Dani's prime cut short list

1. What time frame am I looking at? a year since Dani deemed it so!
2. What does your current schedule/life style look like? I have a 40 hours a week job. I also have a few goals that take up some free time (training for a 5k run, Internet dating *grumble* and helping out my friend with her brand new twins) 
3. How important is writing to you currently? Important enough to want to write and to make it a daily habit. Not so important that it's at the top of my list.
4. Where are you as a writer? I'm coming out of retirement. As a child, teenager, and college student, I wrote. I wrote many papers, but I also wrote poetry in the margins of my theory books and took the occasional C.W. since then I've been off and on with writing nights with a few friends and attempted a couple of NaNoWriMos but nothing really has come from any of those prompts/attempts. I'm looking for a chance to really dig in and get something done with my writing.
5. What goals will better you as a writer? Ugh. improving grammar and spelling and being more mindful would be beneficial. I also really need to back up my work (the computer is old and is having issues multi-tasking--- or really single tasking). And it would be nice to have everything on the computer so I don't have to go through 20 note books just to find a couple of sentences I've been obsessing about.
6. What goals are most important to you? Finishing one of the novels and keeping up with the blog (since I have other people counting on me).

Fatty List

• set aside two hours a week to write (20 minutes. a day)
• finish a rough draft on past NaNoWriMo projects
• 1st Impressions <-- I want to focus on one novel and of the two, I like Thecla better
• The Thecla Series
• complete the word total of a NaNoWriMo in the allocated time (but I would be happy to beat my word count from the last two years/ go to an event/ donate to the NaNoWriMo)<-- It's important to me to donate and support causes I believe in. I don't think I can do a NaNoWriMo this year (between the blog and rough draft of a novel)
• back up all writing material on flash drives (and organize)
• Type up all hand written notes and stories (maybe 1 hr. a week?)
• Attend 2 conference/classes about writing
• do a publishing pitch
• Enter a contest and/or submit short piece to a journal
• Once polishing-- recheck out Writing Clinic and apply the practice.
• write a writing guide-- focused on writer's block and continuing the story.
• Fill up one notebook (because I have the bad habit of starting a journal and then buying a new one and writing in that one.)
• Screen play for 20 Years Later 
• write short story on the brothers
• have a good prompt list
• daily journal, dream journal, BLOG<-- weekly
• Go to a reading and/or open mic
• perform at a reading or open mic
• create an online writing group
• good prompt list
• blog weekly (and more)
• create a 'current life's truths' list as a prompt
• write writing articles for the blog
• regularly keep in touch with writing friends through the blog
• create a current life's truths list
• create a perfect cover letter
• write a short story on Labecca's china story
• Read and practice The Artist Journey
• Regularly keep in touch with writing friends. have writing night once a week and make it a priority!
• improve my spelling, grammar, and vocabulary. And be more focused when writing emails (I tend to switch out words like 'think' with 'like' and 'should' with 'show')<-- not sure how to measure this to make it a real goal.

Short List (From most important to least important)

• back up all writing material on flash drives (and organize)
• set aside two hours a week to write (20 mins. a day)
• create an online writing group (30 minutes a day)
• good prompt list
• blog weekly (and more)
• create a 'current life's truths' list as a prompt
• write writing articles for the blog
• regularly keep in touch with writing friends through the blog
• finish a rough draft on past NaNoWriMo project book one of The Thecla Series
• Type up all hand written notes and stories (maybe 1 hr. a week?)
• Attend 2 conference/classes about writing
• write a short story on Labecca's china story
• donate to the NaNoWriMo
• Participate in a contest and/or get a short piece published in a journal
• Fill up one notebook <-- I kept this one, because I'm almost there on one and I want to cross something off my list :)

Prime Cuts! My (Skoora) revised list of goals and an idea for open mic!

This is how I feel about time management: like a limp clock.

 In answer to Dani's six prime cut questions: the time frame we are working with is a year, and my current schedule is remarkably open, even embarrassingly so.  My life at the moment is spent applying for work, going to the doctors for mental and physical health reasons, going to the Kroc for exercise and overall well being, talking with and visiting friends when able to, and, oh yeah, writing!   Writing is indeed a priority, it is incredibly important to me.  It is frustration and release all at once and it is something that has been part of my life since the very beginning.  Where I am as a writer is standing on the precipice of taking it to the next level.  I've been fooling around with writing for a long time and writing has asked me to commit and I'm being a skittish little cock tease.  I want to commit, I really do, but the logistics scare me.  The following are the goals that will help me as a writer and are most important to me.  In order of least to most important here goes:

• Time management.  I need to put away my messenger, chat, and Facebook, and devote myself to my characters, plots, and worlds.  When I sit down to write, I need to write. Also I've decided to use this blog as my new fun time relief because writing about writing is still writing and, well, writing about writing is fun! :)
• Coffee.  I want to keep the creative juices flowing through prompts and other writing exercises, also through bursts of inspiration - let's hope those arrive in abundance.
• Finishing what I start be it a blog post, a poem, or a novel (or handwritten note or letter!).
• Grad school and everything to do with it.
• Characters.  I want a whole slew of people to populate my head and my time.
• Letter of intent.  I hope to mark this one off very soon.

And now for my idea of open mic fun.  Crimson and I have been toying with the idea of a web series but since that is kind of taking the back burner for now, maybe we could work on doing some recordings of us reading poems and snippets of our work and post it here.  That way we can share and hear how our work sounds and get feedback but also it would make us more aware of our goals and desires because seeing/hearing/realizing our work through visual and audio media is a good way to take writing to the next level.  

Amanda LaFantasie (Skoora) © 2012

Goal Post! (Skoora)

My Fatty List of goals:

• Publication - I want to self publish and do an e-book (series) they are hugely popular right now and have such wonderful fan bases and you can promote your characters/worlds via cafepress.com merchandise and what not and it's just so incredibly exciting to me.
• Publication - the end game is that I would like a big company (an established publishing company) to publish my books.  I want to play with the big boys and kick 50 Shades of Grey's ass out of the water.
• Time management.  I may kill Facebook.  I spent about two hours last night organizing my Sim's bedroom.  If I had been organizing my REAL bedroom that would be one thing but it was a stupid pointless game and I can't even justify it as a mode of relaxation anymore.  I want my stress relief to be going to the Kroc and playing board games and talking to friends that I love on the phone.  And the rest of the time, I want to write. 
• Characters.  I want to make a list of characters that are my babies and I want them to tell me their story and I will chronicle it.  I want them to do the hard work.
• Vocabulary.  I want to be slick.  Crimson mentioned H.P. Lovecraft and his lines of description are like an orgasm for the reader.  I want my writing to be an orgasm for the reader.
• Sex - speaking of orgasms.  I want to write erotic material and I want to find a balance between pornographic overload and too little.  I don't want to write pansy sex scenes but I don't want to turn off potential readers with too much explicit content.
• Back ups!  I recently purchased an external hard drive and I want to make him earn his keep.  
• Old stuff - remember that external hard drive - yeah I want to go through all my old stuff currently on there and see if I can expand on shorts that I've written in the past and also compare and contrast and see where I am now as a writer versus where I used to be even just a year or two ago.
• Support - I need support.  I want support.  I get it from Crimson all the time but I'm so excited about this blog because of all that it offers in the ways of creativity and holding me accountable for deadlines and goals. 
• Artistic immersion - writing is not just about words on paper, it's about images and feelings and verisimilitude and I want to share music links and artistic pictures and drawings that make me hot to write.  
• Practice.  It takes a master musician x amount of time to become a professional and that time is spent practicing.  No writing is wasteful.  All writing is practice and I want to push myself - just like exercising the body - through writing prompts.  Short ones, long ones, any prompts are welcome from my fellow writers and from my own searching.  
• Hastings - I have this intense desire to sit at Hastings and have a pile of my books beside me because I'm dong a signing.  Barnes and Noble would work too - point is, I want to be surrounded by books and promoting my own, like sending my kid out into the playground and hoping that he doesn't come back beaten to a pulp because I gave him a funny name.
• Coffee - and other things that help us write.  I want to find positive ways to keep the creative juices flowing.
• Semicolon queen - I want to use them less.  They are wonderful but they make me sound pretentious.  Never mind that I am pretentious, I certainly don't want to seem that way.
• Nanowrimo - I want to do all Nano events, including, if possible, a write in and, like Dani, I would like to donate to them when I have the chance.  I support what they do very much and feel that a great deal of my novel writing is directly thanks to them. 
• Grad school.  I want to do it and do it well.  I want to come out of grad school with a shit eating grin on my face that says 'yeah, I'm cool, I'm published, want some coffee sometime?'
• Letter of intent.  This is somewhat of a pressing goal as I need to finish this sometime this week.  I may post it on this blog and get feedback.  Even if you have to rip me to pieces, let me have it!  I want to be honest in my letter but I want my honesty to be portrayed perfectly and some ripping and tearing will probably be in order.
• FINISH!!!! I want to finish things.  I am terrible at this.  I have a dollar bill bookmarking a book that I started reading in high school and I still have yet to finish it.  There are about fifty pages left.  Maybe I needed to use a twenty dollar bill and that would have encouraged me to finish.  I need to give myself rewards that I really want for finishing things, regardless of the lust for publication.  I need to finish things.  Period.  And I think this group will help perhaps. 
• Writing by hand!  I want to write letters to people, and writing in journals and the like.  My hand writing is falling by the wayside and while I tend to think of written manuscript and cursive as unnecessary elements in today's writing, these things are the basics, they are how we learned to write in the fist place and still have merit.

Amanda LaFantasie (Skoora) © 2012

Short List Goals

Preface- Some of the contributors to our facebook club told me that they aren't the list writing type. Which is fine-- part of the allure of writing is that you can do you what you want--there are no set rules on the process of writing.  After some short talks I learned that one already has the goal of getting one for her novels published before her next birthday. And another just wants to get the creative juices flowing again (she's been out of her creative writing habit recently). So if you're at that point were you already know what you want to focus on, then just do it! I've started posting writing prompts (other contributors feel free to post your favorite prompts). After we get a good amount posted here, I'll create a prompt page that will list all the ones that have been posted (so it's easier to use).

Week 2 homework assignment-prime cut list

Ok, so now that we have a fatty list it's time to slim it down to a doable amount. Ask yourself the following questions:

1. What time frame am I looking at? For the purposes of this blog, I am willing to dedicate a year of being an engaged, interactive cheerleader. To our contributors, because of this, the longest time frame you have on the list should be a year (September 2013). If I'm not burned out or I still see that we have people still engaged we'll do it for another year.
2. What does your current schedule/life style look like? That is, 'How much time do you have to dedicate to your writing?' If you are already overwhelmed with a packed schedule-- you don't want to add on too big of projects. Keep in mind when you're narrowing your list what other goals, jobs, activities, responsibilities you have. Make sure that the intensity of your goals fit into where you are in life.
3. Kind of going hand and hand with the above question- how important is writing to you currently? Can you make it a priority? Is this a hobby or a career for you? It's alright if writing isn't at the top of the list. But be honest with your goals in how much work you are willing to do in this area.
4. Where are you as a writer? A writer that is just starting to write will, and should, have different types of goals than a writer that has been out of the habit or a veteran writer who has revised and polished pieces. Make sure your short list emphasizes where you are as a writer.
5. What goals will better you as a writer? There are always parts of the process that we favor. We like fun writing group nights with prompts or the excitement of starting a new piece or in my case outlining something. But then we lose steam, or have to do the hard work of revising, or researching publishers. blah. What good is a thousand written prompt excises if you don't do something with them? Sometimes we have to do the steps that we don't like to be better and more fulfilled as a writer.
6. And the most important question-- What goals are most important to you? If you don't care about what your goals are, you're more likely to abandon them.

Dani's Fatty List

• set aside two hours a week to write (20 mins. a day)
• finish a rough draft on past NaNoWriMo projects
• 1st Impressions
• The Thecla Series
• complete the word total of a NaNoWriMo in the allocated time (but I would be happy to beat my word count from the last two years/ go to an event/ donate to the NaNoWriMo)
• back up all writing material on flash drives (and organize)
• type up all hand written notes and stories (maybe 1 hr. a week?)
• attend 2 conference/classes about writing
• do a publishing pitch
• enter a contest and/or submit short piece to a journal
• once polishing-- recheck out Writing Clinic and apply the practice.
• write a writing guide-- focused on writer's block and continuing the story.
• fill up one notebook (because I have the bad habit of starting a journal and then buying a new one and writing in that one instead of the original one.)
• screen play for 20 Years Later 
• write short story on the brothers
• have a good prompt list
• daily journal, dream journal, BLOG<-- weekly
• go to a reading and/or open mic
• perform at a reading or open mic
• create an online writing group
• create a 'current life's truths' list
• create a perfect cover letter
• write a short story on Lebecca's china story
• read and practice The Artist Journey
• regularly keep in touch with writing friends. Have writing night once a week and make it a priority!

added from C.L list:

• improve my spelling, grammar, and vocabulary. And be more focused when writing emails (I tend to switch out words like 'think' with 'like' and 'should' with 'show')

My (Crimson Lantern ) Fatty List of Goals

For my part in the Fatty List of Goals I have been thinking and there are a few that have always been what I could call staples for myself...

1. Improve my spelling and grammar. My Dad used to tell me that I need to buy a comma.

2. Improve my vocabulary, I am always coming across words while reading that I look up. Some I retain while others I do not and I would really love to start doing a weekly vocabulary word.

3. Read more books. There are some classics that I want to tackle but it's not just the classics but not only those but read some others that friends or family suggest. I've always wanted to be well read.

4. Do more research. I adore the paranormal, steampunk, and I love reading lore from other cultures.

5. Finish something. Several years ago I actually finished a book but I'm not happy with it and often times I will write something, get 200 to 300 pages in and decide that I need to rewrite before it's even finished. I get overwhelmed or have a new idea and end up not finishing the story. Or I will get caught up on 'is this publishable' and be uber nit-picky about it, even discouraged.

6. Get something published. I've looked at going the traditional route, getting an agent, and trying to go through a publishing house. I have also looked at self publishing and e-publishing. There are positives and negatives to each.

7. New York Times Best Seller list, I've always wanted to be on it.

8. Write more eloquently and elegantly. I recently watched a documentary on H.P. Lovecraft and during the film they would quote passages from his stories that made me turn to goo and shiver.

9. Improve my writing habit. I want to work the amount of time that I do when am doing National Novel Writers month all the time. Or at least close to that. It would help if I could make a designated time to write every day.

10. Set word goals. Awhile back I tried to write x amount of words a week and I found that sometimes I managed to surpass that amount and I got a lot written. So, I think I want to try that again.

11. Being more descriptive. I've been told I am good with dialogue. However, sometimes I don't do as much with descriptions and people move darn it, I want to throw in more of people's quirks and mannerisms.

That's what I've come up with so far.  

Fatty Goal List.

Create your fatty list of all writing goals.

So take a few moment sometime this week and create a list of everything you want to do with your writing.  It can be something simple like-- 'I want pull out that favorite poem I wrote a few years back and polish it up,' to more grandiose ones like ‘I want to be the voice of my generation or I want to have a book on New Yorker Best Sellers List.’ List anything and everything.

And don’t limit the list to just producing things. Think about other aspects like publishing, communities, material storing, expanding your knowledge on desired topics (e.g. classes, conferences, books, research topics), organization of existing stories and/or articles/inspiration pieces, budgeting, writing habits, revising, list making etc.