2011: Year of the Writer

At least I'm hoping that I can become more prolific with my writing.  I'm so glad that this past year I began blogging here and delving more into things that were bogging down my brain on a daily basis.  Things like the weekly intentions and wishcasting have helped me immeasurably and I plan to continue with those.  But I also want to get back to one of those passions of mine - writing.  I put it on the back shelf for almost two years while I grieved and mourned and tried to make sense of the universe and where I fit in.  The thing is - I'm a writer.  It's how I best communicate with the world, with myself, and I miss it.  And all this blogging this year, this unloading of fears/hopes/anger, it has all made me feel confident enough to say that 2011 is the year of my writing.  There is no reason to avoid something that makes me happy.

To better help me get back into a routine and to stick with it, I signed up for two different writing challenges I discovered through another site.

On January 3, 2011, the a Round of Words in 80 Days writing challenge begins and I signed up.  My goal is to write 250 words a day.  I'm usually able to do more once I get myself going, but I don't want to put too much pressure on myself as far as a number goes that I lose sight of the point of the exercise - to write every day.  

My Writing Goal:  250 words a day

I also signed up for author Kelly L. Stone's 80 Day Writing Challenge.  So between both challenges (250 words a day for 90 days), it works out to be a total of 22,500 words written.  Three months!  I can do this!  I've written more in less time when I put my mind to it. 

As for what I'm working on, I've got a current to-do list of pieces that need to be finished as well as a new young adult novel with a character that's been running amuck in my brain.  And I've been thinking about taking a screenplay I wrote awhile back and turning it into a novel instead.  So there are plenty of current projects that I need to work on and finish.  

My plan is to (hopefully) post updates on a weekly basis, more to keep myself accountable.  I'm also hoping that my own need to make things perfect can be contained.  I have this terrible habit of not allowing myself to get first drafts out without too much over-thinking and it's one of the reasons I get stuck.  So that's my not-so-measurable writing goal:  to leave editing for that portion of the process.