Goal Setting and Other Overrated Activities

Every year needs a purpose.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? But it’s a little late to make a New Year’s Resolution, so maybe I’ll set a goal I’ll actually accomplish, or at least try to meet.

My goal is to try to write 100 pieces of writing (poetry and fiction), edit them, and get them published this year. That would pretty much double my published works and hopefully expand my fan base. I might fail miserably, but hopefully I’ll get some serious writing done. If I just get the 100 pieces written, it will make me grow. In the process, I want to finish the poetry manuscript that I’ve been working on, as well as complete a full-length collection of short fiction. I also plan on participating in the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) challenge in November, where I will try to write a 50,000 word novel in one month. All of this seems daunting, but you don’t know what you can do until you try to do what you think is imposible.

All of this will keep me busy as a writer, force me to be productive, and give me a little more to talk about in this blog. I am going to try to talk almost every day about my writing, my acceptances, and the scores of rejection notices I will undoubtedly receive.

I just set this goal today, and I am already behind. Here is an inventory of what I've written so far this year:

1. A Love Supreme – short story

2. Meditation on Meditation – poem

3. Simple Needs – flash fiction

4. Discussing Temptation – poem

#1, #2, and #3 have been edited and submitted to contests and/or regular calls for submissions by publishers. So I need to finish up this blog entry and get back to work – I have 96 works to write and 100 to get published. Gotta get on my grind…