As you read this, I’m actually on I-20 on my way to Texas to visit family, but courtesy of being able to release stuff when I want, I figured I’d write something up for y’all for today.
I’ve been thinking a lot about goals lately. I didn’t keep my focus this year, so I didn’t make my goals. I probably didn’t set realistic ones. I keep forgetting that when I finished HOC last year, I was only working half time for the bulk of it. So the name of the game this next year is gonna be planning. The evil day job at 40 hours, 2 sections of general psych, and 1 section of abnormal (which I still have to finish designing). Since I’m making this big shift back to paranormal, my big focus is going to be on worldbuilding. This is going to be the foundation for a lot of future work and that’s something I can work on in fits and starts as stuff occurs to me. And if I can maintain a focus, I’m going to aim for finishing 1 book, probably the werewolf story. 2000-3500 words a week feels managable. That works out to somewhere between 29-50 weeks to finish. I will, of course, aim for the 29 weeks, as that leaves a few months to revise and polish. On a craft front, this year I’ve focused a lot on the 3 act structure. For 2009, I think I want to focus on Goal-Motivation-Conflict. In the meantime, I’m making a big push this week to finish the last 11 lecture outlines and start the powerpoints for my abnormal class.