Writing Goals for December

This blog is about getting creative work done, right?  Well it seems to me that I haven’t really been talking about my own work and how I’m getting things done.  So, without further ado, here are my writing goals for December:

Write 2 articles for that travel website I want to write for. While getting those articles published is also a good thing, it’s not as important to me as actually writing them.  Finishing a piece makes me feel accomplished, that I’ve completed something I set out to do.  I’ve been postponing these articles for a while, mostly out of fear.  Of course, I was making excuses such as “I don’t have the time” and “I don’t think I’m good enough”.  This December, I’ll make time and get these articles done.

As for not being good enough?  I just have to remind myself that imperfection is no big deal.

Write 16 articles for Web Worker Daily. Although my work for WWD is a paying job, I’m really passionate about it. It’s not just the quantity of articles that matter to me either.  I’ve been dissatisfied with my work there lately - I always think I can do better.  And I should.  I want to pursue deeper, more thought-provoking topics. Here’s how I plan to do that:

• Review my blog subscriptions.  I subscribe to over 50 blogs (a conservative number for most tech geeks), but almost none of those seem to contribute to my work directly, whether it’s in terms of idea generation or broadening my perspective.  This probably means that it’s time for me to add new, more informative blogs to my reading list.  BUT, I don’t want to add more “noise” into my life.  What I’m going to do is review the blogs in my feed reader and remove those which give me the least value.

• Plan article topics in advance. One of my problems when it came to submitting articles on time was that I didn’t have enough listed topics to write about.  Even if I did, the ideas left on my list were either uninteresting, or something that I didn’t feel like discussing that day.  Starting this month, I’ll devote Mondays for idea generation.  So far, it seems like I’m doing a good job with this, as I have 15 topics listed.

Finish the first draft of that short story I’ve been working on. There’s this short story I’ve been working on almost everyday for the past few months.  It’s over 3,000 words now, but it’s still unfinished.  I hope to finish the first draft this December, so I can move on to another story (and go back to writing the second draft of this one on February).

Now, I’m sharing these goals so that there’s accountability.  So I can hang my head in shame if I don’t accomplish them, and you all can go “neener-neener” at me.  I suggest you do the same.  It’s hard and embarrassing, but I hope it works.

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Note: I accidentally deleted 20 comments yesterday as I was moderating them in the wee hours of the morning.  Although I was able to recover most of them, they’re in a funny order and the dates indicate that they were written on December 3rd.  Sadly, some comments (maybe 2 or 3) cannot be recovered.  I apologize for my stupidity.

Image by Davide Guglielmo from sxc.hu

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