So. The grand experiment seems to be working. For the month of January I focused on writing, with a few specific goals, allowing myself to not worry about not doing All The Things (and therefore not getting distracted). Because of my stunning lack of real self-confidence I didn’t share my goals for the month beforehand, but here’s what I accomplished this month:
- Posted four short stories that had been sitting gathering dust.
- Re-read (after the perfect amount of away time) and edited those stories.
- In Search for the King
- It’s the Little Things
- Morning Star (part 1, part 2)
- The Trader and the Devil (part 1, part 2, part 3)
- Re-read (after the perfect amount of away time) and edited those stories.
- Wrote two short stories whose base themes had been scribbled down in my notebooks for at least half a year.
- Got the feeling enough of one world that I’ll probably revisit it.
- Finished the first section of a novella I’d been letting gather dust.
- Forced it under the eyes of two people to give me legit feedback.
- Have begun prepping it to post here.
Oh wait, what was that? Yeah, once I’ve finished its editing the story is going up here, on a probably once a week schedule. One of the plans for the focus months was that once I’ve dedicated a month to a thing I’m to work it back into life, seeing how I can integrate it while I’m working on the following months’ focuses. The schedule I’m looking at should give me several months to build up more backlog and that perfect terror of failure to finish something that posting ongoing work online does.
Out of a mixture of vanity and convenience I’ve also gathered all my work that fits into the pastoral post apocalyptic theme into one place: Pastoral Post Apoc (natch). All the Five Cities stories are there, as well as the first chunk of Slow Build, which had been unavailable online for a some time and will still have to wait awhile before being finished. The story from this month, Comparative, is also there. Other short stand-alones I write in that general theme will end up there also.
And! If you’d like to flatter my vanity, the Five Cities stories are available in a collected printed form, with one story that is not online (a lady needs a hook).
So, fiction writing focus month done! I know what I’m doing next month. Like I planned, about midway through the month two things kept popping up in my mind to work on and I was able to decide on which one to focus on just this week. I’ll post what February’s focus will be and its goals tomorrow.
Woo!