After winning NaNoWriMo this past November, I briefly thought about editing that draft and turning it into something that I would eventually allow other human beings to read. And then kinda nyeah...not so much. There were plot holes the size of Canada, lackluster characters, and just not enough there there. I wasn't excited enough to slog through edits. Plus, real-life happened. I have a day job that requires its own kind of creative brain power and plenty of writing. A New Year's-fueled dive into dating turned into a holy-crap real relationship that unexpectedly changed my life in a beautiful way. In short, I've been really busy and really happy and everyone knows real writers can't be happy. Wait, no that's not right....
Anyway, while I've been too busy to do any actual writing, that NaNo draft sat in an unlit corner of my brain, evolving and mutating until one day, it burst out of my forehead and demanded my attention. I'm the kind of writer (and reader) that loves characters. If I have a compelling character, I'll set them free in their little sandbox world and just follow them around until some sort of story structure develops from their wanderings. Unfortunately, that first draft had a story structure but no character that I wanted to follow around just to see what they do. Which is probably why it went nowhere.
Enter Maddie, the main character my story was initially missing. She's snarky and damaged and has a good heart and in terms of getting her story down on paper, she's pretty demanding (thank god for fellow writers who won't find that description strange). In between work projects, I scribbled down scraps of dialogue, story arcs, and character development. But I still struggled to find (or make) the free time to actually start writing.
Enter my next kick in the ass: Jenna Moreci. I recently started following Jenna's YouTube channel and I'm loving her weekly dose of no-nonsense writer talk. This week's video was all about how she sets writing goals.
Any advice-giver will tell you that the key to success is setting goals. Whether you want to lose weight, be a writer, or be rich, setting specific goals that include a deadline is non-negotiable. Not just "lose weight" but "lose 15 pounds by September 1st." Don't proclaim you want to "get rich", say you're going to save $100 a month for the next year. Not the most revolutionary idea, but for some reason, Jenna's quarterly goal structure really resonated with me. I didn't have to look way into the future towards NaNoWriMo, or try to rearrange my schedule to try to accomplish something this month. I could work on a single goal for three months and call it a success. Maybe it's the fact that I work in marketing so breaking the year into quarters and setting revenue or project goals for that time period feels really natural to me. Whatever the reason, as soon as I watched this video, I dug out my journal and started brain dumping in preparation for achieving my 2016 Q3 goal: outlining Maddie's novel.
And to keep myself accountable, I'll be posting here once a week to update my progress. Because as Jenna says, there's nothing like the punishment of public humiliation to get your ass moving!
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