My Writing Goals for 2006

Or, Where do I go from here?

At this moment, there are two areas of my life in which I am working, sailing and writing. While Tillerman has provided me with encouragement and – dare I say it? – inspiration in the sailing arena, I am also getting inspired in the writing department by my brother Jerry, whose life you can observe over at Muddled Ramblings. For about two years now, he has been pursuing writing as a potential career, and just recently he made his first sale. Up until recently, writing has been just a hobby for me, a “wouldn’t it be nice if …” sort of thing. But over the past year or so, it, like the sailing, has led me to a more serious focus. Thus, I need to set goals that I can work toward.

1. Overcome fear. All my life, people have told me that what I write is good, and that I ought to submit things to get published. But mostly, I’ve been chicken; the fear of rejection has led me not to even try, except in relatively “safe” places, like guest editorials and feature articles in a small-town newspaper. I have to get over that.

1. Write at least 1000 words every day. This goal I know I can accomplish. For the past two years, I have successfully participated in National Novel Writing Month, in which participants try to write 50,000 words in 30 days. Especially this past year, I found keeping up the word count to be fairly easy. And I know that the best way to get better at writing is to write, regularly, every day.

1. Associate with people who both understand and support my writing. I find that there are a lot of people out there who, at least in principle, support what I’m doing, and they make great cheerleaders. Pat is supportive; my colleagues at the community college are supportive; the manager of the motel I wish I had been at this weekend is supportive; the owner and waiter at the Big Food Express were super-duper supportive – they graciously left me alone while I was working, and then after I shut the computer down, they took a genuine interest in what I was doing, and they even delayed closing the place – they made me feel like I was doing them a disservice by leaving, not by lingering. But actual understanding is harder to come by, and I really need to seek out a writer’s group for that.