Well, hello again everyone. And Happy New Year to you all. 
I’ve been off for a few weeks, reading, writing, reflecting and hanging out with my family. I hope your holiday was peaceful and maybe even productive.
For motivation and to impose order on my seemingly random ideas, I like to write down my writing goals at the beginning of a new year.
Here are my personal and professional goals this year:
• Keep this site progressing as a welcoming, informative and inspiring community.
• Write a nonfiction book proposal and start submitting to agents.
• Write and submit at least one short story.
• Read the complete works of Proust (OK, this one may be overdoing it).
So what are your goals for 2009? Just writing it down is the first step toward setting a plan in motion.
If you like, you can post your goals here on the forum. There’s nothing like a community of like-minded writers to cheer you on.
-Maria Schneider
*flickr photo by Mosieur J.
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Starting to move out of copy by taking all of those lessons learned from the military and from working as a journalist and plotting a logical overtaking of the publishing industry. Yup, like everyone else, trying to go the fiction route.
Welcome back, Maria. I’ve got several goals, and a couple of ours are the same. I, too, want to maintain my blog, hopefully offering helpful and refreshing content on a regular basis, and I’m also working on a non-fiction book proposal. Good luck to you on yours!
I just answered a similar question over at Upstart Blogger. Here’s what I said:
First, continue to balance a full-time job with writing outside of work. Second, get an agent and publisher for my first novel. Third, write a significant portion of a second novel.
And fourth, make a success of Write for Your Life, my new blog for writers who (see points one, two and three) have to balance their everyday lives with their writing!
Begin experimenting with long form medical/health nonfiction
My goal is to finish my novel by Valentine’s Day and begin submitting to agents. After that I’m going to find all the old books I’ve written that are currently gathering dust on top of the wardrobe. As self-publishing is so easy I’m going to put a few of them with LULU and see what develops.
Fingers crossed.
Laura Essendine
Author – The Accidental Guru
The Accidental Guru Blog
The Books Limited Blog
PS. Plus my usual two of read more and don’t buy any more books until I’ve read all the ones I own.
I’m thinking of spending the next few months cleaning up what I’ve already written. That resolution should last until the middle of next week. As if there is some way to TURN OFF the new stuff. Ha!
You got me thinking, what if novelists took this approach:
Write a (non)fiction book proposal and start submitting to agents.
I want to keep up the momentum I got from writing everyday for the NanoWrimo novel I completed. It really DOES feel great to write every day.
I also want to work on my website and start promoting my book again.
I want to read more.
I want to get over my fear of failure before my son starts kindergarten in the fall and I’ll have hours and hours to write…no more excuses.
Welcome back, Maria. I was missing your posts. I never knew you write short stories. What type of shorts do you do?
I posted my goals over in the forum and have already met one of them. I launched my new website. I’m about ready to make good on another, to submit a short short to Your Story. And I’m gearing up on getting that novel resubmitted.
Alas, as always, that final goal (Goal #7 in my list) isn’t faring too well.
Oh yeah, one other goal. To figure out how some people get little icons to show up on their comments here. :)
~jon
Thanks Jon, glad to be back in the swing of things. I do dabble in fiction; it’s more of a hobby really since I’ve never submitted anything.
My goals are as follows:
1. Cultivate long-term editorial relationships instead of writing one-offs for a lot of different publications. (Glad to report that I already have two possible long-term projects in the works!)
2. Listen to my instincts more and turn down projects that don’t feel right.
3. Make time for creative projects, ideally at least 2 days per month of uninterrupted essay writing!
Happy new year!
shhh. You’re not supposed to admit stuff like that in public, Maria.
~jon
My writing goals for 2009 are relatively modest:
1) Get back to blogging regularly, at least twice a week.
2) Get Spindlezine.com back up and running on a regular schedule
3) Develop a writing routine that leads to a first draft of a novel by the end of the year. NaNoWriMo is worst case scenario; ideally, I’ll be ready for novel #2 by November!
And, while technically not a “writing” goal, I’m hoping to spend more time here and get inspired!