Quick Tip: Team Up to Reach Your Goals

The beauty of NaNoWriMo is that it not only challenges you to reach a difficult writing goal (1667 words per day), but it helps you be accountable for that goal with its forums, word counters and support. But November is over all too quickly (especially if you're behind on that word count!) and then all that great stuff is NaNo more.

The solution? Find a new support team.

InkyGirl invites you to join her in The 1000 Words/Day Challenge in 2010, or one of the lesser-word count challenges (500 or 250 words a day). Her goal is simple: to inspire writers to write.

Heather Wright at The Wright Words wants to Fill the NaNo Void too.  She has a simple way to help keep you motivated in sticking to your personal writing goal.

Links Tents: Goals and Resolutions

I'm taking back what I said about not making resolutions this year after reading a few great blog posts about them. Here are some "must make" resolutions:

• Blogalicious offers this list of 13 New Year's Writing Resolutions every writer should make.
• Freelance Folder chimes in with their own list of 10 New Year's Resolutions Every Freelancer Should Have. 
• Heather Wright suggests a resolution all of us should make, whether we are writers or not, with A Resolution for All Occasions. 

If you have set, or are trying to set, more concrete goals, here are a few blog posts that will help you with that:

• Rachelle Gardner, Literary Agent, suggests Setting Goals and Finding Joy, and includes a few more links to help you in your goal. (Apologies to both you and Ms. Gardner for the pun--I really can't help myself.)
• Quips & Tips for Successful Writers helps you set your Blogging Goals--7 Types of Goals to Set for Your Blog. (I have an addition to that list for bloggers like me--posting regularly.)
• We all know how quickly well-intentioned goals and resolutions can fall by the wayside, so QueryTracker.net offers suggestions for Setting, Keeping, and Achieving Your Writing Goals This Year.
• Men With Pens has a series of posts about project management, which involves SMART goals and SMART freelancing. The last installment, Keep the Freelance Clock Ticking, includes links to the other parts of the series.
  

New Year's Goals

My apologies for being MIA for so long. The holidays, a deadline and family took precedence and my usual “plan ahead” philosophy fell by the wayside. I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays and rang in the New Year with family and friends.

Now that the festivities are over, it’s time to take stock, reflect on last year’s accomplishments, and think about what 2010 will bring.

I don’t make resolutions, but I do set goals for myself. This year, I’ve focused on business/writing goals. I’ve set goals that challenge me but aren’t so high that I don’t believe I can reach them . . . although I did set one in November that seemed impossibly high and managed to hit it. (Remember NaNo?)

What about you? Do you make New Year’s resolutions or set goals for the coming year?

NaNoWriMo Winner?

The month of crazy (aka NaNoWriMo) is over. I took the challenge at the beginning of November thinking I had no chance of reaching the 50,000 word finish line, but I had a lot of other goals in mind. I wanted to get a good start to my novel, I wanted to learn to turn the inner critic off long enough to pound out a few thousand words, I wanted to get in the habit of writing a lot daily, and I wanted to remember how to have fun with my writing again, having spent the last year or so editing more than writing.

I had a blast writing this past month. My storyline took off in directions I hadn't considered at the start; ditto for complications that arose. I learned to write at the computer (I've always written long-hand before--but no time with this challenge) which increased my writing speed, and I fully practiced what I preach about squeezing writing in every spare moment. And the only way I could even come close to hitting the word count was to completely ignore the inner critic/editor and just let loose.

So I hit my goals--I was a NaNo winner in my books long before my word count was validated by the evil NaNo computer (evil because it knocked 500 words off my original, barely over the finish line submission), but I was still stupidly happy to reach the word-count goal as well. What can I say? I'm a competitive person and I find it hard to leave a challenge unfinished.

The problem is that by the end of it all, I was focused strictly on the word count, and that had never been what it was about. I wasn't even having fun anymore. I was stressed and half-panicked that time was running out and I was 500 words short (courtesy of the evil NaNo computer). James over at Men With Pens puts the whole thing into perspective with his post Did You Reach Your NaNoWriMo goal?

So . . . would I do it again? Probably not. I plan to take what I learned from this experience and carry it through my writing from here on in. Am I glad I did it this time? Absolutely.