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Monday, January 2, 2012

Welcome to 2012!

It's a new year, full of possibilities. Do you make resolutions? Or do you just set goals that you can re-evaluate over the course of the year?

Whatever you do, isn't it wonderful to know that this year is full of blank pages waiting for you to fill it with words and experiences?

All of us at Unicorn Bell are grateful for our followers. Especially those of you who have been brave enough to share your writing and/or comment on other's writing. Without you, this would be a failed project. 2011 was a great start to reaching our goals on this blog and in our personal writing careers. 

This week, I want to dedicate some time to setting goals. Have you heard of SMART goals?

S--Specific
M--Measurable
A--Actionable--meaning you can actually do something to achieve it.
R--Realistic
T--Time bound--long or short, you have to set some deadlines

So, Getting Published in 2012 may not be a SMART goal unless you plan to self-publish because there are elements you can not control.

My main goal for 2012 is as follows:
Learn to enjoy my writing time again. AKA remember why I started writing in the first place. 

This isn't the best SMART goal example because its sort of vague, but this is what I've lost and I want to get it back. So, here we go.

Specific--Enjoy my writing time.
Measure by how my emotional state improves. Also measured in the time I am allotting myself each day. My dedicated writing time will be from 12:30-2:30 every weekday. During this time I will turn off the phone, the internet, and set myself down to write. I will write whatever I feel like writing on that day. Meaning for the first time ever I'm allowing myself to work on multiple projects at once.
Actionable--I can sit and do this. My family will know when my "work" time is and get used to the fact that I am not to be bothered during that time. I will spend the entire morning doing things with my son (who is still at home) so he doesn't feel neglected in any way. He is old enough to understand work time.
Realistic--Two hours a day is a good chunk of time, but not so much that my home life will suffer. Most of the kids are at school, hubby is working, and as mentioned above the last child will get his time first.
Time bound--Eight months and then I can re-evaluate. At that time the last kid will start school *yay*.

What is/are your main writing goals for this year?

5 comments:

Huntress said...

Excellent post! especially "...this year is full of blank pages waiting for you to fill it with words and experiences..."

My goals are to: finish tweeking my last MS and jump onto the roller coaster ride of querying again.

Keep to a writing/reading/learning/exercising schdule.

Enjoy my first grandkid that is due in a week :)

mshatch said...

excellent goals. My goals are to finish my current project, get feedback from one or two additional critters, query, acquire agent, and sell book. I know, lofty goals you might say but I think I'm writing something truly kick-ass. I just have to write it right :)

Mina Burrows said...

Happy New Year! SMART is the way to go. I have my goals mostly in my head, but I need to write them down. :)

1000th.monkey said...

Well, I managed to make my 2011 goal, which was to send out 10 queries.

So, my first goal is to be patient and work on other things while the partials/fulls are being read. Obviously depending on the final responses, there's a good chance I will be heading back to the trenches of editing. If that's the case, I hope I get at least one personalized rejection from which to re-explore my story.

My other goal is to keep writing, keep editing, keep polishing, keep getting better. I have my 'Brake Fluid, Blood & Body Bags' story to finish, plus an upper MG story I left behind for NaNo/Brake Fluid... and I've been tinkering with the threads of something else new, something entirely different again from everything else I've written...

I tend to prefer more fluid goals than hard ones, I think maybe because my personal goals will aways come first, even before writing.

Tara Tyler said...

i love the organization of resolution!
i think my goals are too vague, i'll have to try smart =)