History That Never Was

So my friend Folly, posted about her goals for the weekend writing retreat. And I just spent a couple of minutes figuring mine out, in the form of a ridiculously formatted and color-coded word document.

But I realized that while the color-coded word document is pretty, it does nothing to actually keep me on target. But if I post my list of goals here, and then make myself report back on them next week, that is a useful sort of motivation.

Will I actually get through all of these goals? Probably not. But I’m giving myself options, in case I get to the cabin and realize that I really can’t work on one of these things. After all, a couple of the projects are still in their infancy, and may require more work before I can actually go anywhere with them.

So I have a list of 6 things that I ought to work on. I’m going to set a goal of completing at least 4 of the goals, and 1 of those should be “Vodyanoi.” I also probably shouldn’t spend much more than 1/4 of my time on revisions in general, so I think my list should more accurately say “fix Vodyanoi and work on 3 stories.”

• Finish the Tam story (1,000-2,000 words)
• Rework and finish the Bernard story (at least 2,000 new words)
• Start the mermaid story (get 1,000 words)
• Work on the young king story (at least 1,000 new words)
• Revise “Vodyanoi” (read and dissect each scene)
• Revise Tick-Tock Tabby (outline all scenes)

Probably I can do the amount of writing (which only adds up to 5,000-6,000 words) I’ve suggested and the short story revision, as long as I stay on target. I’m voluntarily keeping my computer off of the wifi system, and there is a possibility that my phone will only work as an expensive alarm clock/notepad/calculator. (This has happened before.) So that’s one major distraction dealt with.

I know I’ll be in the cabin with 5 of my good friends (including hubbie), but I think we’re all trying to do a lot of distraction-free writing. (That is sort of the point!) It’s a 5 bedroom house with other indoor and outdoor space as well, so we should be able to separate ourselves if we need to. And I have my earbuds, though I forgot my iPod. I have about 50 songs on my phone, but most of them are not conducive to the writing I want to do. So I MAY allow myself internet access for Pandora. But we’ll see about that.

Alright. Wish me luck, and I’ll report back next week on how it all went!

Tags: novella, retreat, revisions, short story, writing

This entry was posted by dawn.vogel on Friday, September 7th, 2012 at 2:27 pm and is filed under Inspiration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.