Belated New Year Goals

I've been bowled over by a wretched cold, so I've spent most of my days off blowing my nose and watching DVDs. But since I'm staring down the barrel of a brand new year, I figured I should review how I did on my last year's goals, and craft some new ones for 2008.

So at the beginning of 2007, I gave myself the following goals.

1) Write 3000 words/week. (Result: 159,000 this year.)

Mmm, this was when I was writing fiction. I stopped counting about 3/4 of the way through the year, but at last count, I was at 30,452. But, I was writing relatively consistently.

2) Work on getting published in journals once a month.

I submitted poems more sporadically, but had some good results, especially with articles.

3) Send out my book manuscript once every two months.

Didn't send it out once.

4) Maintain my blog consistently all year.

Success! I totally did that!

5) Make regular time in my life for my writing practice.

This is the one where I feel I've made the biggest strides. I've changed my job and schedule in order to write articles and poems. So, that's a good thing.

Reviewing this list, I realize that the ones that I did well on were more abstract goals. The concrete goals floundered pretty quickly.

With that said, here are some goals for 2008.

1) Work on getting my manuscript published.
2) Work on getting poems published.
3) Work on getting articles published.
4) Write and revise poetry consistently.
5) Maintain my blog and my journal for the year.
6) Read books that will feed my writing practice.

There's a little less accountability possibilities with these goals, but I think that they are all attainable. I think, in order to keep myself honest, I'll keep a poem count, article count, and reading count on this blog.

Here's to doing a little better this year.