jacquelineb | New year, new beginnings, old plans

Ah wow, it's been too long since I blogged here, and now's the time to rectify that. Well, I hope. I always tell myself each new year 'I must blog more, I must blog more'. I've made a couple of decisions about my online interaction that should hopefully make that easier. I think I've been spreading myself too thin for what I can manage. So that's one thing for the new year.

My writing plans this year are, as usual, ambitious, but hopefully this time tempered with a bit of reason. One goal is to aim to submit at least one short story per month - ambitious, but doable. I need something like that at least because last year, I'll be honest, I let the rejections get to me. A friend pointed out after I had 'Red by the River' accepted by Filament, it may be something of a curse, because no writer ever gets their first professional submission accepted, and I did just that, so what do I go and think? 'Well, that's easy, I'll everything accepted from now on!'

Ha, ha, ha...

So with setting a goal like that, it is something I can control. I think it was JA Konrath who said that you need to set yourself writing goals within your control - so 'I'm going to be published by x/y/z date' is not in your hands (unless you're self-publishing) but the number of submission you put in is. So if I focus on the submission over the acceptance, then it may all work out better for me in those terms.

This year also brings the Chinese Zodiac Year of the Dragon (only six days to go!), and rather than setting myself big writing goals for the Dragon Novel, I'm going to instead aim to get on with the research. That's really been the major barrier with getting on with it, because I've set myself fairly lofty goals in terms of research, but I think I've got a better way of going about it rather than 'READ ALL THE THINGS!' (which is so off-putting). If I can get more on top of things, I will make more of the planned Dragon Project. Then there is also a writing project with a friend that I have high hopes for - so lots of things to keep me occupied.

Am also going to start cross-posting to my dreamwidth journal and to tumblr. Am figuring that, again, it's time consuming to try think of a post for dreamwidth and a post for here, so why not just merge the two a bit more? Tumblr will still remain a spot for whatever pops into my head to link to or interesting things I've found online, but I'll add the posts from here there too. You'll be sick of me by the end of the year. ;)

And I think that's it. Do take a look at my previous post for a new work in progress. Just something to keep this blog occupied.

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