New Year's Resolutions - 2011

I shall start with the skeleton of years past, and flesh it out with new thoughts. In the essence of reducing excessive repetition, I'll just list the high-mark professional and personal items. Changing things up a little bit, though, I'll give you the list in two parts: Things I can control, and "Things I would like and will try for" but are ultimately outside my direct, sphere of influence.

What I can do:

1) (a) Write. The daily routine (250-500 words per day - on a project).

I've had higher goals in the past, but then when things got down to it, there were days that wouldn't hit mark, and days that would sail clear over. Writing by hand (as I've been deciding to do for longer, more creative pieces), this means writing about one to two pages a day. Not necessarily a lot, but considering books are measured in pages, it's not too bad of an idea. Besides. I will likely write a lot more, depending on how many projects I'm looking at, and that doesn't even take into account any blog posts, or "non-project productive" things (emails) I might write.

1) (b) Write multiple things.

This isn't to say "have a dozen projects going at once" (although I might, to some degree), but to write different types of things. To paraphrase the Book of Scalzi: Non-fiction/technical/editorial pieces may not be romantic, but they can pay pretty well, and there's a lot more places for them. And those types of pieces are more likely to help pay bills while the fiction is still making the rounds.

1) (c) Marketing and sending submissions out.

A writer cannot be published if they do not send anything out.

2) Get weight down... The ultimate goal will be to get to between 175-185 (target), but for now the idea is to get into (and stick with) a fitness routine, using some of the things that I've learned over the past year. For future reference, I'm starting the year between 215-220.

3) Read 30-40 "new" books.

I've got about 8-10 holdovers from my stack I started 2010 with. Along the way, between required "class" reading, I've added other books that glued themselves to my hand, preempting others from the stack. I'm going to try a list approach this year: 100 books. Pick about 75 titles as my "To Read" list, early on, and leave room for another 25 to be added from ones that may be picked up during the year.

What I am hoping for:

1) (a) Writing output: Projects can be unruly, and what may start out as a good idea for a short grows longer with each synapse that fires. Novel ideas may only work as a sub-plot. What I would like to produce by the end of the year are some combination of the following: 1-2 novels (50k+ words), 2-3 polished short stories/novellas. 6-10 (academic) articles, nonfiction pieces, or other similar works.

1) (b) Publications/Presentations/Conferences: I'm brewing a couple of ideas for some academic papers that I would like to present at conferences. I am also looking at a writing conference/workshop late in the year, as well as trying to get into some "workshop" tracks at conventions (specifically looking at WorldCon, but maybe others).