M.J. Fifield

Well, it’s a new year which means I’m kicking things off with a monster post with (as the title would suggest) a shit-ton of goals for 2022.

As per usual, these goals are broken up into three categories: writing, health & fitness, and other. Listed here will be the big, bold goals with a due date of December 31, 2022. Not listed here will be how these big, bold goals will be broken down into monthly, weekly, and even daily goals. So, I guess, just know I’m doing it?

I like setting goals for myself. Even if it seems like I never make much progress on them, I think it helps to have set them in the first place. I shudder to think what my day-to-day life would look like if I didn’t have them. Darkness, chaos and probably some dragons… (Name! That! Reference!)

The Writing Goals

—Edit/Revise Full Circle and send to the beta readers

So, last year I finished the first draft of this project. It’s been sitting in the metaphorical drawer since about September, which means it’s about time to print out this monster project (though at 236k words, it’s not my longest manuscript ever) and rip it to shreds.

January goal: Print this puppy out, find some red pens, and let the shredding commence.

—Complete the first draft of the Terrible Romance Sequel

Yeah…this is a carryover from last year. Though I did make some progress on it during November’s NaNoWriMo event, I didn’t finish it. So I’m going to try to do it this year.

January goal: Nothing. I need to think about some things, so this project’s on the back burner for now.

—Participate in all three NaNoWriMo sessions (April, July, and November)

I’m still doing the ML thing, so…yeah. It’s on the list. Please note how this goal states ‘participate in’ but not ‘win’…

January goal: Nothing. I won’t have much to do for NaNoWriMo until we get closer to April.

—Attempt to make some attempt at marketing at least once a month

This goal went pretty poorly last year—although there were only two months where I did absolutely nothing (like a CHAMP!), so it definitely could have gone worse. To be honest, I don’t have particularly high hopes for this year magically being better, but if it’s not on the list at all, I definitely won’t try. So here’s to trying!

January goal: Come up with an idea to try and, you know, try it.

Health & Fitness

—Stop drinking so much damn soda and drink more damn water

I tried to do this last year and ended up going in the complete opposite direction (like a CHAMP!). Now I shall attempt to correct that.

—Walk, run, or bike an average of three miles per day

This goal is slightly tweaked from years past. Some days aren’t conducive to walking three miles for whatever reason. Instead, I’m aiming for the average. Three miles a day for an entire year comes out to 1095 miles. So basically that’s the goal. 1095 miles by December 31st.

All The Rest

—Declutter

I think this goal makes the list pretty much every year, and every year I pretty much do the opposite. But this year, the significant other and I have started to bandy around another ‘D’ word…Downsize. If we go through with it, I will definitely need to declutter. But even if we don’t go through with it, I should still probably declutter. I’m not a hoarder or anything (unless you’re talking about books or notebooks or pens or post-it notes or Funko Pop! figurines or…maybe I should be quiet now.) but I’m guessing there’s still a lot with which I can and should part.

January goal: Take that bag of books that’s been sitting in my office for two months to the Free Little Libraries in the area and donate them already.

—Read a damn book at least once a month

I have NOT done well with my reading goals lately. One book a week has been too much to ask, so this year, I am scaling back and going with one book a month. You may be saying “that’s not a challenge” but you should know that I only managed to read eleven books last year. Total.

I hate how long this slump has lasted. It’s just getting sad now.

January goal: Finish reading that Janet Evanovich book I started reading at the end of last year. There’s only, like, fifty pages left to go, so I think even I can finish them by the end of the month.

So, on that note, I’m outta here. Thanks for stopping by. I hope you had a great New Years, and that 2022 is kind to you all.

Did you set any goals in 2022?

When last we met, I was in the midst of a two-pronged NaNoWriMo experiment.

Prong One: The Pot Luck Technique, where I worked on five different projects, following my brain/muse to whatever WIP it was inspired to work on in any given moment.

Prong Two: The Reverse NaNo Technique, where I started off the month with higher-than-average daily word count goals that got increasingly smaller as the month progressed.

Today, I shall talk about the results of this experiment.

First of all, this happened:

So yes, I earned a win. It was my fastest win ever (earned on November 19th), and I think that’s totally due to the aforementioned experiments (details to come). Because I am my region’s ML, I continued to write past the 50k mark (sticking around through the entire month is part of the deal) and ended up with a grand total of 63,596 words.

Which may sound impressive, but you should know that my wrimo buddies were absolutely crushing it this past month. One of them wrote over 235k words. In thirty days. Another had over 130k, and several ended up over the 80k mark. I bow down to their awesomeness.

Even if they made me feel like a slacker.

But seriously, they’re awesome.

Okay, so on with the post. Let’s talk about the techniques and what I thought of them.

POT LUCK TECHNIQUE

I liked this technique. It really allowed me the flexibility to follow my creativity wherever it went (even if it just went to bed). Usually in November, when I’m working on my one WIP, and have tunnel vision or whatever, I get stuck from time to time. I flounder, I stare at a blinking cursor, and basically I do all those things you never want to do when you’re trying to write 50k words in thirty days.

Having the ability to shift from one WIP to another cut down on those less-productive periods. Don’t get me wrong—they still happened, but they didn’t happen as often nor did they last as long. I had five WIPs from which to choose in three different genres, and that really appealed to my particular mindset this past month. I knew I was lacking in focus, so having options (and having so many options) definitely took some of the pressure off.

Here’s where the five WIPs ended up. The first number is the starting word count on November 1st. The second number is the word count as of midnight on November 30th.

Terrible Romance Sequel: 49,380/61,673

Adventures In Babysitting: 0/9,762

Threnody: 0/23,300

How Many Angels: 0/9,740

The Third One: 0/8,622

I think I will definitely make use of this technique again. Overall, the Pot Luck Technique gets two enthusiastic thumbs up.

THE REVERSE NANO TECHNIQUE

This technique was…fine. I was less thrilled with this and probably will not be using it again in the future.

But that is because about two weeks into this thing, I had about 80% of my word count total done because I was writing 3,000–4,000 words every day because I was trying to hit those Reverse NaNo daily goals (the first two weeks of this technique are brutal, word count wise). A fellow wrimo sent me a message pointing out how close I was to winning (a fact I had not actually noticed because I was so hyper focused on the daily word counts and not the cumulative total) and when I realized the truth of that statement, I decided to just keep the pedal to the metal and power through to the end.

Which led, as I’m sure you can imagine, to some exhaustion and maybe a wee bit of burnout. I woke up on November 6th and literally said, “Oh God. It’s only Day Six. How the hell am I going to make it through the rest of the month?!?”

So while it did lead to some not-too-shabby daily word counts, I don’t think this technique was worthwhile for me in the long run. I’m not sorry to have tried it, though. We never know what will work for us until we try it out. But yeah. This technique was a big Meh for me.

THE FINAL WORD

While I hit the 50k goal, I did not achieve my goal of completing the first draft of the Terrible Romance Sequel. (Honestly, between those two goals, I would have rather finished the draft, but that didn’t work out.) Some progress was made, however, and I may have worked through a major plot problem early on in the story—meaning I at least justified keeping it as is for now…So, not the progress I had been hoping for, but teeny tiny progress (or at least the temporary illusion of it) all the same.

I’m still not convinced that ANY of the five WIPs I worked on in November will ever amount to anything at all (I seriously don’t think I’m smart enough to pull off my concept for TRS), but it was an interesting thought experiment, if nothing else. And my brain offered up an intriguing-as-hell possibility for Threnody. I don’t know nearly enough about that project yet to know if that possibility is at all viable (and if it is, it would likely only be a part of a subplot), but it doesn’t matter right now.

The point of NaNoWriMo (for me, at least) is just to set a big, crazy goal for myself and jump down that rabbit hole of creativity and see where I end up. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t. Sure, I’m way happier when it works out, but there’s always something to be learned from the journey itself.

Or something possibly smart-ish sounding like that. I’m really tired.

Anyway, because I’m obsessed with the show, here’s a nice inspirational Ted Lasso gif with which to end this post:

Did you participate in NaNoWriMo last month? If so, how’d you do?

Thanks for stopping by. Stay safe and well, all.