to write a scene/chapter a day for my mystery novel in progress.
I want to send out three queries for my book
I want to submit three already completed works to journals
I want to work at writing a story a day for May
I wrote almost nothing in April and did not miss it at all (state of world, at-home learning of kids, etc) but Iâm ready to start writing again. My goal in May? To rewrite the PB manuscript Iâve been working on for a couple years. I love the subject -just need to get it ready for submission. Good luck, everyone! Stay safe!
Also – THANK YOU, Julie, for this group and the challenges. Such a help and encouragement.
I haven’t posted any goals for some time because I had completely lost my writing mojo for various reasons. However, it has now sauntered in through the back door and I am determined it should stay. So, I will have two goals for May. The first, to take part in every day of the StoryA Day challenge and to work on the edit of my draft novel.
Goals for April
Send off two stories to competitions.
Submit part of my novel to the tutor of our local writing group for evaluation.
Join our group in virtual meetings with Zoom.
Continue to redraft and type up stories in progress.
Iâm so grateful to get your emails. I may not always act on them but they inspire and focus me and SWAG never fails to bring me back to my goals. Brilliant. Thank you Julie. X
First post here. đ I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who wants a refund for 2020 Between my Dad passing away and the rest of the world, I haven’t written much for the last few months, trying to pull myself out of a funk and start focusing again. My goals for April:
Write 1,000 words every weekday. This is reasonable for me, I was doing 4k a day before.
Out of those 1k words write a short story in the 5k – 6 k length.
Next Month I will edit what I wrote this month.
Oh, Iâm so sorry about your dad. Thatâs tough.
Iâm glad youâre here and that youâre setting new goals. Just be sure to congratulate yourself for every success. Some days will be better than others, but youâre doing a good thing.
Hoo, boy, March was…A Month, wasnât it? But, I wrote about 4,000 words total, which is good considering I spent most of March Very! Anxious! about work. Now, itâs April, and Iâm determined to get things done and write more.
Iâm going to be dropping out of one thing I signed up for, so that I can sign up for another thing (a bad idea!). But Iâm making progress on some things, so Iâll take this as a win for now.
The, uh, novel writing group is going good, except I lost my job, so thatâs more time to write, but also more stress? Not necessarily a good combination. But, I have some caffeine in me, and I actually woke up before noon today, so Iâm counting it all as good and hopefully this month will get better.
(Also, I have no idea why I canât sign in anymore, but itâs probably because Iâm on my tablet and that seems to log me out of things more often than my computer.)
Yes, I would definitely not sneeze at those 4000 words!
Reflection
Other than having a better idea of where I want to send my latest essay and having narrowed down the questions related to my novel that I need help with researching, I didnât meet my March goals. I did write 4 ½ poems though. Writing poems gives me more emotional release than writing nonfiction does. Writing fiction would give me a creative release, but I need to get further in my research before I can write more novel-related pages. I get tempted to write other fiction in the meantime, but Iâve realized I need to quit adding projects until I check some off my list. As such, here are my April goals:
April 2020 Goals
⢠Revise and submit the poems Iâve written in the last week or so. Theyâre timely, so Iâd like to get them out into the world.
⢠Write the emails containing questions for people who can help me with my novel research.
⢠Send emails to the people who may be able to help me with my novel research.
⢠Get caught up on the DIYMFA 101 modules. I’m putting this goal last because I shouldnât have added it to my proverbial plate right now
I’ll be amazed if anyone really managed to meet their March goals. Good for you, for getting as much done as you did and for turning up to set goals for next month.
This will be my first time posting goals in this group. It’s a really good idea, I think.
1. Finish Mrs. Scary story – edited, polished, good – and set aside for a month
2. Keep up with memoir writing class
a. Do daily assignments on time
b. Do weekly assignments on time
c. Do 20 more “burning moments” with the “it was a time” thingies
3. Respond to all letters within 2 weeks of receiving
4. Send 10 letters with stuff to SendSomething people
5. Copy & paste 2013 & 2014 ohlife to Penzu
6. Morning pages DAILY
7. 2 SeaPet blog articles
8. 30 other blog articles per week per Rob
Not all of these are fiction writing goals, but they are all writing goals of one kind or another. I write all kinds of things. I write for work (that’s the blog posts), letters, journal/morning pages, and fiction. Fiction often gets less time than the rest. Well, I should lump in memoirs and fiction, because they are both my “for fun” writing and my “for eventual publication” writing.
Thanks for inviting me to the group, Julie! I would have forgotten without the reminder.
Holy moley! That’s a lot of stuff. Make sure you celebrate every single one when you make progress on it, and be kind to yourself if some of them miss the mark a little.
Hi, all!
My goals for March were to finish my novel and submit it (I did this!), finish edits on a short story that will be published in an upcoming anthology (did this, too!), and go back to a long short story I’ve been working on for a while (this was my critique week piece, worked on it otherwise, too). I also did some Camp Nano planning for April (a new novel).
I can’t believe I submitted the novel less than a month ago.
As mentioned, my main goal for April is Camp Nano. I’m writing a novel (realistic goal is 50 000 words, stretch goal is to finish the whole 100 000 word novel). I have a bit of an outline and a lot of pictures. Relatedly, I’m also involved in planning an online convention for LGBTQ+ science fiction & fantasy writers and readers that will happen in June.
The last thing – the LGBTQ thing – awesome!!!!
In fairness, this has been a Looooooong month!
The online convention does sound cool. Hope you’re getting lots of help with it!
My goals for April are:
1. Finish the first draft of the second book in my series. I already have just over 21,000 words written and I’m aiming for 55 – 60K words total.
2. Create a Mailer Lite account and start using it to gain subscribers.
3. I’m waiting for the final proofreading for my reader magnet. When that’s done I’ll load it into Book Funnel and/or Story Origin.
I LOVE these goals, especially #2. People usually fight me when I tell them to get a mailing list đ
It has been several months since I posted goals. (I got unserious about the writing.) But the past couple of months I’ve been writing more and I am ready to set real goals again đ
I am doing Camp Nanowrimo this month. 25,000 words. I’m feeling better about this project than I felt with the last two.
Also, if there is extra time I want to finish a first draft of a short story I started last month. The completed story will be 3,000-4,000 words. I’m almost finished with the first draft. It’s handwritten so when I’m done I will type it up. Then next month I can work on revisions.
So glad you’ve swung back around to the writing đ Good luck with Camp Nano!