Goals and Dreams 2013

Every year I do my New Year's Resolutions, aka, goals for the year.  Unfortunately, I tend to lose the paper I write it on sometime in February and by December, I never know if I made it or not.  So, now I'm posting it on this blog, where it will stay safely until December 2013.  Maybe I'll update as the year goes by and these goals are completed.

Goals

These are the serious things that I expect myself to finish before the year's done.  If I don't complete them, I'll probably be very upset at myself.

• Get Driver's License (July)
• Finish Posting Fanfiction (by March) (Finished 3-1-13)
• March-Crunch (500 words a day, 5 days a week in preparation for Camp NaNoWriMo) (Finished 3-27-13, 17499 words)
• Camp NaNoWriMo in April (Finished 4-26-13, 57207 words)
• Finish Editing Changelings (Chapter 24, 26, 27, 28, 29) by summer (Chapter 26: Finished 1-5-13; Chapter 24: Finished 1-26-13; Chapter 27: Finished 2-28-13; Chapter 28: Finished 5-12-13; Chapter 29: Finished 6-3-13; Chapter 1: Finished 6-17-13; Total Words: Approx 220,000 or 800 pages)
• Finish Rough Draft of Originals (Finished 4-26-13, see Camp NaNoWriMo)
• Finish "Three Floating Coffins" (Worked on it consistently but did not finish.)
• Begin Credentialing Process (Didn't even start)
• Crunch-tober (More or less)
• NaNoWriMo (November) (Completed Company in 21 days)
• Keep up Blog for the Year (Up until the end.)
• Keep up Volunteering (Read OC fell though, but still volunteering at library.)
• Start Submiting Novel to Agent (10 Agents: 8 Rejections and 2 No Replies)
• Evaluate Goals and Dreams at the end of the year!  (Working on it)

Dreams

These are all the things I'd like to do that are either out of my control or maybe just ideas to throw out there.  In other words, I might get some of these done, but I'm not going to kill myself if I don't.

• Get published this year (Didn't Happen)
• Make enough money to subsist on (Er... sort of.)
• Learn new, more effective ways of writing (???)
• Read more fiction (Thus far read: Trickster, The Skull of Truth, a few short stories; The Grimm Legacy; multiple Agatha Christie novels; Across the Face of the World; Daughter of Smoke and Bone; The Scorpio Races; The Rook; etc.)
• Exercise or meditate for 5 minutes each day (Got off track in spring)
• Write a screenplay (Ha, ha, No.)
• Write poems for NaPoWriMo (also April) (See Blog)
• Finish "Ghost" Story (aka "Company," Complete 11-21-13)
• Write 12 new short stories (1 per month) (1. The Character Assassination of Julia Kaiser: 2-7-13; 2. Second Chance: 2-10-13... And a few unfinished drafts)
• After finishing the rough draft, write a new chapter for the Originals 3 times a month (Finished rough draft, re-wrote 6 chapters--not nearly up to par with my goal)
• Devote a week each month to brainstorming/ research/ short stories/ new stuff (No time)
• Use Weekly Planner to Keep Track of Events/ Words/ Pages/ Accomplishments (Started Jan and Feb, got off track Mar, April...)
• Celebrate more! (That's hard to quantify)

Update

As of January 2014, I have marked off the goals I completed reasonably well in yellow, the ones that were not finished and/ or ambiguous (though some effort was made) in orange, and the ones where no progress was made at all in red. 

Prepping for NaNoWriMo

November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo to those of us who prefer abbreviations. The concept is simple.  You have one month to complete a novel-sized manuscript of 50,000 words, or roughly 200 pages, typed, double-spaced.  Which, for me is actually a quarter of a novel.  Now, I've heard about NaNoWriMo since college, but this is the first time I've had the guts to commit to it.

(For more information about National Novel Writing Month, go to www.nanowrimo.org)

After I signed up, I got an email from one of the website's hosts about an event called Crunch-tober, where you spend the month of October brainstorming 500 word posts in preparation for November.  As I was scanning this email at 5:50 AM, I ended up missing the part where they provide you with writing prompts.  At any rate, it didn't matter, because I already had something in mind.

I'm currently finishing up an epic fantasy novel tentatively called The Changlings, which I've been slaving away at since college.  Part of the reason it's taken me nearly 10 years to finish is that I really had no idea what I was doing.  Foolishly, I believed I could make it up as I went along.  Also, when in doubt, edit!  I ended up scrapping over half of it.  And when you consider I wrote multiple drafts of 850 pages, that's like sending a thousand pages down the drain.  

So, this time, I'm trying to be more efficient.  And that means no editing until I know the ending.  I'm not going to spend three weeks making sure that every detail in Chapter 3 is perfect, only to throw the whole thing away when I realize it's incompatible with Chapter 4.  Haste may make waste, but it's nothing compared to perfectionism.

All this is a long way of saying that my goal for NaNoWriMo is to write down the ending to the necessary sequel of The Changelings, which I'm currently calling The Originals.  I've been anticipating this event since early summer.  On a whim, I decided to do my own version of Crunch-tober.  For 5 days a week, four weeks straight I'd write 500 words about any point that bothered me on my second novel or any interesting tidbit I happened to pick up from the military channel.  I figured if anything, I'd flush out the bad ideas.  Plus, it was a good way of filling up between 6:15 AM to 7:30 AM, that nerve-wracking time of the morning when I was pretty sure--but not quite--that I wasn't getting called in for a substitute assignment. 

So, now Crunch-tober is finished for me, and how did I do?  Over 15,000 words and 50 pages of notes, including the conclusion to two battles and six character arcs.  In other words, it added up.  And I wasn't even really trying.  But it goes to show what a concentrated effort of even 1 hour a day can do.

Now that I have some idea what I'm writing, it's time to sit down and write it.  I'll try to keep you posted in November.  See you then.  

Musings on Limited Willpower

Is willpower finite?

I'm so used to thinking of willpower as limitless, like brainpower or human potential or air.  I had never considered it might be something we gets in daily allowances to be budgeted throughout the day.  Yet this is exactly the argument I stumbled upon while reading the November 2012 edition of Writer's Digest.  Mike Becktle's article "Overcoming Writer's Block Without Willpower" began by throwing out this idea:

"Here's the problem with willpower: It's limited. [...] Simply put, when we use it up by resisting a chocolate doughnut all morning, there's none left to stay disciplined in our writing an hour later."

I'd never heard of this before.  But I suspect it's on its way to becoming the hot new idea, because just one day later, I read about it again, this time in a recent Cracked article, "5 Ways Your Brain Tricks You into Sticking with Bad Habits" by Dennis Hong.  (http://www.cracked.com/article_20028_5-ways-your-brain-tricks-you-into-sticking-with-bad-habits.html)

I'm not entirely certain I believe the scientific explanation, which contrasts making healthy decisions with brainteasers.  While resisting temptation may utilize willpower, I would label solving puzzles more a trait of concentration.  Either way, as a speculative writer, my reaction to these sort of ideas is to hold it as true in my mind (whether or not I actually believe it is) and see what sort of conclusions you can draw.

So, if we you a limited amount of willpower, what will your reaction be?  As with most limitations, you can either use it as an excuse or start getting creative.  Is the limit the same day to day, or does it vary with other factors, say how sleepy you are or how much time you've had to relax?  Are some people born with more than others?  Can you grow it?  Can you trick it?

For example, if you take something you hate, such as going to the gym, and make it a habit (which according to the Cracked article will take you ten weeks), does it no longer count as exerting willpower?  Or if you make something you dislike fun, will that also lessen the discipline?

And if you find the absolute limit, how will you spend it?  If you try to be absolutely efficient with your willpower, will that effort actually drain you of it?  If you dole out your efforts spontaneously, will you ever get anything done?  What's the fine balance?

These are some thoughts, I like to throw around.  To be honest, I've been trying to discipline myself into steady writing for some time now, and it's difficult.  The more deadlines and word limits I impose, the more time I spend worrying over them.  My willpower goes into maintaining my system and then I wonder why I'm not inspired.  How can inspiration come if you're constantly yelling, "You have to write 9 pages by bedtime, hurry up, you're wasting time, you're never going to finish if you don't write already, just get something on the page, I don't care what it is, just do something!"  On the other hand, if I didn't force myself to write at least 5 times a week, I'd make excuses and get out of practice.

What are your thoughts on willpower and discipline?  Do you find the idea of a limited amount depressing or refreshing?

Comments would be nice.