A New Plan

In the last year, I have discovered just how enjoyable and rewarding writing can be, and I want to share that enjoyment with others. At heart I am a storyteller, ask anyone who knows me and they will attest to my penchant for telling tales. So, as we come to the beginning of a new year, I have started to formulate a plan to tell more stories to more people. Call it a new years resolution if you want.

The first goal that I am setting for myself is to write fifty short stories in the next year. At first this seems insane, but I only need to write about 700 words per day to reach that goal. Even with my horrible time management skills, I should be able to do this. I plan to submit these short stories to various anthologies and e-zines throughout the year. Just by sheer number alone, I should be able to get a few of them published. But this should also serve to give me plenty of practice writing, and self editing, which will be invaluable when I decide to start writing longer works.

Another goal I have is to keep up with social media. I never seem motivated to make twitter and Facebook posts, and I'm not so good at keeping up on my blog either. I have heard from more than one person though, if you want to be taken seriously as a writer, you need to have a good presence on social networks. My plan of attack is to spend about fifteen minutes or so each day combing through my various networks, and posting something on them relating to my endeavors.

Once I get a personal website set up, I can start pod casting my short stories too. I have some great ideas for some serialized fiction that would be perfect for that.

Also, a quick update: If you read my previous post recounting my first week of NaNoWriMo, you may have been expecting updates from weeks two through four. Well, I got so caught up in various projects, I was not able to hit my 50,000 word goal on that novel. But I did learn a few things. First, I have some more practice I need to do before I think about tackling a novel. While I'm not half bad at the craft, I just don't have enough experience to be jumping into the deep end yet. Instead, I'm going to take baby steps, and start with the aforementioned short fiction.

Second, I don't really like NaNoWriMo. Don't get me wrong, it's a really cool idea, and a lot of good literature has come out of that since the beginning. But I just don't have the ability to write that many words in a month, not yet anyways. Besides, I find that I enjoy working on multiple projects at once, which makes writing 50,000 words for a single project take a bit longer for me. So I don't think I will be participating in the event next year, and instead I will just write every day.

See you next year!