By Amy K. Nichols
Momentum (\mō-ˈmen-təm\, n): strength or force gained by motion or through the development of events
Through November and most of December, I was on a writing role, blogging like crazy and zooming toward the finishing line on my WIP. Then as an early Christmas present, I got some kind of flu bug. I think it was the zombie flu. It fried most of my brain cells and completely drained my energy. I walked around in a stupor, moaning.
All my zooming? Gone.
Writing is like riding a bike. You have to pedal big when you start out. Then, once you’re going, it doesn’t take as much work to keep the bike upright and moving forward. When you stop, you have to pedal big again until you regain momentum.
Right now, I’m pedaling big, trying to get back that pre-zombie flu energy.
How am I doing that? Momentum is built through the development of events. Through action. So I’m writing. Every day. Write, write, write. I’m also thinking, dreaming, sketching, generating ideas, making plans. Setting goals.
Writing down goals is the first step toward making them reality. So here is my list of goals for the first part of 2010:
- Put my fear of flying behind me and get on the plane to New York at the end of the month (reassuring comments welcome)
- Network my keester off while in New York
- Revise my WIP until my fingers bleed
- Query my dream agents
- Send my top two short stories to journals and keep submitting them until they find homes
- Write a third short story and send it out, too
- Keep three pieces circulating the marketplace at all times
- Finish my website
- Get paid for something I’ve written
- Serialize a short story at amywrites.com
- Enter a couple of contests
- Explore other project and art ideas (picture books, nonfiction, historicals) without expectation
- Do one thing every day to move my writing career forward
- Encourage my fellow Confessioneers
- Meet Neil Gaiman
(I just threw that last one in there for the heck of it. You never know.)
There. I feel motivated already. At the beginning of each month, I’ll give a progress report on what I’ve accomplished, what I’m struggling with, the thrills of victory, the agonies of defeat, etc. I’ll let you know if these goals helped keep the momentum going, if the pedaling got easier. If I turned from zombie to zooming.
Now it’s your turn. What are your writing goals for 2010?
[Sigh]
Writing down my goals and writing a story outline rank up there with watching Barney the Dinosaur (“I love you, you love me, put a shot gun in my mouth, and then we’ll see”") bbbuuuuuuuuuttttttttttttt, for Amy, ANYTHING…so…
1) Finish an agent-able draft of “Haply” (or “Haply I May Remember” or “Leucothea”)
2) Get an agent
3) Transfer my three spec scripts (“Californication” and two “Office”) from legal pad to final draft and send them out to my buddy and my cousins in LA.
4) Learn to pray
5) Edit two of my many sucky short stories and try and make them not sucky and get them published anywhere
6) Write the first draft of “The Game” screenplay
7) Work on my novel, “Resurrection Song” and/or novella “When the Lights Go Out”
8) (and these are in no particular order) Find out how I can volunteer as a writing coach/mentor/teacher for either kids or prisoners…REALLY want to do this, have been trying to do this for years now
9) Take the first step to start my Youth Writing Foundation (was going to wait until I have some sort of notoriety, but realize that I can’t wait that long)
10) Have “Haply” sold, sell three short stories to lit mags (or ANYONE who’ll give me some sort of American currency–heck, why be picky; I’ll take food stamps, two quarters and some lint, Alien dimes, whatever)
And as icing on the proverbial cake:
11) Solve the Middle Eastern Crisis–someone’s gonna do it, why not me