Finish my novel by January 1 2019. It’s been 1.5 years since I promised the agent I would send it “soon” and it’s been the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I have 20 single-spaced pages left and I’m trying not to panic in giving it the ending it deserves while under the holiday crunch. Please cross your fingers for me…
Use 2019 to complete and submit Shepherds of Haven (!) If I end up taking the LSAT and applying to law school, this may be overambitious, but I’m going to put it here anyway…
Good luck to everyone else in achieving their goals, it’s nice to be able to support each other!
I spent a few years publishing before the negative side of the industry beat me down to nothing and I gave it up. I told myself it wasn’t my dream anymore. I told myself I was OK just writing little ficlets no one ever reads. And then I started playing CSGs and this little voice piped up in the back of my head. You know you still have a story to tell, Cosmo… And I couldn’t keep lying to myself.
So @HoneTheDroll (who also happens to be my writing partner and my reading partner) and I have been talking in whispers. Can we? Should we? Yes. And…maybe? We should at least try.
So that’s my goal for 2019: start a CSG with the person I love and trust most in the world. Be F’ing BRAVE. Because it’s still my dream. Because I still have a story to tell. Because I can.
Stretch goals? Get a WIP ready to share, get feedback, learn, grow, evolve the story.
I think I may be overly ambitious, but my goals are:
I would love to finish writing my WIP by the end of 2019. Having a game published under HG is a dream of mine ever since I first read Heroes Rise, my first COG.
Successfully submit a children’s book for a writing competition in my country. It’s going to be weird to write in Portuguese again after spending the last two years writing short stories in English, but fingers crossed.
But most of all, I want to write (and read) every single day. That’s my main goal. Kick laziness and self-doubt in the ass.
I guess I also have to finish writing my masters thesis, but that’s not half as exciting.
Long term goals require short term milestones, however.
December of 2018: finish the spider demon path of the game. Also, before the 15th, complete two works for contests: one is a horror screenplay contest and the other is the interactive fiction contest.
Also complete a short film.
I’m on holiday so I have lots of free time for creative work … though I may have over-committed.
I was taking a scriptwriting class this semester and I really enjoyed it and was doing well for a while but after midterms, shit went down and things have gone very not good grade-wise. I had some talks with my teacher and academics advisor and they had me withdraw from the class since there’s no chance of catching up this late in the semester and I’m going to retake it in the spring to hopefully do better so I don’t have just a straight F on my transcript. I get really hung up on trying to get the words right before I put them down on paper (or whatever it is I happen to be writing on) so that’s definitely something I want to try to overcome. It’s frustrating because I really like writing and I’m finally starting to understand storytelling and what works in storytelling thanks to this class being geared toward films and other visual mediums instead of the more traditional writing which I’ve always struggled with, but there’s just that one road block stopping me from actually doing it
I’ve been really into audio dramas lately and one of the people who made the Wolf 359 podcast started an audio drama writing event for November last year to be an alternative to NaNoWriMo so maybe if my classes next year allow time for it and I’m not burnt out from Inktober, I might try and give that a go
I also want to get my prep work for my WIP done enough for me to get some proper writing for it started by the summer
Some practical tips on how to leap over that hurdle of just putting words to paper:
Set aside one hour. No games, no Facebook, no texting, no human contact. If you’re not writing, you’re staring blankly at the wall. Meditation techniques may help with the blankness. Boredom will easily overpower your reservations.
Go for a walk without music. It helps refresh your mind. Also, movement is shown to spur creative thinking.
Sit at a cafe with a nice warm pot of tea. It’s my own little ritual. Doesn’t matter what cafe for me. The white noise of other people is good. Even if I only get a little bit done, I’m happy, because going to a cafe is nice anyway.
Eight hours of sleep and three square meals a day are more important than getting another thousand words. Take care of yourself first.
Oh and the most important one, can’t believe I forgot:
You need a steady diet of new experiences. Take the time to expand your worldview. Go to art museums. See plays. Watch movies at your indie theatre. Talk to all the weird people at the concerts. Strike up conversations on public transport. Go to parties.
My problem is less about the story since I imagine how I want it to go in my head pretty well, and more that I’m a huge perfectionist and thanks to growing up with english being my second language and getting and honestly terrible person who took real joy in failing students as my english teacher in my second year of high school, the physical act of writing gives me really bad anxiety
I write best when I’m alone and there’s no one to judge me, but that’s kind of a problem when it comes to things I have to turn in for a grade. My school offers only one semester’s worth of free counseling and I only really realized I have a problem towards the end of that, so I’ve been trying to work that out on my own without much success
I’ve heard that my school (or maybe just the school’s GSA? The details pretty unclear) is offering a new counseling program of some sort that’s free so I’m planning to look into that
Well you’re doing a great job here on the forum! Writing anything on the internet no matter how banal is still putting your words out there for other people to read.
Probably the best thing I did for accepting critique is spending a lot of time on reddit. Getting “downvoted to oblivion” is inevitable and you have to develop a thick skin after a while. I barely blink when a comment goes to -50. People will be people and I’ve got nothing to prove.
My major goal is to complete a mini, tabletop adventure-esque game and release it here for free. Mostly I want to know that I can actually finish a small project before moving into bigger things.
My goal for this year is to finally get this story I’ve had in my head for 10 years and get my but into gear lol. It wasn’t due to laziness that I haven’t wrote the book it’s just like I felt it wasn’t strong enough and it need more thinking put into it.
I finally got the gist of what I want and now I plan to make it my first choice game :).
By the end of the year I want this story to be solid and ready to be coded for a game