Checking in again with a quarterly update on my creative goals for 2023. So, how did I do?
Research goals: Again this quarter, I didn’t need to do any research. N/A
Writing hours and word count goals: Life has been in the way a bit the last quarter, so I put a few things on pause. Obsessively tracking my daily hours and word count is one of them. Nothing bad is happening; simply juggling a lot of balls lately and I don’t have the bandwidth to micro-manage this many disparate projects at the same time.
Project goals: Last time I checked in, I had just completed a rough outline and draft of my novel and was ready to plunge back in, but I got stuck again while working on the tight outline. However, I’ve been reading and journaling on the theme and characters and think I have a better approach now. I realize I’m stuck in “planning” mode and need to move into decision and action mode, but I’m ok with it. Life things are settling down and I’m on vacation this week. I’ll be working through my scene list again and I suspect it’s time to chop some scenes that won’t work with my new thoughts on the book.
Blog goals: I’ve been blogging here daily and sometimes more than that. My goal is to blog daily through 2023 and then rethink what I want to do for 2024. The mere habit of writing daily has helped me generate more ideas for blog posts, which is what I needed. I’ve started blogging several times before but never felt like I had anything special to say. But now I feel like I’m finding a groove.
Learning goals: I finished Margaret Atwood’s Negotiating With the Dead, which was interesting. More lecture than learning, but she presented some intriguing notions. I attended a couple of webinars on setting creative priorities and developing a writer brand (I hate thinking of it that way, but what can you do?). I’ve also been catching a lot of writing podcasts.
Social goals: I broke the ice and went back to the writing workshop I attended pre-COVID. I was having social anxiety about it, so I dragged a friend along, and now he feels motivated to start writing again, so win-win. I also added a profile to Stage 32, a cinema networking site, and met a few folks. I still feel like I’m only inching out into the writing community – where I used to feel much more comfortable – but progress is progress.