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Entry tags:
December and 2018 wrap-up; January and 2019 goals
Days written: 23/31
Words written: 6,220
Words of fic written: 1,650
Stories worked on: Three
Stories posted: Two
Days written in 2018: 282
Words written in 2018: 92,131
Fic words written in 2018: 47,292
Fic words posted in 2018: 35,240
December goals:
1. Work toward my GYWO stretch goal. My final days written count is 282, which is really not that far off of the 288 goal -- less than a week short. And given that I'd already skipped enough days that hitting 288 was impossible before the end of the second week of the month, I'd say I did pretty well to keep plugging at it.
2. Finish and post the TAZ fic. Success!
3. Finish and post the Critmas fic (due 12/27), and find another Ladies Bingo prompt to write. Yes on the first, and a few days in advance even (story reveal was today but authors won't be revealed until next week), no on the second.
4. Write at least two media reviews, either in my journal or on LB. I only wrote one full review, for Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, but I wrote a bunch of capsule reviews for the![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
ladybusiness Recmas project, so I suppose I can count that as successful.
Final reckoning on 2018 goals:
1. Complete the Journeyman Habit Pledge (240 writing days) forgetyourwordsout. Stretch goal: 288 writing days, which is about halfway between writing 5 days/week and 6 days/week. That's 24 days/month, which shouldn't be a problem most months, and I can push past it in months where I'm not traveling etc. to make up the difference. Yes on the first, and easily (I hit it before November was half over), not quite on the second, and that includes a hard push to write almost every day in October as well as November.
2. Complete and post Wardens of Ivalice, Part 3. No, and I don't even feel like I made all that much progress.
3. Participate in at least two fic exchanges and one Big Bang. I'd appreciate any Big Bang pointers or recommendations, especially if anyone knows of a good Reverse Bang coming up in the first half of the year. I did a bunch of exchanges this year, but I never even saw a Big Bang that looked halfway interesting. Have people stopped doing those, or am I just looking in the wrong places/in the wrong fandoms? Suggestions are entirely welcome, but I think I need to stop putting this as an official goal.
4. Two media reviews or other substantial articles each month for Lady Business.... Set a schedule for one political linkspam every two weeks, and stick to it. Boy did I ever fail on this one. Posting more in 2019 is a huge priority for me, and I've been thinking for a couple of weeks about how to approach it. I think I've come up with something; we'll see how it goes.
5. Finish every new story I start in 2018. (Exception: if I sign up for a challenge late in the year that has a posting deadline in 2019.) I totally accomplished this, but I also only wrote and posted 10 stories in 2018, and half of those were for exchanges with deadlines. So my success here feels like less of an accomplishment than I thought it might.
For a rough year, where I lost almost two weeks of writing straight out the gate when I got the flu in January, this could have been a lot worse. But it also could have been much better, especially in terms of output. I feel the most obvious place to start is my biggest change: signing up for a GYWO Habit pledge rather than a Wordcount pledge. I've always wondered if it would make more sense to look at writing days rather than words as my major metric of progress, because days written accounts for editing and story planning much better (whereas wordcount best rewards pure drafting). So to a certain extent, I should have expected wordcount to go down, and not be bothered by it. And I'd be okay with it... except that I posted so few stories, and wrote so few reviews. In part, I fear that tracking days written by itself incentivized me to spread out my projects for longer and write fewer words each day. If you go back and look at my charts, you'll see a lot of days with fewer than 200 words written. Some of are in fact days where my writing time was mostly spent editing. But more often than not, those are days where I sat down at the computer, poked at a story for the 10-15 minutes that I chose to count as a "writing day", and then stopped. Or wrote a post that just barely passed the threshold, or put in a few minutes on Lady Business tasks. Bottom line: I was much too generous in crediting myself with a "writing day", because I was so focused on hitting that 288 number. And when I start fudging the metrics to hit a goal number for the sake of hitting a number, rather than to accomplish whatever it was I created the goal to accomplish, that means the goal is not working.
So, in thinking about where to go next, I've decided to try something new. One thing I discovered from doing the Journeyman Pledge, and especially from setting myself this particular stretch goal, is that 24 days/month is not so much as average as a maximum, most of the time. So, although I've signed up for the same level GYWO pledge again, I'm going to approach it a bit differently. I'll still have 240 days written as a primary goal (with somewhat stricter rules on what counts), but with a stretch goal involving wordcount rather than extra days.
Which leads us to goals. I'm going to start by sharing my annual goals this time, and then those goals will inform what I do in January.
Goals for 2019:
1. Write at least 240 days (an average of 20 days/month), with a stretch goal of writing 125,000 words. That doesn't sound like a lot when you look at my historic output, but it's been five years since I wrote that many words in one year, so I think it makes a fine stretch goal. My definition of a writing day is drafting at least 500 words; at least half an hour of editing, researching, and/or outlining fiction or a substantive review or essay; writing up my portion of a Sidetracks, Favorite Media, or other collective review post on Lady Business (minimum 300 words); and/or writing and posting a substantial post on my journal (minimum 300 words). Even if I don't write enough for the day to be considered a "writing day", I can still count the words toward the grand total.
2. Post to my own journal at least two days each week. Post to Lady Business at least once per month (not counting regularly scheduled posts).
3. Write something about every book I read, every movie and show I watch, and every narrative game I play. It doesn't have to be a long or substantial review -- it can just be a few lines on Goodreads (for a book), a mention on a Lady Business's monthly favorites post, or one entry on a "five things make a post" type post. Getting into this habit will not only help me post to my DW and Lady Business more, it will also make it easier to keep track of what exactly I've read and watched, which I've had trouble with in the past.
4. Finish and post Wardens of Ivalice Part 3.
5. Participate in at least five fandom fic projects, whether those be exchanges, Big Bangs, completed bingo cards, or whatever catches my eye. Additionally, write and post at least two fics that are NOT in response to a request or a prompt.
Now, how does January fit into this plan?
1. Write an average of six days per week. (In the interest of starting the year out strong.)
2. Write two fics forladiesbingo.
3. Participate in the 2019snowflake_challenge.
4. Search my DW interests and try to find at least one active, interesting community for all my main fandoms. Follow this community and participate at least once per week.
Some of these goals are very different from the usual goals I set in this space, and that's very intentional. Here where I am right now, in 2019, one of the things that's missing in my fandom life is a sense of belonging to a community centered around specific canons. I have lots of friends, and people I chat with about all kinds of things, but they are centered around things other than media properties. By making a purposeful effort to seek such communities out, I hope to promote more fic and meta ideas in my brain. It's an experiment for sure, but once that I think is worth making. I'll let you all know how it goes.
Words written: 6,220
Words of fic written: 1,650
Stories worked on: Three
Stories posted: Two
Days written in 2018: 282
Words written in 2018: 92,131
Fic words written in 2018: 47,292
Fic words posted in 2018: 35,240
December goals:
1. Work toward my GYWO stretch goal. My final days written count is 282, which is really not that far off of the 288 goal -- less than a week short. And given that I'd already skipped enough days that hitting 288 was impossible before the end of the second week of the month, I'd say I did pretty well to keep plugging at it.
2. Finish and post the TAZ fic. Success!
3. Finish and post the Critmas fic (due 12/27), and find another Ladies Bingo prompt to write. Yes on the first, and a few days in advance even (story reveal was today but authors won't be revealed until next week), no on the second.
4. Write at least two media reviews, either in my journal or on LB. I only wrote one full review, for Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, but I wrote a bunch of capsule reviews for the
ladybusiness Recmas project, so I suppose I can count that as successful.Final reckoning on 2018 goals:
1. Complete the Journeyman Habit Pledge (240 writing days) for
getyourwordsout. Stretch goal: 288 writing days, which is about halfway between writing 5 days/week and 6 days/week. That's 24 days/month, which shouldn't be a problem most months, and I can push past it in months where I'm not traveling etc. to make up the difference. Yes on the first, and easily (I hit it before November was half over), not quite on the second, and that includes a hard push to write almost every day in October as well as November. 2. Complete and post Wardens of Ivalice, Part 3. No, and I don't even feel like I made all that much progress.
3. Participate in at least two fic exchanges and one Big Bang. I'd appreciate any Big Bang pointers or recommendations, especially if anyone knows of a good Reverse Bang coming up in the first half of the year. I did a bunch of exchanges this year, but I never even saw a Big Bang that looked halfway interesting. Have people stopped doing those, or am I just looking in the wrong places/in the wrong fandoms? Suggestions are entirely welcome, but I think I need to stop putting this as an official goal.
4. Two media reviews or other substantial articles each month for Lady Business.... Set a schedule for one political linkspam every two weeks, and stick to it. Boy did I ever fail on this one. Posting more in 2019 is a huge priority for me, and I've been thinking for a couple of weeks about how to approach it. I think I've come up with something; we'll see how it goes.
5. Finish every new story I start in 2018. (Exception: if I sign up for a challenge late in the year that has a posting deadline in 2019.) I totally accomplished this, but I also only wrote and posted 10 stories in 2018, and half of those were for exchanges with deadlines. So my success here feels like less of an accomplishment than I thought it might.
For a rough year, where I lost almost two weeks of writing straight out the gate when I got the flu in January, this could have been a lot worse. But it also could have been much better, especially in terms of output. I feel the most obvious place to start is my biggest change: signing up for a GYWO Habit pledge rather than a Wordcount pledge. I've always wondered if it would make more sense to look at writing days rather than words as my major metric of progress, because days written accounts for editing and story planning much better (whereas wordcount best rewards pure drafting). So to a certain extent, I should have expected wordcount to go down, and not be bothered by it. And I'd be okay with it... except that I posted so few stories, and wrote so few reviews. In part, I fear that tracking days written by itself incentivized me to spread out my projects for longer and write fewer words each day. If you go back and look at my charts, you'll see a lot of days with fewer than 200 words written. Some of are in fact days where my writing time was mostly spent editing. But more often than not, those are days where I sat down at the computer, poked at a story for the 10-15 minutes that I chose to count as a "writing day", and then stopped. Or wrote a post that just barely passed the threshold, or put in a few minutes on Lady Business tasks. Bottom line: I was much too generous in crediting myself with a "writing day", because I was so focused on hitting that 288 number. And when I start fudging the metrics to hit a goal number for the sake of hitting a number, rather than to accomplish whatever it was I created the goal to accomplish, that means the goal is not working.
So, in thinking about where to go next, I've decided to try something new. One thing I discovered from doing the Journeyman Pledge, and especially from setting myself this particular stretch goal, is that 24 days/month is not so much as average as a maximum, most of the time. So, although I've signed up for the same level GYWO pledge again, I'm going to approach it a bit differently. I'll still have 240 days written as a primary goal (with somewhat stricter rules on what counts), but with a stretch goal involving wordcount rather than extra days.
Which leads us to goals. I'm going to start by sharing my annual goals this time, and then those goals will inform what I do in January.
Goals for 2019:
1. Write at least 240 days (an average of 20 days/month), with a stretch goal of writing 125,000 words. That doesn't sound like a lot when you look at my historic output, but it's been five years since I wrote that many words in one year, so I think it makes a fine stretch goal. My definition of a writing day is drafting at least 500 words; at least half an hour of editing, researching, and/or outlining fiction or a substantive review or essay; writing up my portion of a Sidetracks, Favorite Media, or other collective review post on Lady Business (minimum 300 words); and/or writing and posting a substantial post on my journal (minimum 300 words). Even if I don't write enough for the day to be considered a "writing day", I can still count the words toward the grand total.
2. Post to my own journal at least two days each week. Post to Lady Business at least once per month (not counting regularly scheduled posts).
3. Write something about every book I read, every movie and show I watch, and every narrative game I play. It doesn't have to be a long or substantial review -- it can just be a few lines on Goodreads (for a book), a mention on a Lady Business's monthly favorites post, or one entry on a "five things make a post" type post. Getting into this habit will not only help me post to my DW and Lady Business more, it will also make it easier to keep track of what exactly I've read and watched, which I've had trouble with in the past.
4. Finish and post Wardens of Ivalice Part 3.
5. Participate in at least five fandom fic projects, whether those be exchanges, Big Bangs, completed bingo cards, or whatever catches my eye. Additionally, write and post at least two fics that are NOT in response to a request or a prompt.
Now, how does January fit into this plan?
1. Write an average of six days per week. (In the interest of starting the year out strong.)
2. Write two fics for
ladiesbingo.3. Participate in the 2019
snowflake_challenge.4. Search my DW interests and try to find at least one active, interesting community for all my main fandoms. Follow this community and participate at least once per week.
Some of these goals are very different from the usual goals I set in this space, and that's very intentional. Here where I am right now, in 2019, one of the things that's missing in my fandom life is a sense of belonging to a community centered around specific canons. I have lots of friends, and people I chat with about all kinds of things, but they are centered around things other than media properties. By making a purposeful effort to seek such communities out, I hope to promote more fic and meta ideas in my brain. It's an experiment for sure, but once that I think is worth making. I'll let you all know how it goes.
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