Every month we gather here to discuss what we’ve achieved and commit to making more progress in our creative lives in the coming month. We call it our Serious Writer’s Accountability Group or SWAGr, for short! (We’re serious, not sombre!)
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 everyone’s doing.
(It doesn’t 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 don’t forget to celebrate with/encourage your fellow SWAGr-ers on their progress!
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Examples of Goals Set By SWAGr-ers in previous months
- Write a story a day in May – everyone!
- Revise at least 10 short stories – Iraide
- Write two short stories. – Jami
- Attend one writers’ conference – Julie
- Write fable for WordFactory competition – Sonya
- Re-read the backstory pieces I wrote in May and see if I can use them within my novel – Monique
- Research the market – Jami
- Focus on my serial – Maureen
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. )
Don’t forget, if you need inspiration for a story you can still get ALL THE PROMPTS from StoryADay May 2015 and support the running of the StoryADay challenge at the same time. Give a little, get a little 
Click here.
last month:
– 100-word story a day – YES
– bird story for mslexia by Sep 7 – I should have read the submissions guidelines; they want UK subs via snail mail, so NO
– edit Scarlett & enter mslexia novel competition – didn’t manage to get the novel to a standard that would have justified paying the £25 submission fee, so NO
– a longer story that can be serialised in 100-word chunks on the blog in Oct – I have a couple of ideas, but haven’t written it yet
October goals:
– Keep it simple: my other half has taken the entire month off, my MIL is coming to visit for a couple of weeks and we’re going to move at the end of the month…
– 100-word story a day (I’ll have to see what the poll on the blog comes up with; I thought I’d write a serial, but it looks like my readers don’t actually want one)
Interesting. You pay attention to your readers. V. Wise
My goals for September were simple:
– Complete all assignments in the Writing 101 course run by WordPress
– Use Writing 101 as a means to connect with fellow bloggers and build a stronger writing community
– Complete all assignments for Story A Day
– Engage with the Story A Day community
Essentially, lots of writing and meeting new people. As it turned out, maybe participating in two writing challenges in the same month wasn’t the best idea, as I got too caught up with that to do much reading or commenting.
Also, there was a lot going on at work during the last week and a half of the month, which completely derailed my writing. In fact, I still have two Story A Day prompts to finish. A fairly hectic month overall.
Goals for October:
– Rectify September’s mistakes and engage with people
– Maybe do a guest post or two
– Critique someone’s work
– Write some spooky Halloween tales!
I’ve also gotten a bit addicted to longform writing thanks to these prompts, so I need to think about if that’s something I want to continue with, or if I want to return to my regular format of 50-word stories.
Ah, but if we weren’t ambitious, how would we ever find out what we’re capable of? 😉
Good luck with your Oct plans!
Well, September ended up being just as non-writing busy as I had feared. However, I did get some things done:
*4 Story A Day prompts: got these done (yeah)
*Story A Day stories: did a few in the first week and posted them to my blog, I’m working on some others and I got ideas as well.
*at least one other blog post: I did this! I wrote a review of Death’s Golden Whisper, a mystery by R.J. Harlick (very good, too, I recommend it).
*work on my novel. I am currently reading the prologue plus first 3 chapters, so I can get into the right mindset: I did this. I re-read what I had already written and I got some work done on chapter 4.
For October:
*finish and submit 2-3 short stories
*2-3 blog posts
*work on novel
And that’s it!
Thank you for the prompts!!!
First of all what a wonderful month of prompts September was! The range of different prompts was amazing and although I didn’t manage a story every day (I knew it was unlikely) but I have come up with some good ideas, one in particular that I’m looking to turn into one of my October competition entries. Also, it was great reading through everybody’s offerings. Such an amazing spread of different interpretations in all different genres. I think the main learning point for me was how much of a story you can write in so few words. Some of the shorter stories were exceptionally good.
Anyhow, my goals for October:
I’m looking to enter two short story competitions by the end of the month. One will be from my September prompt and I need to source another idea. Also, I have a reunion with some of the writers I met early in the year which will provide support and enthusiasm. I’m still thinking about my half finished novel, whether to persevere or start something new.
What a great month. Thanks for your help with it.
Love getting together with writers IRL. One day we’ll. Do a StoryADay Meetup. Next year in Edinburgh and/or at Writers’ Digest in NYC?
Edinburgh! Mind you, that would be a great excuse to fly to NYC 🙂
Edinburgh sounds good!
I enjoyed coming up with the prompts, it was good to be coming at the task from a different direction.
My goals:
write a serial once a week.
revise all published stories
prepare for NaNoWriMo
Good luck, serials are intense.
I am a leader for a writing local writing group (California Writers Club, Inland Empire) and some of my “writing” time is organizing the club.
Me first:
– 2 early hours to slay the Viking novel: draft plots for Au, B, – subplot for G and Al, around historical timepost. Absolutely no research, no internet allowed.
After work hours:
– submit proposal to CWC for prompt writing book – mentors, scholarships, funding request
– Community: CWC checkin and coaching group citrix/office: sign-ups, schedule dates
– Website, kick that can down the road by throwing $ at the problem
– Blog articles: Bust out a theme of Performance boosters
– Survey CWC members associate vs active
Well, I started the month strong, writing a short piece every day, writing fifteen hundred words or so for my sequel, doing a chapter here and there on a third novel, but got a bit side tracked. I ended up just working mostly on the two novels with lots of story notes jotted down. The next few months are going to be a push to finish the sequel.
Story notes are good. They’ll help you get the words down once the deadline looms and the adrenaline kicks in!!
I didn’t set any goals for September: For October
– Make sure I’m prepared for November’s Nano (including writing count to cover missing days of vacation days in November)
– Finish at least half of the rewrite of The Dawning
– Finish promotional material for The Venatori Website
– First Draft of Book Cover of The Dawning
– Publicly post the first chapter in it’s entity of the Dawning to the New Venatori Website
Sounds like a plan. Let us know when you post that chapter.
Didn’t finish annny of my goals for September. Life happened. But I did write a couple MDG updates (which is a feat, since I was panicking over it all month and wanted to quit), got a REALLY good personal rejection from Tor for a story (they told me to send them more stuff in the future!), rewrote the end of that story and sent it out again, wrote a chunk of a short story called ’til human voices wake us’, and made notes for another short story, ‘the liminal man’.
This month I’m gonna
– hope that the pressure of NaNoWriMo REALLY COMING SOON finally kicks my brain into building an MDG buffer finally, I need at least 4 extra chapters
– finish the 2 fanfics I need to
– rewrite the start of ’til human voices’ (I’ve changed some things) and possibly finish it
– submit ‘The Last Spell’ somewhere else if Lightspeed doesn’t take it
– Decide what to do for NaNoWriMo and prep
Nice! Love hearing about encouraging feedback. Keep pumping stuff out. You’re inspiring me!
Ok, I’ll start! It looks like I didn’t set any goals for September, which was probably because I knew it was going to be a whacky month. And it was.
I did a lot of living in September, which is all good material.
I did write the first four installments of a new serial story that I’m thinking of posting on Wattpad. And I checked in on the StoryADay September efforts of you lovely people, and critiqued a bunch of stuff for my real life Writers’ Group.
This Month I Will
– Write 10,000 words of fiction
– Write sample chapters for non-fiction book proposal
– Get non-fiction book proposal out the door!
– Critique a novel for member of writing group
– Critique stories/excerpts for writing group members.
– [Stretch goal] Flesh out one new writing workshop idea
How about you?
Critting a novel is a big job! Best of luck with it and your other goals.
Short novel the time. But yeah. So lucky to have found this crit group.