Backwards and Forwards

You live life looking forward, you understand life looking backward.
— Soren Kierke

Wisdom is looking back at your Life and realising that every single event, person, place and idea was part of the perfected experience you needed to build your dream. Not one was a mistake.
— John Federick Demartini

The years go by. The time flies. Every single second is a moment in time that passes. And it seems like nothing – but when you’re looking back … well, it amounts to everything.
— Ray Bradbury

Whew! We made it to the new year.

Looking back, I’d have to say last year didn’t start out as badly as I thought it did. I was getting a little writing done, and I even submitted a couple of stories to on-line magazines. Yeah, they were rejected, but at least I got them out there.

Then everything went to hell when I had to have cancer surgery. It was a long road to recovery, and during that time I barely felt like reading, let alone writing. But I did eventually recover, and my writing received a much needed boost in October when I went to the Writescape retreat at the Elmhirst’s Resort.

This was followed by the best National Novel Writing Month I’ve ever had. Thirty stories in thirty days, reaching the 50,000 word goal with a week to spare, ending with over 15,000 words to spare. It was glorious.

Once NaNo was done, it was time to get working on my book flood anthology. It felt a little rushed, but I was happy with the results. And I did every bit of it myself.

I really wanted to start the new year with my office being all organized, but . . . Remember that cart I ordered from Staples? The oh, so handy piece of furniture with the two small drawers and one big file drawer? It was going to be so helpful in getting things in order. Only Staples sent me the wrong cart. This one had four smaller drawers. *sigh*

So it’s going back, and the Staples customer service ticked me off so much I’ll be ordering the proper cart from Amazon, for $30 less.

Not the greatest start to the year.

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Goals For 2022

December was a pretty busy month for me, but I thought a lot about my goals for the year. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far (in no particular order):

Finishing
I have a lot of unfinished/not quite finished stories and novels, and I’d to work away at getting them completed.
To accomplish this: I’m going to take them one at a time, instead of my usual method of trying to do several at the same time.

Selling
It’s one thing when friends and family tell you your writing is good, it’s another thing altogether when someone pays you actual money because they like your stuff. I really want to start submitting more of my work for publication.
To accomplish this: I’m going to set aside an hour a day checking out possible markets and submitting my work. My goal is to submit at least one story/poem per week.

Writing
Kind of goes without saying, doesn’t it? Or at least it should. While a lot of my focus will be on finishing the stories I’ve got, I’m never lacking in new ideas. So unless a novel sized idea grabs me and won’t let go, my goal here is to write every day and produce one story a week.
To accomplish this: I want to start every day with a timed writing to get me going, and then set aside 1 hour a day (minimum) for other writing. Blog posts don’t count.

Learning
I think we never stop learning, whether we mean to or not. What I’d like to do is put a little effort into it.
To accomplish this: The internet is a wonderful tool, allowing us to take courses without leaving our homes. I propose to take a couple of on-line courses, maybe even get my certification in editing.

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Every year I usually spend a lot of time trying to work out a schedule to accomplish everything I want to get done in a day at a set time. Even when I’m able to create such a schedule, I never seem to be able to stick to them for long and they end up being abandoned.

So this year I sat down and started with 24 hours in a day, then subtracted the amount of time I spend doing mundane stuff like sleeping and eating, then I looked at the amount of time I had left over and decided an hour a day was a reasonable amount of time to spend at a specific task. That still gives me time left over for other things, and I can get my hour in whenever it suits me.

These task may vary from time to time, but my short list is: writing, editing, reading, learning, and crafting. And the hour isn’t set in stone, it’s the minimum amount of time to spend on each thing.

I’ll let you know how it goes.