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!
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. )
I did not meeting my word count goals for my novel in November, but it was stupidly optimistic, given all else I had going on, and the good news is that I wrote more than I would have, otherwise, and broke a few sticking points in the story so I’m pretty happy. I did fufill my other commitment, which was to catch up on the online training I was doing.
My December goals are:
* Research write and submit article under contract (by Dec 18)
* Podcast & blog weekly
* Write 16000 words on — and finish— the novel (this is a stretch goal, but it could happen.
We have a quiet Christmas break planned, so I’m hoping to sneak a lot of fiction into the early mornings after the article is done.
Good luck all!
I lost my Swagr last month! I hope it’s not too late to get in for December. 🙂
November was pretty busy for me. I did a NaNo rebel run (one novella and a bunch of short stories) and broke my 50k-word goal, which is more than I have ever written before in a month. That’s the good bit. The bad bit is that a lot of it stinks and needs editing. Besides, I didn’t manage to finish my novella.
My goals for December then will be:
– Finish the novella, give it a quick edit and get it in front of a beta reader
– Do some thinking and decide what my priorities will be in 2018.
I’ve been following Julie’s advice from October and journaling about my writing goals lately. Let’s see what comes out of that.
I’m with you on the ‘thinking and priority-setting’ for this 2018. My podcasts will be about that, this month.
Does it feel good to have completed work, even if it is “stinky”? Did you benefit from forging ahead and getting words down?
Hi, all,
For November, I planned a rebel-Nanowrimo: writing and editing 3 (maybe 4) short stories for upcoming submissions, varying in length from 1000 to 10,000 words. This sort of worked out. The 1000 word flash fiction piece was written, edited, and submitted (and is, right now, on a contest website to vote on). The 10,000 word story has a complete draft that I’ve gone through it once, but it needs some more editing before submission. One other story is over half-done. Not quite as much I had hoped, but the long story ended up needing a lot more thinking time to work out plot and character issues than I had anticipated. So, overall I am happy with the amount of time I spent on the stories.
For December, I’m going to finish the two unfinished stories above and go back to my novel (which I thought about a good deal during November, including building a playlist/soundtrack :-)).
Hey! Just yesterday, I posted my playlist/soundtrack for the novel I’m working on! Great minds…
I’m seeing a theme in these posts this month: how to balance it all?
Sounds like you’re making progress though. I do think sometimes time away from the novel (with thinking) can be beneficial, but I tend to find I need to then plunge back into it until I burn through all those scenes/thoughts and come to another sticking point.
Where’s your story? Where can we vote?
My story is here: http://shorts2017.quantumlah.org/entry/things-did-not-happen-my-childhood
It’s a cool kind of contest with lots and lots of entries. Really interesting, diverse perspectives.
For the most part, I met my November goal of writing 390 words a day towards the completion of my novel rough draft. I think I missed only a weeks worth of days in there (not consecutively). I wrote about 10,000 words total this month.
I’m torn on what my December goals should be. A significant part of me thinks it will be best to have the same goal that I did in November. I find that when I miss a day working on my rough draft, I feel lost, and getting started again is a struggle, even though I have something like an outline. Once I establish consecutive days of forward progress, I don’t really struggle much to meet my daily goal.
This part of me tells me I should wait until I finish my novel rough draft to go back short stories. I figure I can work on publishing shorter pieces while I’m creating distance between myself and my novel in preparation for revision.
But then there are other parts of me that want to do other writing-related things. I really miss writing short stories, and I’d like to write a short Christmas story for posting on my website. I’d also like to get a blog and a newsletter going. I want potential readers to have something of mine to read while I work on my novel.
In the past, I have planned to work on more than one project in a day. However, I find that after I work on my novel, my writing energy is sapped (as hokey as that sounds). Thoughts, anyone?
I guess my December goals are as follows, and I’ll just see what portion of it I get done:
— Write at least 396 words each day toward the completion of my novel rough draft.
— Write a holiday-themed short story for my website.
The attempts at resuming my blog or starting a newsletter can wait until January.
I totally relate to your issues about balancing novel and short story writing! I have been going through the same thing for the last year. I totally lose momentum on the novel when I take time off from it. On the other hand, I think there can also be some benefit in allowing ideas to percolate in one’s mind over time.
As I said elsewhere in this thread, I spent November working on short stories, but I was thinking about aspects of my novel. I still have some work to do on a couple of stories, but this month is back to serious novel editing and I’ve spent yesterday and today re-orienting myself. So, no solution, but sympathy!
I think this sounds like a good plan, and I certainly relate to the urge to do lots of different things. But your novel goals are working, so stick with it! And you’re throwing in a single short story to keep you fresh. Good luck!
I succeeded in my NaNo goals for the first time and actually won. *party favor noises* So November worked out great (except for sickness at the end, boo!).
This month I’m going to take it easy. I’m starting out the month sick, which is not the best time for writing, and with all the holiday plans we’ve got as a family, I need some time away from constant writing to just relax. I’ve still got a few fic exchanges I need to work on, so I’m going to focus on those before anything else.
Way to go on Nanowrimo! It is such a great feeling.
Yay! for the NaNo goals. What a great feeling.
Boo! to the sickness.
Sounds like you have a solid plan for December. Chill, do a little writing, a lot of socializing and come back refreshed in Jan!