Tag: goals

It’s a New Year! Hello 2017, Good-bye 2016.

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New year, new resolutions, new goals!

Although, before I let you know about my new goals, maybe I should review my progress in 2016. I had goals and did make some progress. Here’s how I listed them in my deviantArt journal at the start of the year:

The important resolutions in 2016:

1. Art every day.
2. Draw every day.
3. Social media/blog every day.
Then there are some others to help me accomplish those and all around be more productive, like limiting how much I spend watching TV (*cough* anime *cough*) and gaming (Yay Guildwars 2!).

The Goals for 2016:

1. Start posting pages for my web comic Fur & Fangs!
2. Finish the outline for F&F.
3. Finish the script for F&F.
4. Audition for Hiveworks with F&F!
5. Start the next drafts on Mythics & Chook’s story.
6. Make stuff to sell.

Writing every day was also part the the resolutions, so I don’t know why that didn’t make it onto the list there, but I guess this was the deviantArt journal, so it was geared towards art.

How did I do on these goals? For the start of the year, great! Up until I had two consecutive family visits I was writing and working on my comic (arting) almost every day. About 85-90% of the time? I still watched too much TV and played too many games, though. My time-management left much to be desired. I did start posting comic pages! I did audition for Hiveworks (and was rejected, but hey, I applied)! I almost finished the outline for F&F (still have the last act to fill out).

I did NOT social media/blog every day. Major fail there. I got nowhere near close to finishing the script for F&F. I only made 2 necklaces to sell and never posted them anywhere. I strained myself in the Hiveworks audition process and put a hiccup in my updating schedule for my comic, and once those family visits happened I completely fell off the wagon due to situational depression and then even after I recovered from the depression I failed to get back on the wagon art-wise. I did get back to writing, though, and finished the year pretty strong in that.

You want to know how strong I finished the year writing-wise? I managed to write 158,682 words! Most of that was comic script, some of it was fun fluff, and some was on my novel.

Overall, I’d say I succeeded and failed enough to neutralize out 2016. I plan on learning from all that and doing much better in 2017!

Here’s my resolutions and goals for the year ahead!

2017 Resolutions

  • Become a professional from-home worker by establishing and maintaining professional practices and self-management.
  • Write every day.
  • Art every day.
  • Journal every day.
  • Be kind and helpful. Make friends and uplift others. Be a light.

2017 Goals

  • Finish a draft of Mythics.
  • Finish the F&F Outline.
  • Make merchandise.
  • Resume posting F&F and maintain steady update schedule.
  • Create a couple short-form comics.
  • Establish myself as a streaming artist.
  • Build my audience.

I’m already slipping a little on my resolutions, but this week I plan on taking them by the horns and showing them who’s boss!

How did you do on your goals/resolutions for last year? Do you have any new ones for 2017? Tell me about it! 😀

Writing with Goals

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Hi! Long time no see. 😛 I took on a freelance visual effects job recently that I thought would last for two weeks and then stretched out to almost six months. It ate my time. Sorry for the absence, but I’m back now!

And I wish to return with a word or two about writing with goals. Sure, all these tips and advice are great help, but they won’t do you any good without a goal, a SMART goal. What is a SMART goal, you might ask? Well, it’s a goal that works because it’s: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound.

Goals like, “I’m going to write a book!” are great and all, but in order to achieve them they need to be broken down into SMART goals, like NaNoWriMo’s “Write 50,000 words in 30 days.” That fits all the requirements. Fifty thousand words in a month is a very big goal, though, one I don’t recommend doing on a regular basis, but 20-30 thousand might be more doable.

You might be saying, “Well yes, Senpai, writing 20k words a month sounds like a good goal, but what about all the other aspects of writing a story?” All aspects of writing a novel, comic, or other type of story can be broken down into SMART goals to help you keep moving forward. You can plot out your story to a pre-made structure or method in a month, or develop a character a day. If you’re not a word-count kind of person you could write a scene per week, or decide on a time minimum to write every day.

Not only do SMART goals help you move forward, they give you something to look forward to accomplishing. Once you achieve your goal you can take a moment to celebrate before moving on to the next SMART goal. Don’t party for too long, though. Once you get your novel written there’s revision, querying agents, and other things you can make SMART goals for to help you achieve that nebulous goal of getting published!

My friend Whitney recently wrote about how she’s using SMART goals to help herself in her writing.

Go, write, win!

Your Writing Senpai

Hello 2015!

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I’m considering today my first day of the year.  It’s the first day my hubby goes back to work, and therefore the first day of a regular-ish schedule.  I got up at 7:30.  Thirty minutes later than planned, but hey, I got up!  I figured out how to work the treadmill my parents got.  Took longer than i thought, so my planned 30 minutes for exercise this morning turned into an hour, and my new little iPad lost my internet, so things went different, but hey, I exercised!  And I will exercise more at lunch and in the afternoon!  Yay!

So I guess it’s the time of year for resolutions and goals.  I pretty much failed at all my goals for 2014.  The only one I got close to was exercising daily.  I managed that for three months, about, then fell off the wagon with NaNoWriMo in November.  Oh well.  I did make progress on my stories.  That’s important.  And now I don’t have to work at a job job, so I can use all my days every day for being productive on projects and stuff!

So my big goal/resolution for 2015 is to make every minute count.  To master my self-discipline and be productive every day.  I must write, draw, and do something productive every day, starting from today!  And exercise.  That’d be good too.

I’m also rewriting my webcomic and restarting it sometime this year.  Finishing the “2nd” draft of Ian’s 1st story, rewriting Chook’s story, and planning for the next stories after those.

What are your resolutions and goals this year?

Summer Goals

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My writing goals are:
-Finish the novel I’m working on.
-Do a major editing pass on a novel I wrote before.
-Manage 50,000 words to the second book of the story I wrote before for NANOWRIMO Camp in July.
-Write something new every day.

Reading goals:
-Join the local book group and read their books once a month.
-Read two other new novels or writing help books each month.

Fur & Fangs:
-finish a page a week so I can start posting again.