I’ve mentioned here a few times that I’m working on establishing and accomplishing a series of new writing goals. Those included:
- Cataloguing my work
- Getting published in more print magazines
- Finishing a personal book
- Doing more collaborative projects
I’ve added a few more goals to that list:
- Submitting work to anthologies
- Setting and achieving some clear goals for my 3 personal blogs
- Creating and executing a plan for more active promotion of my Hubs
Taking a look at my list, I’ve figured out that there is one specific writing goal that needs to come before everything else: getting organized!
I tend to be basically good at getting naturally organized. My freelance finances are in order. I’ve got my client’s files in good shape. None of that is a problem. However, I need more organization as it relates to these specific goals because there are areas where I’ve let things go. So, my specific goals for getting organized include:
- Doing my planning on paper. Several of these goals require creating action plans. I like to do those in my head but I’m actually going to do them on paper.
- Collecting all of my creative writing. I have poems, stories, essays and books that are written and half-written. They are in journals, on scraps of paper, on various computer files and who knows where else. Before I can reasonably submit work to anthologies and magazines, I need to be able to see what I have. This means learning about good methods of organizing this stuff and then going through the process of organizing it. That’s the big goal as far as this goes.
- Deleting all unnecessary files. I back things up all of the time and I have multiple copies of several things that I didn’t need to save in the first place. I want to get to where I only have what I really need again.
So, I’m still working on the bigger goals but I’m focusing right now on the small organizational goals that I believe will put me in a better place for meeting the big goals in the end.
I mentioned last week that I’d established some new writing goals for myself. Here’s an update on how I’m feeling about those so far:
- Creating a catalog of my work. I located all of the different disks and files that I’ve stored everything on over the years. That’s the first step in going through everything. That’s all I’ve done with it so far but at least I took a tiny action!
- One dozen magazine publications. I recently had someone request the right to republish one of my articles in a magazine. I want to get my hands on a hard copy of that magazine so I’ve emailed about that. I need to make a more solid plan about this goal though.
- Finish a personal book. I’ve committed to a specific book project that will take 9 months to complete. Since it’s in such early stages, I really don’t want to discuss the details but I’m on my way with this goal.
- Collaborative writing projects. I haven’t made any progress on this goal yet but writing about it today is making me feel more motivated to get some ideas out there for people to possibly pounce on.
Tell me about your writing goals. What tiny step have you taken recently to realize them?
As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve been working on some new writing goals. I love the fact that my freelance writing career has been very diverse. However, I feel like this diversity has also caused the problem that I haven’t made or met a lot of writing goals even though I’ve been writing professionally for nearly ten years. I’d like for that to change.
Part of my line of thinking is this:
I would really like to take a one-year sabbatical from freelance writing to pursue some personal growth and make some other life goals. I don’t know what will happen in that time. Although I assume that I will come back to freelance writing after that, I don’t want to bank on it. So … if I were to never return to freelance writing after that, what would I have liked to accomplish during the time that I worked as a freelance writer.
A few of the goals that I’d like to meet in the next three years are:
- Catalog of Work. I have a pretty good portfolio that links to a lot of my work. However, I’d really like to get a clear catalog of all of the work that I’ve completed. I want to be able to see all that I’ve accomplished in a clear manner.
- One Dozen Magazine Publications. I have been published in a few magazines but I have not pursued this as much as I would have liked over the years. I’d like to achieve the goal of being published in one dozen different magazines during the course of my freelance writing career.
- Finish a Personal Book. I have worked as an author on multiple books. However, these books were all commissioned or suggested by the publisher. I have several books that I’ve started on my own which I have not completed. I would like to complete one.
- Complete 5 Collaborative Writing Projects. I really love collaboration and I haven’t done enough of it. It doesn’t matter what the projects are but I’d like to complete at least five of them with writing as my part of the project.
There are some other goals that I have in mind but I haven’t figured out the details of them yet. These are the ones that I’m certain I want to complete in the next three years.
What are your writing goals? Are you ready to put them out there for the world to see?
We have all had that awful moment when we suddenly realize that the computer has eaten our work. It’s a moment of panic. In many cases, you can do a simple “undo” move and get your writing back on the screen but for that moment before you figure out that the work can be saved you feel this terrible sinking in your gut.
And sometimes, the feeling is even worse because the computer has won and there is not going to be any saving of the work.
This problem doesn’t happen to me often. Since I write all day long for a living, I’m really good about doing frequent saves and backing up my work regularly. I’m meticulous about it. But things go wrong sometimes. And every once in awhile I experience one of those situations when I’ve lost a big chunk of original writing and there aren’t many options for getting it back.
That happened to me about a month ago with the book that I’m working on. I’m writing a San Francisco travel guide based on my blog San Francisco is Sexy. Or I was until about a month ago. What happened was a stupid error … I was getting ready to reformat my laptop so I saved all of my work to my desktop computer. Only some things delayed me and I didn’t get around to the reformatting for a few weeks. At that time, I went to save the work to the desktop again. And I made a mistake.
For some reason, I just didn’t re-save the file that had the book in it. I saved everything else. Bookmarked sites I don’t need, work that is already online and doesn’t need to be backed up … but I simply missed that file. I had done a lot of work on the book in those few weeks. When I went to move the files back to my newly formatted computer and saw what I’d done, I felt this terrible disappointment in my gut.
The truth is that it’s not that bad. I still have the previous draft of the book from the first save. I know where all of my research came from. It’s not going to be that difficult to write the original copy again. Although I could pay money to try to get the most recent draft back, I don’t think it’s worth it because really it’s not that terrible to rewrite the thing again. In fact, I tend to think that it’s a chance to start with fresh eyes and to do a better write-up this time around.
However, I can’t seem to get my brain to move through the writer’s block that was caused by this setback. I know that it’s not a big deal and that it’s an easy re-write and that it might be better this time. I know that the only way to get it done is to get going on it. And yet every time I open up the document and see the missing pieces that I know were once there, I freeze up … I just don’t want to write it again.
I’m not sure what this means. That I’m not as committed to the project as I thought? That it’s not as exciting or appealing to me as it was originally? Maybe. Or maybe I’m just still sulking that the computer beat me this time. Since books don’t write themselves, I’m going to have to get over whatever it is. I’ll do that. Tomorrow.
I have written here in the past about my struggle to decide whether I should soldier on with projects started many years ago or whether I should just let them go in favor of starting something new. The answer I always come back to is that I will continue to sporadically work on old projects if something inspires me to do so but I’ll also leave myself plenty of room to start new projects.
I am thinking about this again today after just reading a post on the Gypsy Girl’s Guide blog. The author writers about how she has studied the work of a photographer who captured in images the growth of her cousin and sister over a ten year period. Thinking about this, the author writes:
“In my humble opinion, to build something continuously for ten years is a most admirable task, don’t you think? … Time brings the work a certain maturity and intimacy, that most definitely comes through in the final product.”
I don’t know if this is true for all of my long-term projects but it is certainly true for some of them. I have been able to go back to rework old ideas that started with only a glimmer of true understanding about the topic but have now grown because of more immersion in the topic over time. And I don’t just mean more research … I mean that there are pieces of writing that I started but hadn’t yet had enough life experience to clearly understand the emotions I was trying to convey and more time in life has given me more time to develop both the experience and the ability to articulate the experience that I didn’t have when launching those projects.
Is it the same for you? Do you like projects that drag on over the years or do you like to pick something, finish it and move on?
I have found through conversations with other people who write for a living that most of us have the same problem when it comes to our personal writing projects. That problem is that we don’t take them seriously enough as “real work” to make time for them in our work days. We make sure that we take care of our other writing first because “that’s what pays the bills” and often end up having no time left for those writing projects that really excite us.
I’m working on a few different projects right now that I do for myself and not for money. A couple of my blogs are this way, the poetry project I mentioned earlier this week in the post on collaboration is this way and it is this way with the book that I’m working on which is based on my blog San Francisco is Sexy. I am excited to have these projects going on because they are writing that comes from my heart instead of from a job application that I made at one point or another.
However I do easily fall into that trap of putting off this writing while working on my paid writing gigs. It’s not so much a problem with the blogs. I’ve gotten into the habit of writing my blogs during my normally scheduled workday due in part to the fact that these blogs link to my other work and promote it so it feels kind of like “real work”. But I’ve definitely had to learn to make time in my work day for the poetry and book projects.
It’s easier said than done. At the start of each week, I commit to spending a certain amount of time on this work. Then things get busy, plans get changed, deadlines creep up on me and I find myself struggling to get everything done. At the end of the week, I haven’t worked on these projects much and I find that I either have the choice of not working on them at all or of taking my free time on my weekend to work on them. Neither is really preferable to me.
Slowly, but surely, I am learning how to set aside a chunk of time during each work day to devote to these projects. Right now it’s just half an hour per day but that adds up to about ten hours per month and that adds up to something tangible in front of me on the computer. I do this because I want to take my own projects as seriously as I take those projects that I’m being paid to complete.
What do you do to make sure that you have time for personal writing projects even though you work on writing for a living?
As mentioned briefly yesterday in my blog carnival round up post, I have started a new blog called Diary of a Smart Chick. The purpose of the new blog is to serve as a place where I can compile information about my writing across all of the many different topic areas that interest me.
For a long time I have been trying to figure out the best way to keep an ongoing online record of all of my work. I write across so many different websites and topics that there’s never seemed to be a great way to do that. Although I’ve started using social networking sites like Twitter to let people know about blog and article updates, I haven’t found a good place to keep that information stored online.
In some ways, I’ve tried to do that from this blog. This blog is primarily about my experience as a web writer so it makes sense to use it to link to my writing around the web. However, I have always wanted this blog to be more about what it means to me to a be a writer each day than to serve as a showcase for my work. So I’ve tried to limit how much I link out to my other writing, especially writing that isn’t about writing and blogging and Web 2.0 issues.
I realized recently that I could create a whole blog devoted to the different topics that I cover regularly in my work. This coincided well with realizing that I wasn’t going to follow through on another project that I’d been toying around with for about six months. You see, Diary of a Smart Chick originally started as a website that was going to pull together news feeds from my twelve favorite topic areas. I was planning to discuss that news there and then allow for social networking about those topics on the site. But the logistics of doing that stopped making sense and I never finished creating the site. Now the site will serve the purpose of discussing those same twelve topic areas through the lens of my work around the web.
I hope that you’ll check it out as it develops. It’s only just launched so March is the trial period of beginning to post and discuss my work links. I’d love some feedback on what other writers think about blogs that are designed primarily for the purpose of compiling links to your web work in one place. How have other writes been doing this?
I am slowly starting to return to taking on a few freelance jobs here and there. Mostly this is because a girl supporting herself in the city needs to have an income to rely on. But partly this is also because I do like starting new projects and there are things about going back to work that I’m happy about.
One of the things that I’m discovering I really like is the excitement of browsing through all of the freelance writing and blogging jobs that are advertised each day. When life has been busy and I’ve been in a rush to get to actually working, the process of finding work has seemed like an annoying burden. But now that I’ve got some time on my hands to appreciate each part of the process, I’m really kind of enjoying the browsing through jobs.
There are so many different jobs advertised each day for at-home writers. There are jobs on Craigslist and Monster and Indeed and MediaBistro and Freelance Writing Jobs. The truth is that most of these aren’t jobs that I would want to do. They don’t pay well (or at all) … they aren’t on topics that interest me or based on work processes that work for me. But I still really like looking at all of the different projects that are being launched and developed out there.
Just looking through today’s posts, I saw jobs for editing books and conntributing to national travel guides and writing about home design and blogging about the college admissions process … in other words, there is a wealth of opportunity out there to write about so many different things and there are people out there snapping up those jobs and contributing to the body of written work that is out there for all of us to read.
It’s really all kind of amazing!
One of the things that I do as a writer is to regularly immerse myself in a variety of different projects which are designed to keep me interested and engaged in life. It is only through getting out and active in an array of different experiences that we gain the kind of creative inspiration that really keeps us fresh as writers. One of the projects that I have going on this year is called ‘the neighborhood project’. My goal is to focus on exploring one specific San Francisco neighborhood each month. The neighborhoods here are all so unique and interesting, filled with their own histories and cultures and modern attractions, that it is impossible not to find that there’s something to find in every single part of the city. I find that I benefit from this because it lets me explore a topic in-depth for one month (which is great for a writer/researcher to do) and also because it allows me to really go out in search of experiences and images that I wouldn’t otherwise have found.
February was Chinatown month because Chinese New Year fell in February and that meant that it was the time for the annual Chinese New Year parade. I had been saying that I was going to go to that event every year for as many Februarys as I’ve been in San Francisco and I’d never made it before, usually because it was raining. It poured down rain this year but I went anyway and it was a terrific experience. The streets were packed with entertainers and costumes and firecrackers and merriment and it was definitely something worth seeing.
Some of the other things I explored and experienced in Chinatown last month included:
- Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory. I had heard about this place on Ross Alley in Chinatown and wanted to explore it. I was expecting it to be a big factory because I knew that you could tour it to see how fortune cookies are made. However, it’s in a small building in an alley that appears unmarked. It’s just one room with handwritten signs saying that you should leave 50 cents if you wish to take pictures. Indeed, you can see how fortune cookies are made and you can sample them. Neat little place and it reminded me that not every famous things needs to be super historic or super modern; there’s an in-between that’s really what real life is all about.
- The alleys of Chinatown. I go through Chinatown nearly every day but there’s so much of it I’d never explored before. Every little alley has its own shops, its own art, its own architecture. You could spend an entire day wandering around the few blocks that make up Chinatown and stumbling across new things all of the time.
- Amy Tan. I knew that Amy Tan’s books are set in and inspired by the time that she lived in Chinatown. That inspired me to go ahead and start reading her books again, starting with the Joy Luck Club. These aren’t the types of novels I typically read and I was interested in the chance to immerse myself in them. I certainly appreciate them in a different way now that I live in San Francisco than when I first read them before I’d moved here.
Related Links: How Annual Projects Inspire Creativity, The Way That Berkeley Inspires
Question of the Day: What similar projects do you have going on that keep you going when you aren’t otherwise feeling motivated?
[Tags] inspiration, writing, creativity, projects [/Tags]
I am a firm believer in the idea that creative people must constantly refill their personal wells of inspiration in order to stay fresh in their work. I find this to be particularly true since I make a living as a writer. I spend almost all day, almost every day, writing for work. In order to avoid recycling the same ideas again and again, I work to engage myself in activities and projects that will broaden my creative experience.
One of this year’s projects is what I call “the neighborhood project”. The idea is that I’ll explore all there is to see in each of the different neighborhoods of San Francisco, taking them one month at a time. Because I made a move in January to begin working part-time in Berkeley, I decided that I’d choose that city for exploration in the month of January (as opposed to a neighborhood actually in San Francisco). It was difficult to do all that I wanted to in this first month because I didn’t make the move until halfway through the month. However, I did manage to experience some neat things which helped to inspire me in different ways.
Here are some of the things that Berkeley month did for me:
- I learned about some of the hiking areas in and around Berkeley. The only one that I have been able to check out extensively so far is Lake Chabot over in Oakland. The hiking that I did there gave me a renewed apprecation of the vast amount of nature that lies around the city. It also got me thinking about the way that places get their names (Lake Chabot is named after Anthony Chabot, as are many other things in this area). I’m not yet sure how that’s going to work it’s way into my writing but I hope that it does.
- I discovered Berkeley street poet Julia Vinograd. This got me reading poetry again which is something that I find really helps me get centered. There’s a simplification of words there that doesn’t happen in the other stuff that I read regularly, even blogs.
- I started to find the coffee shops, book stores, clothing stores and odds-and-ends shops that I hope will be places that I can go for self-expression over the next several months.
- I discovered the art museum associated with the college and put it on my list of things to visit in the next month. Also on this list I’ve put seeing a dance performance at Ashkenaz, music at Freight & Salvage, and theater at the Berkeley Repertory Theater. These are things that I hope will be ongoing sources of inspiration.
Because Berkeley is going to be a place that I’m going to be spending a lot of time, I was more focused on doing research for future sources of inspiration than really experiencing the creative moments available to me here right now. That sense of excitement about stuff that’s to come is, in itself, a great source of inspiration. I feel excited to see where I am which I think provides a great perspective for taking a new approach to work.
Tomorrow kicks off Chinatown month … who knows what I’ll discover in that famous San Francisco neighborhood?!
Question of the Day: Can you share something about Berkeley with me that I haven’t learned yet?
[Tags] berkeley, inspiration, writing, projects, creative, vinograd, chabot [/Tags]
