My 2020 Writer's Goals

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I have my own mental and physical calendar that is different from the traditional western yearly calendar.  My system allows me to reflect on the close of last year and to structure my plans.  If my goals appear more thought out than yours, know I’ve been meditating on them and planning what they are and how I’ll measure them for 50-ish days. 

1.   1.  Launch my debut novel Follow Me: Tattered Veils. While I often treat this as a fait accompli, it’s far from that.  I’m still creating blog posts and considering what kind of author media I need. Even after the book becomes available for purchase, there are some blog posts and little extras I want to include as a “read along” style content.

2.   2.   Complete the first draft of both Follow Me: Gods and Monsters and Cress Legacy (working title).  Both are novel length projects with some word count already invested.  I imagine I’ll need 130,000 more words to complete both.  Given my calendar structure I need to write about 3,000 fiction words a week.  I’m most concerned with achieving these draft goals.

3.    3.  Co-teach “Hello World and Introduction to Creative Writing” with Ashley once and finish all PowerPoints and course material for “Aggressive Self-Editing” with a possible course run in July/August?

4.   4.   Weekly blog posts going into the release of “Follow Me: Tattered Veils” and bi-weekly posts after its release.  Remember I write for 2 blogs.  That means I will still have a new post up every week, but I will change which blog I’m posting in.  I am reducing production goals to improve consistency.

5.    5.  Social media circus has to come back up.  Each week I will dedicate 2 hours to Twitter, an hour to Facebook and an hour to Instagram.   I don’t have a consistent schedule, so I will have to change the days and times I provide for each.

6.    6.  Reading and reviewing books.  There are 44 weeks in my calendar year, I think it’s appropriate to read 44 books or a book a week.  And I’m committing to 1/3 of those books being in either my genre (fantasy/urban fantasy) or being independently published works. 

Talk to me!  What are your 2020 goals?  Do you have any advice on how I can achieve my own plans?

Want to see more?  Check out my 2019 writing goals and my 2019 wrap up. 

Curious as to how I plan to achieve these goals?  Check out my post on how to create realistic 1st draft goals here.  I also have a post on how Habitica, an online fantasy goal tracker can help and I have one more post reviewing my own personal planning system.

Want to see my year in books?  I have my 2019 year here and my top 5 for 2018 along with a full detail list of 2018.  For more what on what I'm reading, check out my GoodReads profile.  

Going Through Copy Edits!

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My Copy Editor, Kristy Stewart of Looseleaf Tea returned my manuscript this past Wednesday!

As long-term readers and friends may suspect, I’ve been too keyed up to do much new writing (blogging/creative/ect).  But, I committed to post once a week on each of my blogs so let me offer some editing observations.  

1. I am over the moon with excitement.  Didn’t know it was humanly possible to be so energetically happy so long, figured it would burn something in my system out.  

2. It’s taking longer to approve/reject changes than I expected.  Mark up on a word document can be difficult to see if it’s a single comma (and I’m missing a lot of those).  It’s also tedious any time my editor makes a period a comma or a comma a period because I have to approve 3 changes individually (agree to delete the original punctuation, agree to accept the new punctuation and agree to capitalization or lower case of the following word).

3. There're fewer edits than I expected.  Not a knock on Kristy, her work is thorough.  I just mentally set my mind back into English paper mode.  I never scored well on those in school.

4. The recommended edits are a continuation of work I’ve already done.  She suggests a lot of verbs tense change, and I’ve changed a million verb tenses a million times already.  I still missed some or changed them incorrectly.  I would never get these tense right without outside eyes, so that alone is worth my money.

5. There are open-ended comments.  Like “this is confusing for X reason. Consider clarifying.”  

6. I don’t know how/when to hyphen words together.  When I’m done with these edits, I’m rereading those rules.  

7.  Even though she was copy editing, there are little gems that show what a strong grasp of character and plot Kristy has.  So far, she’s made two suggestions to add a line of dialogue here or there that should have been obvious fixes for me, but I needed someone to suggest.

8. She’s suggestion : and ; but I’m rejecting them still.  I’m aware of what grammar says about these things, but I have an ever expanding list of why these two kinds of punctuation do not belong in fictional prose (funny coming from someone who is using a colon in their book’s title). 

9. She’s adding some “that” back into my writing and she’s starting some of my sentences with And or But.  Both elements I culled due to massive overuse.  It’s nice when someone else sprinkles them in.

10.  In a few notable places where my writer’s group asked me to change something, and I held onto it for detailed reason X, Kristy asked for the same changes.  My writers’ group will be happy to know I capitulated.  

11. Even though I use breath and breathe all the time in my stories, I don’t know when to use which. 🙄

12. Toward vs Towards also comes up a lot.  Maybe reread rules with when to use an s?

Talk to me.  Where are you in your writing process?  What kind of feedback do you get from beta readers or writing groups? What kind of feedback do you get from your copy editor?  What’s your best experience with an editor?  What was your worst experience with an editor?

Looking for more posts about the writing and publishing process?  Check out more posts on my novel publication process: Going Through Copy Edits, 1st Daft vs 2nd Draft, Goal Planning: Getting Through the First Draft, My Character Looks Nothing Like My MC, Cover Art: Truth in Advertising, and Post Book Launch: Reflections.  

Want to know more about my novel?  Check out my childhood stories recapping themes in my life I hope prepared me to write this book: Remember the Magic of Santa?, Closet Monsters: Gone too Far?, and Garden Gnomes and other Evils.

OR check out my series where I find similarities between my novel and other popular media.  Hopefully it gives you a better idea whether there are elements in my book you may enjoy. Lost Girl Comparison, American Gods Comparison, and The O.A. Comparison.

MY BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT AMAZON!!!  Please go look at "Follow Me: Tattered Veils" and see if it might be a story that interests you.