I will confess: I am totally fascinated by writers who write longer than a single blog entry. My word limit is about 250-300. A 250-300 page document?! Oh hell no. Brain short… no words left…all done.
So – writers, editors, publishing dudes, what’s your writing resolution this year?
:gulp: What writing resolutions? I just started a blog with my personal friends and now this! I am now aware there is a “protocol” for how long they should be. *sniffle* I kept it to 3 paragraphs and of a moderate size…
I have to go look and count my words in my blog entry. Darn it. Oh well, I appreciate this “heads up”. Green as peas…
I’ve got a WIP (Work In Progress) that’s been spinning its wheels for a while, so my resolution is to finish the damn book.
Oh, and part of that resolution is not to spend so much time online foolin’ around, which is my lame way of avoiding what one writer called “the white screen of despair”. That’s when you look at that clicking cursor and think you’ll never be able to write another word, much less fit plot device A into continuity slot B.
My resolution? Discipline, discipline, discipline. It’s so easy to be distracted with everything go on around me—and there so many enticing places on the web to go to (present company included)—that I find myself chattering with others about writing and books and mantitties, but not getting any writing done.
More words on my project, less on the internet.
writing is easy.
REVISING is the trick.
My resolution:
I will revise the five novels I have sitting around. Revise or throw those suckers away. Or at least move them out of any folders I open regularly. I guess it’s not exactly like cleaning out a closet. . .
(I really need a critical beta reader who’ll read whole mss and tell me if they’re worth it.)
Finish editing my Big Thang. (No, that’s not the title, that’s what it is.) Send it out.
Try to write a normal-sized novel for a change.
You say you want a resolution? Well…
1. Get Lord Alexander’s Cipher; or, the Bridekirk Behemoth sold to a publisher (I haven’t even got an agent yet, but it’s being looked at);
2. Get Lady Cardington’s Folly; or, the Limehouse Leviathan written (I haven’t written any of it yet, nor do I have a clue yet who Lady Cardington is, nor in what way she might have been foolish, but I am sure it will all turn up as I write);
3. Come up with a title for the concluding book of the trilogy.
You’ll post the title as soon as you come up with it, yes, Stephen?
Write everyday if even it’s crap. It will be crap. That’s the point – to make it better.
Resist the seduction of the internet. Not doing very well so far am I?
My resolution is more of a life philosophy, which is: if (insert salacious activity, behavior, food or drink item here) is wrong then I don’t want to be right. For example, if eating cheese fries at ten in the morning is wrong then I don’t want to be right. If drinking wine is wrong then I don’t want to be right. You get what I’m saying.
How this applies to writing: I am unpublished and would probably be considered struggling by some. Being in this state can be distressing, to say the least. My profoundly practical parents despair; that whole get-a-real-job syndrome. Therefore, if writing is wrong then I don’t want to be right helps me remember to keep the faith, so to speak.
Revise, like Kate says. Take shorter than a full year to write a book. Sell another book (I only sold one so far, and it was a trad Regency. Ring death knell here).
And finally (maybe after I sell another book?) believe I am actually a writer.
My resolution is to finish the plethora of things I have halfway written and get them published.
I have a horrible habit of letting “life”, as it were, invade my writing and then I stop working on what I find fun, which is escaping into another world – one of my own creation; something I intend to remedy!
Um, all of the above? Well, since I was laid off and now can try for a month or two to live the dream of full-time writer, I DO need more discipline. I’m at the end of my contracts for the Heart Books and once I turn in Protector of the Flight, the Luna books, so I need to get Option Proposals out there (at least 5). I have a contemporary paranormal series I’d wanted to sell last year and didn’t so I need to polish it up and and send it out again. Some of this stuff is coming up quick.
Robin
Like Doug, I have this, um, opus that needs to be reduced to a more readable length.
Also, I want to draft three new longer, narrative poems by April. I had about one-quarter of a book MS before the opus interrupted & ate my life.
Less time online, more time reading & reducing the TBR pile to more manageable proportions.
Finish 3 more gay historical romances. Sell at least one of them. That’s not as ambitious as it looks—I’m about 2 chapters shy of the end of one that’s been shelved repeatedly for the past 3 years; and have a good enough start on the follow-up to The Price of Temptation to wrap it up by the end of March (which I hope my publisher will love). Plus, as of this week, I’m now living the full-time writer dream. :coolsmile:
Meet all my freakin’ deadlines without having to ask my doctor for valium.
bwahahahahahahahaha. Wish me luck *g*
My resolution was to set up a workable writing space in my bedroom. I have a big new monitor to hook my laptop into. A killer new-to-me printer. A whopping 160 gig external hard drive (love those after Christmas sales!), and wireless internet. Life was looking good. I was going to have a writing empire!!!
Then I discovered that there’s only one fucking outlet in the room (stupid 1920s bungalow!). So now I have to run an extension cord all the way around the room and put in a surge protector with multiple outlets. Grrrrrr. This would have entailed leaving said stupid bungalow in the torrential downpours that took place over the weekend. Not gonna happen.
So I guess my resolution is to not procrastinate doing this for the next several months . . .
A writer is someone who will gladly describe his/her genitalia in meticulous detail for the front page slot of their biggest local daily newspaper, as long as they get paid and can do so under a pen name.
A writer’s writer will do the exact same thing under their own name for free.
Don’t believe me? Visit my blog.
This year, I will finish the first draft of my memoir.
Stephen, how about this:
The Duchess of Edinburgh’s Little Friend; or, the Hothouse Homunculus?
Just a thought ;o)
1. Finish the third book in my fantasy series, let it ferment, revise then toss it to my critique circle and duck.
2. See if I can actually finish the mystery novel I’m co-writing before the end of the year, the one that woke me up three times in one night and would NOT go away. And I don’t write mystery (hence the co-writer).
3. Figure out what I want on my website and actually send it to my webmistress so she can design the sucker. Bad enough I don’t have time to actually promote my stuff without having a website that looks like a desert island.
The Duchess of Edinburgh’s Little Friend; or, the Hothouse Homunculus?
Dirty. *GRIN*
Dirty Dirty Dirty.
1. Learn to write faster without writing crappylier. Two books a year starting 2006.
2. Set clearer boundaries between work and personal life without hurting anyone’s feelings.
3. Somehow make time for marketing and promotion, possibly by carving out a little cubicle in the space-time continuum.
Wordsize? I knew it! Lassies keep telling you “Size doesn’t matter”. It’s A LIE!
Damn b*tches! *sulking in the corner* 😉
Alison Kent made a great suggestion in her blog. Just write one page a day and in a year you have a full book written.
OK, I’m 5 pages behind right now, but it’s my resolution.
I so so so need some writing discipline. Resolution? A mere 1,000 words/day of prose. I’m already 5,000 words in arrears.
1. Become e-published.
2. Finish revising my NaNoWriMo story so I can decide what (if anything) I want to do with it.
3. Do the above while holding down a full-time job, organizing my house, and reading good books. Not all at the same time.