Tag Archives: Writing goals

Another year over…

31 Friday Dec 2021

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Each year I do a little wrap up post about the last twelve months and how they’ve gone for me. 2020 was, as I’m sure it was for many of you, a shit show. 2021 started out hopeful, I went back to working in the office sometimes, I saw a couple of Melbourne Comedy Festival shows and a few band nights and gigs around town.

I even managed to get through the year without testing positive for COVID which is nice; I’m not sure I’ll be able to say the same for next year. Our case numbers are in the thousands per day, but with over 90% of the population vaccinated, it seems hopeful that we’ll be able to stay open even with new variants.

I set my expectations pretty low, after 2020 I wanted to feel confident I would tick some of them off, even if there was another long lockdown. Turns out I was right to be sceptical that our freedom would last; from May until October, we were all stuck inside again and we’re only allowed out now because of high vaccination rates.

My goals for 2021 are as follows:

  • Publish Singular Focus
  • Finish manuscript from NaNoWriMo 2020
  • NaPoWriMo 2021 (April)
  • NaNoWriMo 2021 (November)
  • Keep up the blog
  • Paint more murals
  • Put on a third Melbourne Fringe Festival show (October)*
  • Wasted Monday performances*

I achieved all my goals, except for the Fringe Show. If I’m honest, I’m not sure I would have done a show this year even without lockdown. There is a lot of joy in putting on a Fringe show, but an enormous amount of work. I’m focussing my energy on my writing, music, and doing some painting as well. I have three murals in my apartment now and have moved on to smaller boards that can be kept or given away to friends.

I took up piano lessons late in 2020, online only at the time since we were still in lockdown then. After a little over a year, I’m enjoying playing and tinkering on the piano. I might even build a repertoire so I can do some open mic nights with the keyboard – although the keyboard’s pretty massive so transporting it will be a pain. My piano teacher has organised two small concerts in 2021 with her adult students, and I have really enjoyed having an audience again, as well as being able to play two or three gigs with Wasted Monday when we were allowed.

Five people pose, each giving a peace sign with both hands and smiling broadly.
Piano concert crew: Jaya, Andrew, me, Mizuki (teacher) and Ben, November 2021.

My work that can be done at home has been pretty consistent, I have drafted about 80k of a new novel, and I have two novels that will be ready for publication in 2021 (stay turned for title and cover reveals).

Though I did a 30k goal for NaNoWriMo, I’m counting it. It’s been a tough year and my writing practice is pretty solid, so I don’t need to rely on November to make up the lion’s share of my first draft output.

My ankle, which was smashed when I was struck by a car in January 2020, is largely recovered, though there is some long-term damage and it’s never going to be back to the way it was. The biggest issue I have nowadays is chronic back pain, likely a secondary injury from the ankle problem. I find it hard to work when I’m in pain, a sentiment I’m sure many of you share.

I’m pleased to say my relationships–with friends, family and work colleagues–have remained solid for the duration, I am so grateful to have so many fantastic people around me. Even when we couldn’t see anyone in real life, I knew you were all there, at the end of the phone or over text.

My grandmother passed in September, she was 94, so had a good run. The funeral was weird, because we were in lockdown and had only two people in the chapel, and a few more watching online. Most other things have ticked along, in some cases limped along during lockdown, but have largely survived. I feel hopeful that 2022 will be enjoyable, possibly going out of the house more often, perhaps I’ll even be able to have a holiday outside of Victoria.

I wish you all health, happiness, relaxation and fulfilment, for the next year and beyond. The next post will include my new year goals.

Welcome to the Roaring 20s

01 Wednesday Jan 2020

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Let’s start with the age old question of how did it get to 2020? I must not have been looking. Far out!

In the first entry of each new year I like to post a list of my goals for the coming year. You can read the review I wrote of the last year and its goals here.

I achieved a lot in 2019, and I have probably not taken enough time to appropriately pause and appreciate it, however I plan to keep up the hard work in 2020.

My 2020 Goals!

  • Finish revising and submit My Mother’s Secret to publishers
  • Finish manuscript from NaNoWriMo 2019
  • NaPoWriMo 2020 (April)
  • NaNoWriMo 2020 (November)
  • Redraft Janine’s story (working title)
  • Put on a third Melbourne Fringe Festival show (October)
  • Keep up the blog
  • Wasted Monday performances
  • Paint mural (in my house)

I’m sure there are other things on the list I want to do, I’m planning to do a bit of travelling, possibly to Perth, WA, for the RWA conference in August, but I haven’t completely committed to that.

I will continue to decidate quite a lot of time to running the Life Models’ Society, and we have a number of projects we want to get done in 2020, but they don’t go on my list.

If I don’t get any pick-ups from publishers, you can be sure I’ll self-publish My Mother’s Secret some time later next year. I’ll be sure to keep you in the loop on that.

I hope you all have a great new year; a good start to a new decade. How weird it feels to be entering the twenties!

Reflections on 2019

24 Tuesday Dec 2019

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Firstly, this is my 301st blog post! Wow! I completely missed the fact I’d hit three hundred when I published the last one. My first post here was 7 November 2011. It seems like a lifetime ago, although eight years is a pretty long time too.

I’ve done a lot of stuff in that time, completed NaNoWriMo eight times, self-published two books, co-written, co-produced and co-starred in two Melbourne Fringe Festival shows, left and started several jobs, become a life model and become heavily involved in running the Life Models’ Society.

My life is very different to what it was in 2011 when I started. We’re also approaching the end of another decade which has its own weird feelings associated with it.

As is my tradition, I take some time at the end of each year to reflect on the goals I set myself at the start of the year. I like to look at the things I’ve achieved the things I haven’t as a record of the evolution of my life over time.

Last year I published the following goals for 2019:

  • Publish ‘Discovery of the Franklins’
  • NaNoWriMo 2019
  • Finish manuscript from NaNoWriMo 2018
  • NaPoWriMo 2019
  • Sitcom
  • Top Secret Project
  • Wasted Monday performances
  • Blogging
  • Life Models’ Society Exhibition
  • Life Models’ Society 30th anniversary

Maybe/if I have time:

  • Self-publish one of my other manuscripts
  • Finish/rework shorts story/novella

I have achieved several of these goals, I published my second novel, I completed NaNoWriMoand NaPoWriMo, I project managed a successful art competition and exhibition for the LMS and helped to organise a lot of events for the LMS thirtieth anniversary year. And I’ve kept up this blog.

A couple of these goals weren’t achieved. I went back to my NaNoWriMo manuscript from 2018 but haven’t completed it. I don’t know whether it has what’s necessary to be an interesting book. I may come back to it later but for the moment it’s on the back burner.

For my collaboration stuff, the sitcom and top secret projects were worked on at the start of the year, but have fallen away in the later part of the year. Wasted Monday has gained and lost a drummer this year and with it some motivation. Lu and I are still keen so hopefully next year will be a good one for us.

A couple of things I’ve done this year were not on the list: I finished a first draft of a manuscript that was not a NaNoWriMo project, I also submitted a manuscript to my editor with the aim of self-publishing my third novel next year. The editor has encouraged me to submit to publishers (once I’ve made the required changes) so that’s an exciting opportunity too. And I travelled to Morroco and Spain in October.

This is, of course, not counting any of the stuff I’ve done for my day job. The day job has been a pretty intense year, in a number of ways. We’ve had a couple of restructures, and a lot of changes in the teams. I look forward to a more settled year next year, but who knows, maybe there is more change to come.

Do you have an annual goal setting ritual? Do you believe in New Years’ resolutions? Next year is shaping up to be a pretty busy year for me, I’ll give you the full run down of goals in the New Years’ post. I hope you all have a safe, fun and restful holiday period and I’ll see you back here next year.

Goals for 2019

01 Tuesday Jan 2019

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Last Friday I went to a workshop that I found through Meetup.com. I frequently attend Meetup events that have highly variable outcomes – some have been really great and positive, like one group for artists which was really positive and motivating for several months. Other times, like a board game night I went to recently can be full of people who make it not fun. But to get back to the point, this workshop was to create a vision board. These are essentially a big seven year plan with pictures. I’d heard of vision boards before, I thought they were mainly nonsense, but it sounded like it might be fun.

When I got there, a room full of women did a meditation and then cut and pasted pictures out from magazines, some of which where twenty years old, onto big coloured cardboard sheets. I’m going to re-do it – either as a list or with pictures from the internet which more closely match what I’m looking for. The magazine pictures were a bit too commercial and a bit too old school for me.

fireworks

Traditionally one of the first things I do in the new year is make up my goals for the next twelve months. Many of my goals remain the same from last year; I’ll do NaNoWriMo again, and NaPoWriMo, as they both generate a good amount of first draft material.

I’m not going to do a fringe show this year, but Alex and I are planning to work on another top-secret project instead. We’re also looking at writing a sitcom and will do a show in 2020.

I have a couple of maybe goals in there too. I have a manuscript that I started last year but abandoned because I couldn’t get the pacing right; I’ll go back to that project to see if it’s salvageable as a short story or novella. I’m also thinking about publishing one of my other back-catalogue manuscripts in the last quarter of the year, but that will depend on how much time and energy I have by then.

My 2019 Goals!

  • Publish ‘Discovery of the Franklins’
  • NaNoWriMo 2019
  • Finish manuscript from NANoWriMo 2018
  • NaPoWriMo 2019
  • Sitcom
  • Top Secret Project
  • Wasted Monday performances
  • Blogging
  • Life Models’ Society Exhibition
  • Life Models’ Society 30th anniversary

Maybe/if I have time:

  • Self-publish one of my other manuscripts
  • Finish/rework shorts story/novella

I’m glad I did the vision boarding workshop. Long term goal setting exercises are important to undertake every so often; it makes me feel less like I’m making things up as I go along. I’ll re-evaluate against the long term and annual goals as I go to make sure my priorities and values haven’t changed along the way (this happens at work all the time!).

I hope you’ve all had a productive, happy, and positive 2018. I wish you all of that for 2019. I’m starting to make my own luck and I’m really loving it.

Just Keep Writing

18 Sunday Nov 2018

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I arrived back in Melbourne yesterday at 8:00am. It was a red-eye flight and I had very little sleep: I had one screaming toddler, one loud snorer, and a man sitting next to me who seemed unhappy with the amount of space I wanted to take up. I can’t say I blame him, economy seats are not large.

I had a fantastic time in Japan, my Facebook friends have all been spammed with my food photos, and my various landscapes, but here is a sample of the good ones:

I managed to keep up with NaNoWriMo while I was travelling. I had plenty of time on trains where I was able to sit down and just write for an hour or so. I’m lucky enough to be able to get my 1700-odd words out in about an hour, usually, and being unable to scroll through my social media while ‘thinking’ about writing certainly helps.

My NaNoWriMo manuscript’s working title is ‘Well Suited’. The two main characters are both professional, and very well dressed. My hero is a three-piece suit wearing graphic designer and my heroine is a sharply dressed legal adviser. I mocked up a cover but I don’t like it enough to show anyone.

Now that I’m back, I think it will be harder to get my words done. I’ve filled up my days a lot now that I’m home. I’ve even had to pull out of a project until after December 1 because I was trying to do too many things at once. Even now I’m blogging instead of NaNo-ing!

Better get back to it. Much love!

It’s a real book!

06 Friday Jul 2018

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Exciting news! Print copies of my Choose Your Own Adventure novel, Sophie’s Path, are now available. 

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Sophie’s path – Print edition cover

They are $15.99 (AU), and you can order them from me directly. I haven’t worked out how to distribute them through Amazon yet.

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Sophie’s Path – Print edition interior

In other news, preparations for Fleur and Alexandra are Out of This World are coming along great.

Tickets for our show as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival go on sale 15 August, 2018, and I’ll make sure you have the details. You can follow Fleur and Alexandra on Facebook for all the updates, and make sure you’re in Melbourne 17-23 September, 2018!

NaPoWriMo 2018

27 Tuesday Mar 2018

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I did NaPoWriMo two years ago. In the last few months I’ve had loads of compliments for my poetry chapbook, My Body. No Apology, so I’d like to produce some more poems and make a follow up chapbook.

Much of the raw material from NaPoWriMo last time was not so great. I guess it’s all first drafts and they don’t always work out anyway, but surely one or two will be useful.

I’m not very good at having a daily practice; I get distracted with the band and other projects. I do write faithfully every week, particularly on my days that I don’t work.

I’m just coming out of a particularly busy period at work, preparing for our yearly external evaluation. As a result of doing some extra work, and being part time, I will have eleven days off, including the Easter long weekend, so I’m going to write. In addition to my poem a day, I’ll be finishing some additions to my manuscript from last November.

The manuscript will go into a Box Set with a number of romance authors. It will be released as a collection of short novels/novellas, and we’ll be self-publishing them at the end of the year. More on that as it gets closer.

During that time off work, I’ve rented a little cottage in country Victoria for a few days of walks by the lake, coffee, and catching up on my reading pile. Bliss!

I’m constantly inspired by the productivity of other writers and artists and I know once this stressful period in my day job is over my energy for creation will be back in full swing.

Is anyone else planning to spend April doing a poem each day? Let’s be writing buddies.

Reflections on 2017

17 Sunday Dec 2017

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I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’ve done over the year even though there are still two weeks left of 2017.

If I made a list of what I did this year it would be sort of inadequate to express what I’ve achieved. I’ll try to make this an interesting reflection on the things that went well and the things that didn’t go so well for me in 2017.

Writing

My commitment to my writing this year has had a few challenges. I finished a manuscript that I started last year in NaNoWriMo. It was 104,000 words at the end of the first draft in July. I pitched the manuscript to three publishers at the Romance Writers of Australia conference in Brisbane in August. Of those three, two wanted to see it. I thought I was finally getting the hang of this writing thing.

Since then one has come back to me with a no, the other hasn’t yet replied.

I participated in a weekly workshop for much of the year. Unfortunately that workshop became something I dreaded and sucked the joy out of my writing. I suspect the other members didn’t like my style, and so looked for something positive to say, but it felt forced. As a result, I felt like a fool even when I got positive feedback.

I’ve also written about 50,000 words on a new story, this year’s NaNoWriMo project. I’m considering using it for a self-published collection coming out next year. The story is reasonably solid, and it will need a bit of work to get it into shape.

Finally, I entered three writing competitions. I had aimed for five, but it didn’t quite happen. Perhaps I could count my pitches as competitions.

I’ve learnt the valuable lesson that I can’t listen to all criticism all the time. Not least because it depends who you ask. Editing is a skill I’d like to improve however I became so disheartened trying to please everyone that I didn’t even want to read my own story. From now on I’ll try to be more discerning in taking on critique.

Music

I joined Hello Volume in September of 2015. The three band members and I got on well, we were great at improvising and jamming out new material and I really enjoyed the process. One of my goals for 2017 was to get Hello Volume performing regularly, as well as working on new material.

Unfortunately, as of last month, I am no longer the bassist for Hello Volume. My priorities for the band were not the same as the other members, and I chose to move onto another project which was more in line with my personal goals.

Hello Volume played a number of cool gigs while I was involved: the Bendigo Hotel and the Workers Club, and open mics at Cherry Bar and Mr Boogie Man Bar. Thanks for jamming with me.

I wish the band all the best for the future and I’ll keep you in the loop with regards to my new project.

Day Job

I’m slowly coming to accept most art creators have a day job. There are lucky humans out there who make their living from their art, and that gives me hope. Most creative people I’ve met over the last year have jobs in the ‘real’ world.

It doesn’t make me any less of an artist that I have a job. I keep telling myself that. Artists have to make opportunities for themselves, self-publishing or putting on an independent show, or finding music performance opportunities, for the love of the art. If there’s some monetary reward then that’s a bonus.

It saddens me the world is structured like this. We are a society who doesn’t like paying for art. I’m as guilty of it as anyone else. I work hard for my money and I often don’t value art with my dollars.

My day job has been going along pretty well since my new boss started in late July. It’s probably sadistic of me to say I feel validated she’s getting frustrated by the same roadblocks I was before she started.

 

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Relaxing with my backyard banana lounge and a book (not pictured)

Overall, I think I’ve achieved a lot and learned a lot this year. I’ve done many things I’d never done before. I coped with some pretty difficult life crap too, like being evicted from my home with three days notice (the building was unsafe) among other things.

I think I’m starting to get a handle on the things I need to do to keep myself happy. I’m allowing myself to sit with my feelings more, particularly anger and loneliness. After having four good friends move away from Melbourne last year I’ve been looking for new people to hang out with. It’s a slow process.

Next year is looking busy and exciting. I’ll be doing my annual New Year’s Goals soon so stay tuned!

Is it ever ready?

27 Tuesday Jun 2017

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Last week I finished a manuscript. Well, I typed ‘The End’. It was a project I started as part of last year’s NaNoWriMo and ended up being 104,000 words; my longest manuscript to date. It sort of feels like I’ve finished it, but I know that the next step is starting the editing process.

I have another manuscript that I’ve submitted to a couple of competitions which I wrote a few years ago, and I was working on edits of that right up until the day before the competition. I’m still not sure whether I should rewrite whole chunks of it because it doesn’t work the way I hoped it would.

The thing is, there is always more work that can be done on a piece. I could rewrite some plot point, or change the point of view of a section. A couple of the earlier manuscripts I wrote, back before I knew about genre conventions and other such things, now feel like they need to be completely rewritten so they’re more like what people expect. Of course there is an argument for originality of structure, but I’m not sure how far I’ll get with that.

The problem I’m facing now is when do I call a project finished? I know I have to let go of things, not least because I’ll drive myself batty with boredom, but I’m also afraid that they’ll never be ready.

I wrote an epilogue for the most recent project and I felt so naff tying everything up so neatly. I know that some readers like that, especially in a romance novel, but I was spent the whole time writing it thinking it was the worst drivel I’d ever thought up.

I’m heading up to the Romance Writers of Australia annual conference in Brisbane in August. It was a lot of money, but I decided that it was worth it for the professional development, networking and opportunities. I’m not really sure what to expect, although people who I’ve spoken to about it have sung it’s praises. I plan to have a second draft of the manuscript ready by then so that I can send it straight to any publisher who might request it or even seem even vaguely interested.

Slowly but surely I’m working my way towards releasing a novel that I’ve written myself into the world.

Radio Silence

17 Monday Apr 2017

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It’s been two months since I last posted. That sounds like what you’re supposed to say at confession: ‘It’s been two months since my last confession.’

I’ve had a pretty full on time since then, some of my own creation and some outside of my control.

I’ve managed to achieve two important creative goals that I set myself. On 14 February, Valentine’s Day, I got my latest genre romance manuscript to 80,000 words. I had planned to have the first draft finished by 80k, but the story was still going and I had to move on to the next goal. There is still some work to be done to tie up the end of the story, I’m back to working on this now, and then the editing process begins.

Then, on 31 March, I submitted a previously completed manuscript to an unpublished manuscript competition run by the Kill Your Darlings literary magazine. I spent six weeks thoroughly editing it. I feel like there might be more work to be done on that manuscript but if I win the competition I’ll have a mentor to do that with. The competition has prize money and the mentor is author Hannah Kent. The shortlist will be announced 1 June, and the winner on 3 July. I have my fingers crossed.

I’ve also had a couple of pretty intense things happen outside of my creative stuff. Firstly, I was evicted from my home with three days notice when the council declared the building unsafe to live in. I managed to find alternative short term accommodation within those three days and I have secured a new place to move into at the beginning of May.

All in all the whole thing went pretty well all things considered. I had to pack up my life, move it to my mum’s for storage, run around trying to find somewhere to sleep, and go through the search for a new share-house all in about a week. It was tough and draining and took up all of my brain space. I’m exhausted just thinking about having to move my stuff again – from Mum’s into the new place.

In addition to being evicted I had a particularly stressful couple of weeks at my job. I work in a not-for-profit organisation doing Quality Assurance and we had our annual external audit. It was my first audit and I didn’t know what to expect, or a have good idea of how to prepare. In addition to the audit my direct manager left the organisation suddenly, which left me, relatively inexperienced, and my boss one step up, the General Manager to manage it all. Everyone pulled together and we managed to get through without too much trouble, but it was incredibly stressful. Now we start planning how to get ready for the audit next year, which is an even bigger project.

I’ve spent the last week and the Easter break trying to regain my calm. I’m still recovering after so much stress. I’m tired and don’t feel at home in the temporary accommodation; more like a guest in a hotel.

The new house, once I’m settled in, will be an opportunity to build a space to create and socialise and live in. It wasn’t my choice to move, but now that it’s happened I think it will be good.

I like to have things planned out. I like to have things settled and stable and reasonably predictable. But the last few weeks have shown that I can cope with a lot. I can have a little cry, and then I knuckle down and do whatever needs to be done. It’s reassuring that even when everything is falling apart around me, I can keep putting one foot in front of the other. Yes, it’s hard, but it’s possible. And that’s very reassuring.