My 2016 Writing Goals

So, yes. I realize that I’m writing this at the end of the first month of 2016, but I totalllllly forgot about it at the beginning of the year, so it’s being written now!

I am a failure.

(JK, I’m pretty great. This means that instead of concentrating on my writing goals, I’m focusing on the actual writing part!)

Okay. Let’s get into my goals for writing for the whole year of 2016 (or the rest of it).

• Write everyday.

I want to try to write something every day, whether it be a blog post or part of my novel or fanfiction. (What? Sometimes, you just get in that mood. You’ve never felt that way before? Oh.) By the end of 2016, I feel like I’ll have improved in my writing a huge amount if I write everyday.

The reason I haven’t set myself a number goal (i.e., write 1000 words a day!) is because I do NOT want to feel pressured. Some days I have a lot of time to write, and some days I have 5 minutes between classes. As long as I write a little bit every day, I’ll be happy.

• Participate (and WIN!!!) in NaNoWriMo.

Last year, I participated in NaNoWriMo for the first time. And I epically failed. Okay, I didn’t fail, but I wrote 10K, then decided that it wasn’t the story I wanted to write. So I didn’t write very much for the rest of the month. I planned and outlined and thought of a lot of ideas, but I didn’t reach 5oK on this new story. So I want to reach 50K this year during NaNo.

• Finish PIRATES!!

I’m not sure if I’ve talked about it on here before, but PIRATES!! is my WIP, the new one, the one I mentioned above. I’m at about 15K now, and I want to finish it before 2016 is over. And then 2017 will hopefully be the year of editing and rewriting.

PIRATES!! is a Young Adult fantasy novel centered around a female pirate named Alexandra who is the captain of her ship. She and her crew get discovered and captured, and since piracy is against the law, they are about to be killed. A man comes to her in the jail, and offers her a deal. He will free her and her crew if she does something for him, but he doesn’t tell her what it is. Alexandra agrees. STUFF HAPPENS.

I don’t have a specific word count goal for it. The story will be finished when I feel that it’s finished, not when I reach a number. I DO have an amount I’m aiming for, but if it ends up being shorter or longer than that, I’ll be good with that.

(If you were curious, I’m aiming for 100K.)

• Start Alice.

This is another project, one I’m really excited for. I have the idea, but basically nothing else. It’s a YA retelling of Alice in Wonderland, but the Queen of Hearts and Alice fall in love. I won’t say more than that (and NO, it’s not because I don’t have anything else planned, I don’t know what you’re talking about.) but I love this idea and I don’t think anyone has written this before…? If you have, let me know!

Hmm. Maybe this could be my NaNo project if I finish PIRATES!! in time.

• Find my “voice”.

I’m a relatively new blogger and writer. Well, I’ve been writing for most of my life, but not novels. And I’ve been blogging for about 5 months (but 3 months posting regularly and often). I don’t know what my writing voice is like. I want to discover the natural way of writing and blogging for me, the way that feels most “me”.

• Don’t feel pressured to write on my NOVEL everyday. 

Yes, I know I just said above that I wanted to write everyday. No, I’m not contradicting myself.

Some days, I’ll be able to pound out 1K on my novel really really fast, but some days, I won’t feel like working on PIRATES!! at all. So I don’t want to force myself to write. On the days that the writing isn’t flowing, I won’t force it. I’ll work on a blog post, or something else.

There isn’t a time limit for this novel to be done. I can’t make myself think that I have to finish it by a certain date, or write at least 1K each day. That’s not realistic for me. I’m not a speed writer. I can’t write 3K every day like some people can. I’m still a student, and school takes up SO MUCH of my time. 1K in a day is a huge (and rare) accomplishment for me.

So even if I don’t write anything, I’ll be perfectly okay. Because I know that even if I’m not writing, I’m thinking about it. So many things provide inspiration for my novels daily, I think of ideas, I plan, and that’s still progress, even if my word count isn’t growing.

• Figure out which way of writing works best for me. 

Am I a plotter, or a pantser? I DON’T KNOW. I want to experiment with both, and see which is better suited for me.

With my NaNo project, I tried outlining. I had the first half of the book planned out, and knew the ending, but it wasn’t extreme outlining like I’ve seen some people do. I had bullet points of what was going to happen, but that was it.

It didn’t work very well, and I think this may have been part of why I didn’t get very far??? I’m not sure, but I felt so confined and it just made me not want to write.

Now, with PIRATES!!, I don’t have any outline. I know what I want to happen, and the ending, and have a vague idea of how my characters will get there, but that’s all I know. It’s all in my head.

And I THINK it’s working better. I’ve written a lot more than I usually do.

But I want to try both outlining and not outlining, and, once and for all, figure out what works the best for me and what makes me the most productive and happy. Because if I’m not enjoying myself while writing, what’s the point?

What are your writing goals for 2016?

Ava