However…

I am doing extremely well so far in December. I met my writing goal for week 7 and will meet it again this week.

This is due to a couple things. First is that I knew that there was a good chance that I would be getting a new laptop computer this month, which was not only exciting news but a relief on the technical end for me. Second is that I was pretty much disgusted with myself for not writing and got fed up enough to do something about it. Third is that signing up for NaBloPoMo turned into REAL motivation for me.

And holy crap—I just went to the NaBloPoMo site to verify the link and my Inner Geek Blog is listed as the blog of the week!

NaBloPoMo stands for National Blog Posting Month… started in response to National Novel Writing Month I’m sure. But the thing I like about NaBloPoMo is that it’s more laid back and really focuses on a very simple goal: post a blog entry every day. It doesn’t even have to include words—just a photo counts as a post for that day.

What I’ve found is that when I force myself to at least post a photo, the photo inspires me to write a little note about it. Which ends up turning into a bigger note, which turns into a blog entry. Magic!

As a fan of his work, this was cool to learn. But as a fantasy writer, in that I fantasize about being a writer, I connected with Neil’s introspection about his fantasy:

“As daydreams go, it says an awful lot about me as a young man: I wasn’t confident enough about my ability to come up with stories. I was coming up with this huge, intricate story in order to justify in my daydreams of creating stories.”

It all comes down to confidence, doesn’t it?

I did have some fun last week creating a newsletter for the local League of Utah Writers, for which I wrote some snippets and edited the whole thing. That will be a monthly project that I hope to enjoy… it allows me some creative distraction (and, okay, occasional frustration) as I am involved with the overall design in addition to the overall editing.

Kind of makes me wonder if/when I have a book that’s ready to be published if I’ll really want to be able to put the whole thing together myself in InDesign or Quark or whatever. At least I’m not that interested in doing the artwork for the cover — hey, whaddya know? I am actually aware of some personal limitations!

Writing goals for week 6: not looking great, especially since it’s Thanksgiving week and I’ll be traveling to spend time with family.  Or maybe I will get sick of family time and be interested in sequestering myself, which might then result in Golden Writing Time?

I’m checking out Guru.com right now to see if it’s something I might be interested in paying to join. My friend Eileen personally knows someone who made $12,000 last year using it as middle man for getting freelance writing gigs, and the site definitely looks legit, so who knows?

One more time, with feeling: SUCCESS!!!

It took me a few weeks, but I did it! And as I’ve known all along, once I sit myself down and focus enough to start writing, the one hour goal I set for myself is really easy to achieve. I’m going to keep my goal for next week. Once I start hitting it every week, I’ll add a different goal on top of it.

It’s all about taking it one step at a time. And reading the Zen Habits blog has really helped with motivation and practical advice.

***

I went to the local university library today for the first time it opened since this summer and wrote without internet distraction for almost two hours. It was a nice change of scenery and provided me more opportunity for focus than I can typically find at home. I plan to return to the library to write soon.

On a side note, the city where I live has plans to build a new, much needed library, but I still have to wait a couple years before that will be ready. It should be more conducive to writing than the old existing (and very cramped) library.

No, I did not meet my writing goals. I wrote on Monday, had a really great story idea that I fleshed out on Tuesday, and that was it.

I caught a virus from hell and was feeling tired and crappy most of the week, though I still could have disciplined myself better. I’m sure a psychologist could diagnose my lack of self discipline with a “she doesn’t respect herself enough to respect her goals” line. It is interesting/sad that I have much less of a problem accomplishing tasks when I am answering to someone else.

The good news is that I accomplished a lot of other things that were sitting on my to-do list while I was procrastinating. Among other things, I cleaned the house, researched new laptops (my computer problems are only increasing), cooked some awesome cashew chicken and noodles one night, read portions of a few anthologies and non-fiction books for research and self-education, and assembled all of my RSS feeds into Google Reader.

I also spent some quality time at the local too-small library (I’ll be voting YES on that bond tomorrow) and overheard a teenager on her cell phone complaining about the way one of the librarians treated her. I followed her all casual-spy-like to the children’s room where she had arranged to meet a different librarian to file a formal complaint. I found a shelf of children’s books suitable to hide behind while eavesdropping (I admit it! I was curious! And hey, it’s a public library!) and I ended up being more interested in the books in front of me than the conversation they were having. In fact, I checked out a few books from that shelf that just might help me get moving on one particular story I’ve been ignoring for a while.

So I did worse than last week in regards to my writing goal, but it was not an entirely unproductive week. Next week, though… I want to say that I accomplished my goal. Note to self: remember the desire you are a feeling right now to accomplish that goal and make it happen!

Accomplished during the week of 10/19? Almost.

I got off to a great start, and wrote for at least an hour each day on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. In fact, I wrote well over 5 hours total during the week. But I didn’t sit down to write for three days last week, so I can’t say that I fully accomplished my goal. I came close, though.

Hopefully I’ll have more to be proud of when I report my progress next week. Hey, this whole accountability thing might work out for me after all!

The speaker was Kay Lynn Mangum, Utah resident and author of three fictional YA Mormon books published through Deseret Book (a Mormon publisher and chain book store). She was interesting and fun, and happily shared her experiences with getting published and some of the writing, organizing, and editing techniques that work best for her. I liked her anecdote about friends coming over to her house and being surprised by a wall full of notes and plot lines taped on her bathroom walls. “That’s my novel” she explained. Sounds like my kind of quirk!

I didn’t realize that her books were in the Mormon/LDS category right away, which is a good thing.  She made some good points about being published first with a niche publisher that could be applied to any niche market, in my opinion. It was cool to listen to a published writer speak about the process, especially embracing rejection letters.

One of the fears I had that probably prevented me from joining the League a long time ago was that the majority of the writers would be LDS and only interested in reading and writing LDS material — and that I would be uncomfortable sharing any of my material that contained swearing or R-rated themes. But I’ve grown a little more in my skin as a non-Mormon living in Utah and though I’m still aware that I’m Not Like The Others, I’m less frightened of being myself among other local writers.

There were about a dozen people at the meeting, and Kay Lynn opened the floor to questions and comments after she was finished. People were hesitant at first, but there were some interesting discussions that arose after people got started. My suspicions were confirmed that a good number of attendees were working on novels with LDS themes, but I was delighted that sci-fi and fantasy were also mentioned.

A couple older women with no formal writing training wanted to know if they should bother attending English and/or creative writing classes. One guy who spoke up indicated that he thought they were a waste of time and just focused on over-analytic literary rhetoric, which is exactly what I thought of English classes until I had a really great college professor. Then I realized the difference between most stories and the well-written stories with a purpose — where every character, detail, and piece of dialogue is there for a reason. Of course that also inhibiited my own writing because I realized that most of it fell into the former category. Whoops.

So there was definite value in attending that meeting, and I intend to return. I also volunteered to be the local chapter’s newsletter editor which should help me stay involved and hopefully inspire others to stay involved. Ultimately, I hope to find a friend or two through this group and, more importantly, an honest and trustworthy writing support team.

Last night I went to bed late and woke up early before my husband’s alarm even went off. I had a flash of an idea come across my mind, and I let it percolate for several minutes while the room was still dark and cozy. By the time I heard the alarm that I usually ignore (because it’s waaaaay to early for my tastes), I was ready to get up and start writing.

Rather than go to my computer, where I have 15 project reminders on my desk and the temptation of email and the internet, I reached for a spiral notebook that I’ve used a couple times this fall. I wrote an initial scene, but it took some twists and turns and didn’t end up where my original percolations pointed. So I rewrote it on the next page. It still wasn’t what I was looking for, and I figured out that the point of view was all wrong. Even though I was getting sleepy again and thinking about heading to go back to bed, I pushed myself to write a half-scene, half summary of the story from a different point of view. Then, with one more idea still not fleshed out with those characters, I wrote a fourth section of text with a different location.

I didn’t look at what I wrote yet, but I’m hoping that one or two of the story scenarios will jump out as the clear leader when I read them again tomorrow.

Coming up with initial ideas has never been a problem for me… it’s just convincing myself later that with a little work, my original idea could be a great piece of writing. And then pushing myself to do that editing and rewriting work.

But hey, one goal at a time if I seriously want to achieve something, right? So I’m going to stay focused on writing for at least 1 hour, 5 days a week.

I’m still very afraid of failure.

NaNoWriMo is right around the corner, which brings a lot of past failure to my mind. I’ve attempted to write a 50,000 word novel in four of the past five Novembers. I have to make a decision soon as to whether or not I will attempt that again.

I’ve read or heard the suggestion that if one can schedule an hour a day to write–anything–then writing will come more easily. One hour will turn into two or three if you get on a roll. I experienced that when I was blogging every day on my innergeek blog. But the reality is that I’m not going to blog every day of my life because I don’t always have something I want to share with the Internet.

So I’m setting a new goal: To write for one hour a day, five days a week. That’s a very reasonable goal. I will count blogging, writing new story content, editing existing story content, and writing freelance nonfiction proposals in this goal. My “week” will be Sunday to Saturday, and I will report my progress on this blog on Sunday or Monday of the following week.

Five hours a week. I can do that.

What writing goals do you have? What’s worked for you in the past?