Expanding My Goals

Monday, May 2, 2016

Written by Kodi Wolf at 4:49 PM

Somehow, I've been managing to get my writing done every day despite issues with my back (and the drugs that go with it) and trying to get my jewelry website ready to begin accepting orders.

To recap, my goal for April was to work on the outline for Lights of Life every day, which doesn't require a specific word count. I could add 5 scenes to the outline, but if they only require a few dozen words each to describe them, I'll have done a lot of work without a lot of words to show for it. Or I could have a series of scenes that I've already written, but then spend an hour working out exactly where in the story they need to play out and end up with no new words written, but some necessary work accomplished.

Even so, I still ended up with a total word count of 15,147, which averages out to about 505 words per day. My lowest words per day was 12 and my highest was 1,626.

And because I've been successfully reaching my goals these past few months, what else can I do but try to shake things up a bit? :)

So, I've come up with a plan to expand my goals and see what more I can accomplish.

My main goal will still be to continue working on the outline for Lights of Life, since I'm hoping to finish that up either this month or next. This will be my main daily goal, so even if I don't get anything else done for the day, I'll still consider it a win as long as that bit gets done.

However, I want to add a few more monthly goals, stuff I can work on or not each day depending on how I feel, but that I want to see completed by the end of the month. These goals involve me working on several of my other stories, namely Xena: Warrior Slave, Prisoner of War, and A Bondage Primer. Technically, the first step is getting them into Scrivener and if that's all I accomplish this month, I'll be happy. But really, the goal is to figure out what the next step is for each story based on where I'm at in the creative process and then come up with a plan for getting it done.

For example, Warrior Slave only has a few more chapters that need to be written and then the story is done. Those chapters are vaguely outlined, as in I know what I want to have happen in general in each of those chapters, but I don't have a lot of specifics. So, I guess the next step is brainstorming.

For Prisoner of War, I have a timeline and fairly solid outline, so it probably just needs a little more fleshing out (mostly figuring out how I want to get certain scenes into the story), and then I can pretty much just focus on writing. So that means the next step is organizing the outline and timeline into specific scenes.

For A Bondage Primer, again, I have a vague timeline with only a couple things filled in, and the rest I probably need to spend several months brainstorming on, before I'll start to have a solid enough outline that I can continue writing. So, the next step is lots of brainstorming.

Awesome! I just completed half my goal for the month. Now all I have to do is come up with the action plans (and get the stories into Scrivener, of course).

Thanks. I just needed to say that out loud. :)