Well, this is a first…I completely forgot to post the SWAGr post for August 2018! But here it is, better late than never. Post your goals for this month and let us know how you got on with last month’s goals.
(P.S. If you were interested in Jerry Jenkins’s Your Novel Blueprint course, but couldn’t face the one-time payment, good news: today only, they’re offering a payment plan, which is MUCH more affordable. Check it out here. I promise I’ll shut up about it after today, but I’d hate for you to miss out if the one-time payment was the only thing holding you back.)
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!
Download your SWAGr Tracking Sheet now, to keep track of your commitments this month
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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. )
July Goals
Win Nanowrimo camp- Done!
Relaunch Personal Website – Done!
Write a blog a week – half done
August Goals
Devote another 30 hours to writing
Get a blog a week out
Keeping it small because I’m in the process of giving up sugar and caffeine.
I didn’t finish my novel-in-progress, but I knew that was a long shot, especially since I had a fundraiser and an out-of-town wedding. But that’s the new goal for August. Actually the real goal is to STOP REWRITING THE BEGINNING. This is why I never finish the manuscript. I keep reworking the beginning. So. No more! It’s forward only. Right? Yeah.
>Stop rewriting the beginning
Oh yeah, that sounds familiar. I’m realizing my process with novels is
* have a great idea
* flesh it out
* write the beginning
* rewrite it
* worry
* write some more
* get to what I think is the climax only to find that I’m just approaching the midpoint
* despair
* realize that it’s never going to be finished if I don’t keep working on it, but that having reached the actual midpoint, I now know what needed to come before (not as much as I’ve written) and better yet, what has to come after.
* sigh
* keep working on it.
A few years ago I picked up James Scott Bell’s book “Write Your Novel From The Middle”. From what I recall, he makes the point that this moment at the middle is not unique to me, and that perhaps starting there is a smart move. I don’t remember the details but I’m thinking I need to dust that off both now and next time I try to start a new novel!
I’m going through a tough time writing wise. I feel like whatever I write is rubbish. I guess we all go through that.
I didn’t do much on my goals for last month. I’ve started some more in depth research for the aforementioned steampunk story. I’ve written half a short story based on an idea my son had, but that kind of feels like stealing. I have another idea for a short but it kind of feels like it’s very similar to other things.
Any suggestions for escaping writer duldrums welcome!
Well, I didn’t hit my 35,000 words, but I managed 25,000 because I couldn’t scrape together the last 10,000 for this story, so it remains at 10,000 words. And I couldn’t care less, because at least I got it DONE.
This month I’m taking it easy. I might start my 50 days of fics over again with another fandom, but I’m not too worried about that. Now it’s revisions for the final posting of the three stories I wrote last month and catching up on my reading (I read all of, like, three books in July, which is way too low for me).
My goal for July was to read and comment on one page of my novel manuscript per day. I made a little progress on this goal, but travel and my day job made it difficult to be as dedicated to that goal as I wanted to be. Okay, to be honest, I wasn’t that into the goal either. Still, I feel like I made progress even when I didn’t look at pages. I spent a lot of time thinking and imagining during my travels. The time spent this way revived my interest in the project, as did some articles I read about writing.
By the end of next week, I should have cleared some major obstacles in my day job. Until I do, I’m going to focus on those. After next week, I’m going to fill out online worksheets for my major characters. Then I’m going to let the characters do the talking. I hope to get down some of what they were telling me when I was out of town. Maybe they will tell me some backstory or some short stories, or maybe they will tell me to go back to the manuscript. I think I’ll be using the Write on Wednesday prompts each week this month. I just feel like I need space to be creative.
Here’s what I said I would do in July
* Work on the behind-the-scenes StoryADay admin stuff – very much YES (so much still to do. I have AMBITIONS, yo)
* Write one polished short story – Not done
* Send out the bounced stories – Done. One even bounced and went back out to a different market already.
* Outline and revise the partly-finished novel – Done. I feel like I’m getting a handle on this story at last.
* Post prompts, Reading Room posts and two podcasts – DONE
FOR AUGUST
I’m traveling in the middle of the month so my productivity will be way down. I’m going to be realistic and just commit to
* Getting ready for StoryADay September (that one sentence doesn’t really contain all that I WANT to do. We’ll see how much cool stuff I get to do…)
* Keep sending out stories
* Capture 3 story sparks a day while I’m traveling. I’ll designate an easy way to capture them in one place before I go.
July was a good month and here is hoping August is even better.
July Goals:
1. Continue to write and post to the blog every day (with 2 posts on Sunday). 100%
2. For camp Nano I have committed to 60 hours of editing the draft. 100%
3. Read at least one resource on “Plot & Structure”. 50%
Additions to July but not on the goal list:
Write and submit a contest story (2500 words) 100%
Read/Work through, “The emotional craft of fiction”: 50%
Goals for August:
1. Continue to write and post to the blog every day (with 2 posts on Sunday).
2. Finish Plot & Structure.
3. Finish The emotional craft of fiction
4. Write one short story (3,000 – 5,000 words) each week Total 5
5. Submit one Flash Fiction story to a contest
6. Write and finish the draft outline
7. Attend critique group meeting
Wishing everyone success in August.
Yowza, that’s a lot. My August list is fairly pitiful in comparison, but everyone’s lives run at different rhythms, right?
Here’s wishing you a productive month!
Last Month’s Goals: 1) Continue with The Artist’s Way, and 2) read StoryFest 2018 entries.
I did both… sort of.
Artist’s Way is going alright… I’ve done the morning pages every day but missed a few tasks and (worse) a few Artist’s Dates as well. I’m frustrated that I didn’t do a better job blocking off time but at the very least I’m getting the pages done and this week one of the tasks was to review the pages which was a lot of fun and very thought provoking. I also read several of the StoryFest 2018 Entries, they were so good! Thanks to all who posted for sharing.
For August, my goal is to 1) continue the Artist’s Way, and 2) to do some amount of work, 5 days a week, on several writing projects I’m starting. Hopefully I’ll have more details to share in September 🙂
Excellent work, David. And I’m impressed at your commitment.
Here were my goals for July:
July the goal is twice a week for the blog. – YES!
Revise 2 stories. – YES PLUS SOME!
Submit 3. – YEP! Two rejections one still out…
Go to writer group.-YEP!
Write everyday and draft at least 4 stories for the month.-OH YES!!!!
August –
3 blog posts a week
2 articles on Medium
revise 4 stories (at least)
submit 5 – goal is to have 5 out at all times
mine my notes in my GOOGLE DOCS…(this has been full of gems…and crap)
Go to writer group at least once a month (meeting is tonight actually for August)
Get ready for Storyaday SEPTEMBER! hee hee
That’s a whole lot of ‘YES’! LOVE it!
Hi!
I hope everyone had a good July. It was ridiculously hot here (Ottawa, Canada), but I was still fairly productive.
My plan for July was to:
1) finish editing the novel. I only have ~3o pages (of 296 total) left, so I am pleased with that;
2) outline my next novel for Camp Nanowrimo (kind of using Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method): this went well and I put in a lot of time, but I’m not as far along as I had hoped.
Also, I had a piece of flash fiction published in Queer Sci Fi’s latest anthology and there’s a Kickstarter for another anthology that I have a story in that’s ongoing (and there’s a short interview bit with me in the updates section). Anyway, links if you’re interested on my website: https://notwhereilive.ca/writing/
For August, my plans are (again) to finish the novel editing and get it out to a few people for beta reading and work further on the new novel. There are also a couple of calls for submission for short stories that I am interested in, so I will try to squeeze in a short story or two.
Good luck, all!
Awesome. Congrats on the anthologies, and interview.
Keep on keepin on!