Teacakes and Goal Setting

 

 

The teacakes have been eaten and the goals have been set.

 

Last year, I didn't state any formal writing goals on my blog but this year, in order to make the coming year as productive as possible, I have decided to do so.

I wanted my goals to be challenging yet hopefully achievable and with this in mind, I met up with writing and blogging friend Tracy Fells earlier this week for some serious goal planning (and teacake eating).

Brimming with enthusiasm, I wrote this blog post but didn't publish it. Then I started to get a niggle of self-doubt and as the day went on, it grew and grew so that by the time I got to the West Sussex Writers' Group the following evening, there was little left of my writerly aspiration. Luckily Tracy came to my rescue again and told me that what I had was just one of Helen Yendall's writing Gremlins and that it was was perfectly natural when planning a big project.

 

So (deep breath) here is what I would like to achieve by the end of 2014:

 

1) Increase my story output to three stories every two weeks, (this may not be possible due to goal 2!) in the hope that I can achieve my hundredth sale by the end of the year.

2) Write another serial.

3) Now for the biggie. I have challenged myself to write a novel this year. There have been many reasons why I have not done this before: wanting to establish my magazine writing, wondering about the sense in spending a year writing something that may never be published, not having a good enough idea for it and wondering if I have enough drive to see the project through.

So what has changed my mind? Well, out of the blue I received an email from my mum. She had read one of my magazine stories and these were her words: I thought it would expand into a very good novel which I would certainly be happy to read. Now my mum is an avid reader - we share books and literary taste and if she doesn't like a novel, I can guarantee I probably won't either. This is the first of my stories she has said this about and the idea that she might think me capable of writing something longer - that she would want to read - is very flattering (although it wouldn't have been her intention to flatter).

I presented this idea to Tracy (who is also writing a novel) to see what she thought of it. After giving her the skeleton of the story, she declared it a worthy plot and we talked over how it might be developed, which was very exciting.

When I start to self doubt and dwell on the fact that the chances of publication are very slim, I shall give myself a talking to and remember that if I had thought this way about magazine writing I wouldn't be where I am now. Once I've set my sights on something I will go for it!

My next goal was going to be setting a time limit on this (ideally have a first draft finished by the end of the year) but I think that I probably need to be flexible due wanting to continue with my magazine writing.

4) Finally, I would like to publish a collection of my short stories in time for next Christmas.(This is the goal most likely to fall by the wayside as it sounds pretty time consuming.)


I am not setting any goals for writing more articles (last year's goal) - if I do write more, they will be a bonus.

 

In order to keep our goals on track, Tracy and I shall be meeting (and eating teacakes) monthly but now that I've written this all down, it looks kind of scary!

Am I being too ambitious I wonder?