I was inspired to create this long list of writing/reading goals with a few personal improvement ones thrown in for good measure, by Brooke Warner's post on Huffington on 52 goals/ideas for writers. I borrowed some of the items off her list but many are just mine. Feel free to borrow. You can see her post here:
Brooke Warner's post
There are 52 goals for 52 weeks in the year.
1. Submit at least one piece of writing for publication.
2. Get a part time job teaching college in the Fall (1 class)
3. Take a writing class.
4. Join SheWrites.com and set up a profile
5. Set aside at least 1 hour of time every week to write. Get up early on a weekend day and head to the coffee shop.
6. Go to the Loft Young Adult Writer’s Conference again this year.
7. Apply for a writers residency retreat and go.
8. Participate in Camp Nanowrimo this summer.
9. Subscribe to a writer’s magazine
10. Learn to meditate to decrease stress
11.Try the 500 word a day challenge for a month (summer)
12. Continue my book blog but limit myself to 5-10 posts a month, use the extra time for working on novel.
13. Go see a counselor to work on being a better human being
14. Map a book you love. It will teach you a lot to outline a book you've read more than once to see how another author thinks about structure, scenes, and narrative arc.
15. Write and publish an e-book. These can be as short as 25 or 30 pages (single stories or essays) and they can get your work on the map.
16. Enter a writing contest
17. Map out a timeline for your book, or for your next book. Consider when would be a reasonable publication date for your book and write it down. Post it somewhere where you can see it to hold that date as a goal.
18. Find and print pictures of my characters. Make a poster board or put in writing notebook.
19. Do a literary pilgrimage to see a site where a favorite author lived or wrote about-Kansas & Missouri to visit homes of Laura Ingalls Wilder
20. Take part 2 of Laura Ingalls Wilder online class offered by Missouri University in April.
21. Read a book on Writing.
22. Read a short story every Saturday.
23. Read a poem a day
24. Pay off my medical bills.
25. Revise some of my writing
26 Try to write at least one sentence a day on my novel!
27. Find a writing routine that works and stick with it.
28. Find a writing workspace in my home or a coffee shop
29. Make a playlist called “writing music” and write to it.
30. Use the journal in my purse to write down my ideas.31. Finish Iowa online fiction writing class- MOOC.
32. Start writing in a journal again- daily, 1 sentence a day at least.
33. Story map my book
34. Find my old outline and book in word that disappeared on this computer- put in a help desk ticket- use Geek squad
35. Create a Google doc with all my story ideas
36. Continue collecting news articles on my book topic. Put in writing notebook.
37. Create a new writer’s notebook for 2015 and make a collage for the cover. (the pictures in this post are from my 2014 writer's notebook)
38. Back up my blog posts on Evernote
39. Read 90 books in 2015
40. Lose 10 pounds
41. Eat lots of good dark chocolate and drink more tea.
42. Do Yoga to gain balance and strength
43. ?Print blog posts and put in writer’s notebook?
44. Be Brave and post some of my writing on Shewrites or Wattpad
45. Make time to read other peoples work and comment on Shewrites and Wattpad
46. Add new people to my writing group.
47. Create a vision board for your book. This is different than a book cover concept. It's a collage of images and/or words that inspire you, and that can keep you motivated and disciplined with your writing goals.
48. Participate in First National Readathon Day on January 24th
49. Set up and participate in Postal Mailbox book club on Goodreads
50. Make a list of your top 10 favorite books in your own genre and reread two of them.
51. Instead of buying books, read more books from my bookshelves and then give them away to share my love of reading with others.
52. Create Japanese and England themed weekends for my kids to immerse ourselves in another culture.
53. Travel to Peru.
Mantra: Love thyself, hug thyself, forgive thyself.
Happy 2015!
What are your goals?
