We are now into the final week before my birthday, and I've been doing some more thinking on how best to structure my year ahead.
I'm pretty happy with the
fitness plan I drew up two weeks ago. Last week was a bit intense with working on finishing up a Program and two Challenges from December, plus the Secret Santa gifts, as well as my new stuff. But I will be down to just one Program and two Challenges by the end of this week. Which I think is about right for me.
On the writing front, I have one story left to write to complete my year of writing a short story a week. I'm in great shape to get this done. The goal of writing 54 stories in my 54th year I might miss. I'm hosting a dinner party on Sunday, attending a friend's party on Saturday, and I have some important administrative work I need to get done this week. While I'm happy I did the story-a-week challenge this year, and will definitely finish that one up, I don't think I'd be well-served by losing sleep this week to try to squeeze in the two additional stories. I'm not saying it's a definite no at this point. But it's a probable no. We'll see how things go.
For the year ahead, I will still be focussing on writing short stories. But I am not setting myself any goals for the volume of short stories I will complete. I am also going to drop tracking my word count. (I may start tracking a career and annual word count of
published words as this number has financial implications. But number of
drafted words is largely irrelevant, and trying to hit a target there does not positively impact the quality of my work. So I'm going to stop doing that.) Instead, I will track time spent with BICHOK.
The thing is: I like writing. I love writing. If left to my own devices to write simply because I feel like it, I will write while eating, I'll write in bed, I'll write while sitting on the toilet to squeeze in some extra writing time. But if you give me a deadline, I will procrastinate. I will hit the deadline. But I will do it at the very last possible moment. Every single frakking time.
This has been a lifelong trait of mine. (It was a lifelong trait of my father's too. I come by my vices honestly.) And sure: I can try to fight it. Again. I can try to change. Or I can choose to work with my strengths.
The story-a-week challenge served me well last year because it kept my pen in the game during an extremely difficult year that likely would have seen me fall away from writing completely without an externally-imposed pressure. But I'm in a very different place now. My stress level is many fathoms less than it was for most of last year. The non-writing things I need to get done now consume much less mental energy than they did last year (or for several years before that, for that matter). So why add stressors into my life in the form of unnecessary (and unhelpful) deadlines?
It is true that many short story markets have limited reading periods. So there are externally-imposed deadlines out there for my profession in general. But the fact is: there are many short story markets. Submission windows come and go all the time. And there is no reason I need to choose the markets I am targeting in advance of writing my stories. I think I will be better-served by simply writing, and then, when I have finished a story, sending it out to the best possible market for that story that is open for submissions at that time. So this is what I am going to do.
Of course, being a writer in 2025 involves a lot more than simply writing. These days a writer must also be an editor, a copy editor, a formatter, a cover designer, a publisher, and a marketer. Writers need to network. They need to research. They need to get out and experience life and be a part of the world in order to write about it. (Even if they're writing about imagined worlds--all of which are necessarily birthed from our understanding of the real one.) Last year I did not focus on these other areas of writing at all. This year I need to do so. On the other hand, I also need to continue creating new content. Without the content, there is no point to doing any of the other stuff! And I know from experience that I create the best content--and have the most fun doing it--when I am creating content regularly.
To this end, my writing goals for my 55th year will be:
1. write (create content) a minimum of 10 hours per week
2. work on writing (content creation) a minimum of 5 days per week
I may allow myself some vacation days if I have good reason to. But for now, these are my baseline targets.
I am defining writing/content creation as story planning, drafting, and content editing. Targeted research (i.e.: looking up that one specific fact that comes up during the content creation process as something I need to know) will also be included in this time. (Watching a documentary/reading a book/visiting a museum/attending a lecture/etc. about some topic because I'm considering writing in that area in the future is part of the work of a writer, but does not count towards my 10 hours a week of content creation.)
For now I do not have targets for time spent on the other areas of a writer's work, because I don't yet know what the distribution of work amongst these areas will be. Also: I suspect the optimal distribution may vary quite a bit from week-to-week. And many of these tasks are things I can do all day every day for a week, and then not do at all for several weeks, without losing any sharpness in my ability to do them.
The one exception here is cover design, which requires me to up my graphic design skills, and, as with writing, keep them sharp. I do not expect designing covers to be a big part of my work this coming year, because I will be creating content primarily to submit to magazines and anthologies for their first publication. (I will later self-publish reprints of everything myself. But this won't happen this year.) I do, however, want to improve my graphic design skills prior to doing any more of my own covers. So I will set a goal for this coming year to do artwork a minimum of 5 days a week (but with no time target). Here I am defining artwork as: drawing, painting, creation of digital art, preparation of surfaces, digital editing, layout, and learning how to use digital tools. Photography is also included if it is done specifically for the purpose of creating art. (i.e.: not just photographing birds because I like to photograph birds.)
For other aspects of writing work I will track the amount of time I spend working on each, but I don't have targets for what these times should be at this point.
The categories I will track are:
- RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT (includes craft study, study of writing business/markets, subject matter research, etc.)
- CONTENT CREATION (includes story planning, drafting, content editing)
- ARTWORK (includes drawing, painting, photography, creation of digital art, preparation of surfaces, digital editing, layout, learning digital tools)
- PUBLISHING (includes copy editing, formatting, submitting, etc.)
- MARKETING (networking, social media, readings/presentations, book fairs, etc.)
- BUSINESS (taxes, ISBNs, accounting--all that fun stuff)
I think this is good.
I do have one deadline-focussed target for my writing work for this year, which is this: If I have a piece of work which is ready for submission, I will submit it to a professional market within 48 hours of the piece of working becoming ready for submission. Stories become "ready for submission" a.) when they are first completed, and b.) when I receive notification they have been rejected by a market I submitted them to previously. Exception: if a story is ready for submission, and I determine the best market for it is one that is currently closed to submissions but has a new submission window opening soon, I may wait to submit the story first to that market.
I plan to overcome my deadline-induced procrastination issue on the submitting goal by developing my own market listing in advance, such that whenever I have a work that becomes ready for submission, it is dead easy to just sent it out there.
Let's see how this goes.
from
This is why I’m so careful about making judgements. I didn’t know your situation. I’m really sorry about everything you’ve been going through and I hope things work out much better for you this year.
from
Pronouns: He/Him
I ended up spending the whole day watching different beaver videos haha. Thank you, I loved knowing about this animal
