What and When . . . just as Shonna ordered

(Argh! I thought I had the procrastination monster licked this week. I wrote this post last Wednesday! All it needed (I thought) was a short five minute polish and posting. So when does it get posted? Late! Argh! I’m doomed.)

          What and When. That’s Shonna’s assignment. Decide what you want to accomplish by the end of the year and when you are going to do it. As often happens, Kitty and Shonna and I are on the same wavelength. This is exactly what I’ve been doing this week.

          My what: Playtime!

          I will write. I will, as Kitty reminded us last week, write because I want to. I will write what is important to me. It’s important to me that I create entertaining stories. It is not important to me that I sell them. So for now, in regards to the fiction, I am just writing. I have a novel I’ve been working on for years. It has grown and sprawled and become a huge monstrosity that exhausts rather than energizes me. I want to organize it into one story, and I will spend some time on it, but it is not going to be my focus. (Sorry, Shonna and Kitty! )

          At least for the next couple of months I am going to just write anything I want to write. I said I was going to do that at the beginning of the year. Then I started trying to force complete stories from my head when I only had isolated scenes. That’s when writing took on this alter-ego and became a thing I wanted to avoid. No more! I am writing for me. If, in the process, I create something suitable for the market, that’s great. I’ll rejoice and get on the published author ride. (That would be so fun!) If not, I’ll leave all my snippets, half-finished stories and (hopefully!) completed novels to my children and heirs. Perhaps a future generation will find joy in them. I will have received joy enough in the creating of them. (But I still hope they’ll be published in my lifetime. )

          More what: I have several non-fiction projects I want to finish. I will work on those. I will finish one of them by the end of the year. Because of what I am learning/being reminded of about myself, I’m not going to limit what I work on, just that I work. When one or the other of them near completion I will consider “setting the goal in stone”. For now, for my own creative health, I need to stay fluid.

          My when: Every weekday.

          I’m keeping this fluid, too, at least to start. I’m not establishing a set time that I have to write, just that I will write each day. I will write at least 115 words of fiction. That’s about what I need to “catch the muse”. Or, if the muse is hiding, that’s about what I need to break through my own motivation inertia. (And the number is ‘off” enough to appeal to me on a level I’m not sure I quite understand, but I’m going with it. This is the season to listen to, enjoy and cater to my creativity.)

          There you have it. My goals for the next four months. What are yours?

(When I went to edit this post, as often happens, I realized I had multiple thoughts, enough for at least two blog posts, in my rough draft. In separating them out, this thought needed more than five minutes work. (But not much more.) That means I have next week’s blog almost ready. Yehaw! That Procrastination Monster in on the run!)