Sunday 14 July 2013

Check-up of my goals for 2013

It’s halfway through another year. Man, where does the time go?
I wrote a blog post back in January on my goals for 2013 and it is probably time to see how I am going.
So, here were my resolutions for 2013:
1.     I will write and publish one novel (approx. 100k words) and a novella (20-40k).
2.     I will reach 500 likes for my Facebook author page.
3.     I will write 2,000 words a day.
4.     I will write less fanfiction.
5.     I will improve my writing, grammar etc.
Hmmm… first off,
1. I will write and publish one novel (approx. 100k words) and a novella (20-40k).
I finished the novella. Polished it up and sent it off to an ebook publishing company that accepts erotica. It was pretty much pure erotica. After more than a few weeks, I have no reply. In publishing terms that means they don’t want it. Now I have to decide what to do with it. Still thinking on that. Do I put a cover on it and put it up on Smashwords?
The novels? Still working on them and going through huge moments of self-doubt. Omg everything I write is a trope - ahhhh. Plus, I keep getting more new exciting wonderful shiny ideas that tromp all over the old unfinished ones.
2. I will reach 500 likes for my Facebook author page.
121? Hmmm… I’ve got 560 on twitter. Dammit… should have written twitter.
3. I will write 2,000 words a day.
I keep a record of how many words I write each day. When I finish something I toss the word count into an excel table. I really wish Google had a running word count app for Drive; please?! Scrivener does it for each project and you can reset it when you want. I do daily. According to my chart I wrote just under 200,000 words up to the end of June. 120,000 of that was fanfic. I have written a large pile of short stories or flash fiction; usually under a thousand words. I think I have written about forty of those; some have been posted on this blog. Some are just scraps or fragments that (as per usual) beg to be extended.
It is probably more than that because I lost data when my PC auto restarted a few times,  and I hadn’t saved the table and one day Scrivener was drunk and said I wrote 32k words - yeah right. I didn’t count that.
That sounds like a lot, but it works out to be just over 1,000 words a day or half my goal. DAMN.
4. I will write less fanfiction.
Well that didn’t go well… 60 percent fanfiction? Is that less than I used to write? I can’t tell.
The truth is I think I complete and post more fanfiction.
5. I will improve my writing, grammar etc.
I’ve been reading up and spending ages looking through RSS feeds of writing sites, grammar rules and so on. I’ve read Seth Godin, Larry Brooks and am currently on Nail your Novel by Roz Morris. I listen to podcasts from Joanna Penn and Writing Excuses. So I think I am doing okay on this one.
So in summary, I’ve failed. I have managed two (and a half) of my goals - the last ones. If I can count half the word count? Lmao
I look at my total and I think, wow imagine how productive you could be if you just concentrated on one thing at a time? I’ve known me for a while now, and I know that is just not how my mind works. Pity.
I watched Adam Hills the other night and he interviewed Paul Kelly; Aussie muso - very famous and talented. He called that self-doubt the ‘pretendies’ and he said it was contagious. That flat panic that you shouldn’t be here doing this, and you are terrified that everyone will realise that you do not have a clue. I was oddly comforted by the fact that all the other people including Leigh Sales (journalist interviewed Hillary Clinton recently) said the same thing. One comic Josh Thomas, said that was his default life position. Lol
Paul Kelly said you just have to play through it. Stick your head down and do it. That’s good advice.
So I have six more months to just play through it.
I must say, I was looking up a book on the Barnes & Noble website and I thought I would have a peek how I was doing. Kissing Cousins had a sales rank of 8,906 and Alejandro & Maela was 10,209. I think that’s not bad. Yay me.
Let's call my goals a conceded pass. I scraped a C grade.


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