My “Winter Round” Goals

Over this past year, I’ve learned a lot about my writing habits and style.  Being a goal-orientated person, I’m always trying to set goals for myself that are both workable and achievable.  The challenge in setting these goals is that they must coincide with my personal writing-style and work-process.  There are two factors that contribute to this challenge; the first being my chaotic writing process and the second being my capricious Muse.

First, let’s start with my chaotic writing process.  Being a visual artist, I approach writing a novel like I would painting a landscape; broad-strokes across the entire canvas, blocking-in all the shapes so I can see the whole picture.  Then, when I’m satisfied with the composition, I go back in to add the fine detail.  That’s how I approach novel-writing as well; loosely blocking-in plots, swapping out characters, and altering scenes and settings until I am satisfied with the general structure of the story.  Then, I make consecutive passes at the story to fill in the details, building upon the layers beneath.  I’m constantly jumping around, trying to balance the story as a whole.  That’s my chaotic writing process so, knowing this, I must calibrate my goals accordingly.

My capricious Muse is an all-together different kind of challenge.  Let me preface this by saying that when my Muse and I are attuned to each other’s frequency, magic happens.  I have many file-folders full of wonderful story-ideas due to our imaginations being synchronized.  That being said, my Muse is unpredictable and fickle.  She has trouble staying focused on just one story at a time.  Often times, she’s focusing on a story that is unrelated to what I think I should be working on.  Or she has me chasing off into the wilderness after new plot-bunnies (Muse Gone Wild).  Mostly, I just go with the flow and fill-up those file-folders.  That’s great and all, but at some point I’m going to need her to stay focused long enough to finish one of these story-ideas.  I’ve found that in order to accommodate the mood spectrum of my Muse, I must always have several different stories going at once.  Again, knowing this, I must calibrate my goals accordingly.  With that in mind, here are my goals for ROW80 (Round 1)…

Goals for ROW80 (Round 1)
My goal for the “Winter Round” of ROW80 is to write four novellas within my “Sword & Sorcery” universe.  Each novella will be approximately 20,000 words apiece, for a total of 80,000 words.  Each novella will be written simultaneously (again, alternating back-and-forth to accommodate my Muse), and each will vary in tone, mood, and style.  Essentially, I have given my Muse four different "sandboxes" to play in, each with its own set of "toys" (characters, etc.).  I have four story-candidates in mind and will be outlining and plotting them during the month of January.  In February and March, I will be focused on word-counts and getting these stories to completion.  I figure that one or two of these stories will probably take precedence over the others and will become my lead focus.  Again, I’m at the mercy of my Muse’s mercurial whims.  But, with this flexible method, I figure that at least one of these stories will catch her fancy to completion.  If conditions change, I’ll refine and update my goals.

Keep the Fire Burning!
Please visit the other writers in the ROW80 Community…

Here are my Writing Goals for 2016