Back at the start of November, I set for myself writing targets for #AcWriMo. In the spirit of accountability, this post reviews those targets.
1. Finish and submit my three outstanding short pieces. They just need to be off my plate so that I can focus on something else.
I completed two of the three, but I chose to hold off on sending them off until I have finished the third. I’m optimistic that this can happen by the end of the year.
2. Spend at least one hour each week writing on one of my new academic projects. For this goal I’m going to set an absurd (for me) target of 500 words an hour, for a minimum of 2,000 fresh words on top of whatever else I write this month.
I spent an hour writing on new projects in two of the four weeks. Four would have been better, of course, but these projects are in a state such that any progress is good progress.
3. Write one book review blog post per week.
I published two review posts in November, one on The Final Strife, one on The Medieval Crossbow.
4. Write one other blog post per week. Writing begets writing, as they say.
Aided in no small part by the decision to start publishing a weekly roundup of news and stories that I read in a given week, I achieved this target. I published four posts, a What is Making Me Happy on my new tea infuser, a post about Twitter, and two weekly varia posts.
5. Continue writing in my journal every night. In particular: November has 30 days: write 28 entries.
I wrote 26 entries in 30 days. One of those might have been in a morning, rather than an evening.
6. Write a recap blog post for December 1 that reviews the targets and reflects on my month in writing.
I missed this by a couple of days but met it in spirit.
If you’re a stickler for such things, I successfully completed one of my six writing goals in November. Spiritually, though, this was a wildly successful #AcWriMo. I set my targets with the understanding that this is the busiest time of my year and that good writing habits are the secret to a good writing routine. (The secrets to good writing, on the other hand are a little more arcane and involve reading, attention to the poetry of language, and learning to edit, but you can’t write well until you write.) While I didn’t hit these targets, I made demonstrable progress on every one of them and, in so doing, primed the pump for more writing just as soon as I finish the final grading push of the semester.
Noodlings 