Tag: goals

Looking back at 2024 and ahead to 2025

On By MiriahIn Life, Writing PathLeave a comment

Standard blog content for this time of year would be a review of my past year and committing to goals for the upcoming year.

My 2024 in review:

  • I was extremely sick with pneumonia and complications for all of January and February.
  • My father passed away in July at the age of 97 from covid. The best friend of one of my daughters died suddenly of cancer – he was only 23 and his partner was pregnant (their baby is healthy). Also, both of my elderly cats passed away.
  • I continued volunteering on the Board of Directors of Cascade Writers Workshop.
  • I resumed submitting a couple of short stories to markets. (I had sort of stopped bothering when covid hit and put my energy into mainly writing for fun.) Black Cat Weekly accepted my novelette, The Ballad of Kinmont Willa, for publication (but I don’t know when it will be published).
  • The in-person Numenera table-top campaign I GM’d, based on Monty Cook’s Slaves of the Machine Gods wrapped at the narrative end after about 14 months.
  • I continued to participate as a player and GM in multiple play-by-post roleplaying games. On one forum where most of my games are hosted, I volunteered on a ‘Collaboration, Accessibility, Community, and Equity’ committee. A game I GM’d in the Killjoys tv series setting came to a narrative end, and I started GMing a new game with three groups of players in a setting based on fairy tales and Monty Cook’s We Are All Mad Here by Shanna Germain.
  • In September, my husband and I went on a week-long guided tour of the US southwest National Parks that included Zion, Bryce, Arches, Canyonlands, Antelope Canyon, Monument Valley, and the Grand Canyon. It was absolutely lovely and amazing! But we both came home with covid, curtesy of another couple on the tour.
A large black and white dog named Teddy.
Teddy, looking back.

Looking ahead to 2025

  • My goals include more exercise, declutter, keep a log of the books I read.
  • I plan to engage with world events in a meaningful way, although I don’t quite know how I’ll do that – yet.
  • My big goal for 2025 is to write a novel. Often when I get a novel-sized story idea the beginning and end are clear to me, but when I write an outline, I realize I don’t know what happens in the middle. For this novel idea, I’ve been working on what feels like a good working outline that includes what happens in each act, and I’m excited about writing it, the characters, and the theme. I can write a novel in one year, right?

What are your goals for 2025?

New Year Goals: 2017

On By MiriahIn Writing PathLeave a comment

Microsoft main campus trail January 2017
Along the trail when walking my dog this morning

Today was a clear, sunny January day in Western Washington. The kind of day that makes you run out in your short sleeves and sandals.

Then you run back in the house, because it’s bloody 27˚F outside and everything is frozen. You put on a warm coat, gloves, and socks. Then since this is Western Washington you put your sandals back on and go outside.

January 1st whooshed past, smelling of popcorn optimism for the new year. So this is the semi-obligatory goals-for-the-new-year blog post.

My writing goals for 2017:

Goal 1: Get my novel ready to submit to agents.
This will be occupying most of my writing time. Although I finished my zero/first draft last June, the next draft of that novel is going very slowly. It’s only about one-quarter done, and I am far from happy with the beginning. I think the problem is that this novel, the characters, the plot, etc., crystalized in my head as I wrote it.

So my plan is to finish the current/second draft by April, and get two or three beta readers to give me some feedback while I take a break. Then another rewrite. After that more beta readers and hopefully ship it off to agents by the end of the year.

Goal 2: Attend a writing workshop in June.
I applied to Taos Toolbox. Chances are slim that I’ll get it, since acceptance is audition-based, and there will be lots of competition because the instructors are amazing and the special guests are famous. So my back-up plan after I’m rejected is to register for Cascade Workshop which is local, run by some fabulous people, and they always have great (though less famous) presenters.

One important thing I learned from applying unsuccessfully, three years in a row, to Clarion West workshop is that dreaming and hoping to attend a prestigious workshop is crazy-making, wasted energy. I should be writing. So for Taos, I edited the first 10k words of my novel to the best of my ability, then sent it off with my application, and went back to writing.

Goal 3: Write and submit three new short stories.
My plan is to do this during my break between the current re-write of my novel, and the next re-write. At the moment, I only have three short stories circulating to markets.

Goal 4: Critique other writers’ work on a weekly basis.
I’m a member of two critique groups, but sometimes they go on hiatus and I get out of practice. But I can take advantage of other critique forums where I can both supply helpful feedback and learn about craft.

Goal 5: Keep track of the books I read.
And write reviews. Because reviews make a difference.

Goal 6: Keep track of my non-writing goals and activities.
This is a new one.
I have other things going on in my life besides writing, including raising two teenagers. Life happens, and when I inevitably get slammed by other responsibilities it’s way too easy to beat myself up because I haven’t met my writing goals.