January Assessment

One-twelfth of 2016 is already in the books; eleven-twelfths remain.  Being the last day of January, it’s time for my writing-progress assessment of this past month.  Each month, I plan on reviewing my writing-progress for that month so that I can stay on track with my yearly writing goals, as well as the quarterly goals for each round of ROW80.  For me, I’m far more likely to keep my new year’s resolutions if I renew my commitment to them each month.  A fire needs constant stoking.

The new year always starts off with quiet contemplation of the previous year and renewed hope for the next.  As you can see, I’ve listed all my writing goals for 2016 on the right-hand column on this page.  These are my ideals that I hope live up to this year.  For my ROW80 (Round 1) goals, I chose to work on my four novella-sized pulp-serials that I’ve been developing.  Each of these four serials will star one of my established heroes.  My hope is to lay the foundation with these characters so that I can develop multiple adventures for each of them, much like Robert E. Howard did with Conan the Barbarian and Solomon Kane (my characters will be completely different, of course).  So far, all I have been working with are base hero-archetypes.  These nameless characters are in the rawest stages of development right now, but I have a vague idea of each of their multiple adventures.  My goal for January was to develop these four characters further and to outline simple stories for each of them so that I could start writing vigorously during February and March.  That was the plan for January.

The first ten days of January were golden.  I was excited about my writing goals and was making some significant progress.  I was re-reading and researching many of my favorite pulp-serials, studying their basic story structure.  I created individual project folders for my four characters, each with their own characters, villains, settings and situations.  Everything was coming along nicely until I hit a couple of setbacks.  A nasty bout of the flu and a sports-related injury put my writing ambitions on hold.  By the time I was feeling better, two weeks had gone by and I struggled to get my momentum back.  I was in a creative funk.  The remainder of the month has been me trying to re-start my writing routine again.  To do that, I had to re-establish discipline and accountability back into my life.

Going into February, I’m going to continue developing of my four pulp-serials.  My characters and stories are still very vague and need a lot of work, but I’m starting to get a feel for them again.  I can almost visualize a few of them and have a few ideas for a couple of story adventures.  If I need to re-calibrate some of my goals for this round, I'll adjust them over the next few weeks.  The important thing for me is that I’m excited about the project again.  A new month is a new beginning, which blows a gentle breeze over the dying embers of my goals and reignites my passion for my story-world.  Like I said, a fire needs constant stoking.

Keep the Fire Burning!
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