Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Decide on Writing Fiction and Other April 2011 Goals

I've been too busy doing the things on this list to make this list, which is an improvement over being too busy slacking off! Here are my April goals:

  1. Decide on where I want to go with writing fiction. I'm starting to come to the realization that my heart just hasn't been in the fiction novels I've written. It's a hard thing to come to terms with, because I want to be a fiction writer. I'm just not sure how much I want to write fiction. Or maybe I just haven't come across something that I'm passionate enough about yet. My goal as far as this goes is to gauge my enjoyment of this activity, and see if it's worth it.
  2. Write Weird Worm articles. My Weird Worm articles didn't get written last month. But now that I'm used to writing 3,000 words a day, it should be a breeze. I want to get at least 20 13 done this month (7 done already!). And that will give me enough money to buy the digital camera I'm eyeing!
  3. Plan for travel. I have an ambitious plan to visit my granddad in England and then my relatives in Norway in May once my lease is up. I also want to leverage this into a travel writing opportunity. I plan on tackling a bit of my huge to-do list each day. I've already started contacting travel mags and writing sample articles.
  4. Keep up with exercising. I've been averaging 6.5 miles a week of jogging/walking/biking/hiking, and I want to average 10 by the end of April. So far I'm good with 20 miles this month.
  5. Start a cooking blog? I'm playing with the idea of starting a cooking blog. I love to cook, I do it regularly, I love to take photos of food, and I love to blog. However, I'll have to see if I can swing it with everything else that's going on.
  6. Keep improving traffic to my online articles. So far, the work I've put into my online content isn't really paying enough for the amount of time I've spent. I want to make sure that I'm using my energy in a productive manner.
That should be more than enough to keep me busy until May!

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Recap of March 2011 Goals

Here's a quick recap of how my March 2011 goals went:
  • Get the plan for my next novel into reasonably good shape (due March 5). Finished this on time! Whoo hoo!
  • Write 50,000 words. Actually ended being about 82,000, as my mentor upped my goal!
  • Write 12 articles for Weird Worm. Woefully failed at this one :(
  • Approach 2 new markets. I think I need to decide exactly what I want to write before I do this.
  • Publish about once a day on writing site Squidoo. I've made another important discovery, that I've written a lot that just isn't earning. To that end, I spent more time editing and deleting lenses than creating new ones.
  • Do taxes. This, thankfully, I finished without too much trouble!
  • Run 3 miles in 28 minutes. My time hasn't improved greatly, but I think it's better to focus just on getting my total number of miles per week up.
In the next few days, I'll post my updated April goals! Yay!