2009

Originally Posted 01/03/2009


Only two days left until Oliver starts the new job and our lives get back to normal. I'm glad that we'll have that source of income, but after spending 3 months of being with the one I love all day long every day, I'm going to miss him. On the other hand, I'm the type of person that needs space/alone time, so maybe it will be good for us. :)

I spent the last few weeks of 2008 playing around with some tentative writing schedules for 2009, as well as my resolutions for the new year. I think with some touch-ups yesterday I got things more or less figured out.

In an effort to treat my writing more like a job and less like a hobby I've created a set up to treat it more like a 9-5. 
My plan is:

• Write 2,500 words/weekday.
•  Weekends and holidays (New Year's, February 2, March 20, Oliver's birthday, Easter, May 1, Memorial Day, June 21, July 4, our anniversary, August 2, Labor Day, September 22, my birthday, October 31, Thanksgiving, the day after Thanksgiving, December 21, Christmas Eve, Christmas, Boxing Day, and New Year's Eve) off.
•  For every 5,000 words I write I accumulate 1 vacation hour and 1 sick hour to be used as I like. 8 sick or 8 vacation hours may be redeemed for a day off in which I am not obliged to write, edit, or do anything involving my writing.

I know it seems like an awfully complicated system for something I should just do, but I figured if I treated it like this, gave it a concrete system, it would be easier to keep myself accountable to my writing. Making myself accountable for what I do or do not do is a large part of what I'm trying to work on this year.

2009 Goals:write 12 short stories
write 4 novels 
program my placeholder website
submit short stories at least 20 times
send out at least 150 queries
blog at least 3 times/week
type all the longhand writing in storage
write a short synopsis for each idea
keep notebook on me at all times 
develop an idea for a comic
read at least 100 books 
walk 1000 miles
drink less than 3 glasses of soda/week 
drink 64 oz. water/day 
stop using plastic bags 
stop using plastic water jugs
stop using incandescent lightbulbs in my home 
start recycling once I have a car 
get an oil change every 3,000 miles 
check tire inflation at least once/month 
say at least one nice thing/day 
stop and think about the thing I'm about to say before I let myself say it
put 5 cents in a jar for each time I swear

I have a few things to finish up on Queen of Freaks, then I'm going to do a round of edits for the things I already know need to be fixed. After that it will be all set to finally go out to the betas. I'm thinking that will be about the 16th or so. When I get it back from then I'll do a round of edits to fix any problems they catch, then it's going in a drawer for a month before I do my final edits. When the final edits are done I'll send out my queries.

In the interim I'll be working on PDA1, which really needs a title, but I can't think of anything. Maybe while I'm working on the zero draft I'll think of something. I think the zero draft will go quite quickly, since I've taken the time to plot the whole book in advance, unlike Queen of Freaks. It's also had time to simmer and develop. The last three months have been very unproductive as far as word count, only about 10,000 words, but PDA1 has developed nicely. Now I just have to ship Oliver off to work and get back to work myself.