It’s January 1st once again and like the years
before I want to reassess my goals and where I would like to go on my writing
journey. After a Year in Review, I have come up with some things I want to accomplish in 2012 to
better the craft of my writing.
Read
The best way to get better at any craft is to study those
who have gone before in the field you wish to know about. So if you want to learn
to write what better way than by reading what others have written? Reading
something every day is my goal, even if it’s as simple as a blog post.
Write
How can a person get better at something when you don’t
practice? You can’t, so that’s my next goal to write every day. A good friend
of mine once told me that it takes approximately 10,000 hours working at
something to really be good at it. Looks like I’ve got a ways to go. My plan is
to put a decent sized dent in that 10,000 hour mark.
A New Path to Walk
I
have discovered a new way to approach my writing and the writing process
through the book How to Be a Writer. I plan on making the book’s exercises a
regular practice not only in my writing but my life as well. Also my views on
deadlines and publishing have made a 180 degree turn. I now realize that to
save my sanity, I need to not focus on deadlines or publishing, but writing
simply for the sake of writing and that is all.
New Niche to Write In
I have been struggling for some time with a niche to write
in, so far I have dabbled in speculative fiction (my favorite), science
fiction, supernatural and mainstream fiction. Recently I have discovered that I
truly enjoy writing about past memories (mostly from my childhood), so for
right now this is what my writing will be focused on, creating a bunch of short
stories with the eventual goal of putting them all in one book for my son to
enjoy, as well as my family.
More Blogging, but Not
Scheduled
In this past year, I have struggled with my writing, but the
one area that had the least of that struggle was writing on my blogs, which is
interesting. Every time I wrote on my blogs (personal or writing) I didn’t
consider it real writing at all and was upset that the blog writing took away
from my other writing, and yet when I did get to the “real” writing I never got
very far because writer’s block would settle in and not let go. This year I’m
going to make blogging more of a priority. At the same time, I will not be
pushing myself to create blogs. I had a schedule (on this blog) of posting
Tuesday and/or Saturdays, which didn’t always happen every week, so I’m tossing
out the schedule and posting when I feel like it and see how that goes. This
blog (and personal blog) might end up with four posts a week or one post a
month, we’ll just have to see how it goes.
Learning the Craft of Writing
In 2011, my main focus was learning the craft of writing,
but for 2012 I think my focus will change to learning the love of writing. I will, however, still focus on the craft when I
have a chance and have recently purchased a few writing books to read. I look forward
to diving into Michael Knost's Writer’s Workshop of Horror and Josip Novakovich's Fiction Writer’s Workshop, and doing the fun looking exercises in Bonnie Neubauer's The Write-Brain Workbook.
Be More Flexible
I have the personality- or perhaps more correctly- the
learned traits of being a bit of an anal person. Yes, I said it, I’m anal. This
may have some use in the world- though I’m not sure what that is- but mostly it
just gets me worked up about stuff and sends me into supercharged panic
attacks, which even spills over to my writing. This year I’m attempting
to take a “chill pill” and not get so worked up about things. I’m not sure how
well I will accomplish this, but a person has to start somewhere, right?
I think that sums up my goals for now, but I realize that
things change. It’s a part of life (see that chill pill seems to be working
already). All I can do is my best and make changes when necessary. It will be interesting
to see what happens, and what 2012’s Year in Review will look like. Until then, a
happy journey to all and I wish you the best in your own writing endeavors.
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