Writing: 2018 Roundup and 2019 Goals

[likealeafonthewind]

 I've been putting this off for awhile (and put it off further this morning by doing some tag-wrangling because procrastination is a Thing for me) but here it is at last. \o/

In 2018, I...

• wrote 100,990 words (had a goal of 79,500)
• posted something (either a chapter to a fic or a new fic) 10/12 months (this was not actually a goal of mine at the beginning of the year but I liked doing it)
• participated in my first big bang (okay, it was mini-bang and I didn't actually finish, but it was cool and it gave me an opportunity to write out a fic idea that I'd had floating around for awhile)
• joined a writing community on Discord

In 2019, I want to...

• write 100,000 words again
• post something every month
• write an original story
• finish my Star Wars wips

So I think that some things that worked for me last year was tracking my daily writing progress. I had a goal of writing every day, even if it's just a few words, but that didn't end up happening. I did find, though, that when I was able to spend a couple of minutes writing in the morning before leaving for work, it kickstarted my braining into thinking more about my fics throughout the day and making some mental progress on them. It was a nice feedback loop, if that makes sense. But anyway, even though I'm not going to try to write everyday this year, I am going to keep tracking my progress on a daily word count table in my writing journal, which was another thing that I found helpful. Sometimes, I can organize my thoughts better on paper than on the screen, at least for planning. For writing, the screen works better.

I tried a milestone tracker too and that was sort of, meh. I didn't keep up with it. I'm gonna try it again with fewer but bigger milestones, and maybe work in some rewards for hitting each one.

As for my goals...well, one of my long-term goals is to write and publish professionally and there's a lot that I need to work on before I do that. Character building, world building, plot building, etc. But a big one is being able to finish my fics and carry a story through to the end. So that's the main reason I want to finish my Star Wars wips, even though I've pretty much moved on from SW in all other fannish sense (except for playing GoH, but I've dropped down to being a really casual player in that too).