Writerly Commitments - It's Never Too Late

I may or may not have said all this already, but I feel I owe you all something.

People make New Year's Resolutions, yes? Well I don't. I hold to the philosophy that if something's worth doing, you do it now - usually. But Script Frenzy's shown me that sometimes we all need a jumpstart to get us going. A timeframe and a deadline works wonders on my work. This is why I've made something new for myself: Writing Commitments.

Before Screnzy, my creative drive was all but dormant. I wasn't writing anything and I felt sorta guilty about that. But Screnzy gave me the energy, that impetus, to start up again. The goal of a hundred pages made its mark upon me. When I completed Script Frenzy I set myself goals that I wanted to achieve throughout the rest of the year (only seven full months remaining, oh dear). The goals were (and still are) as follows:

1. Write a novel.
2. Write a short story (or five pages of a story) per week; this excludes the novel.
3. Enter at least five writing related competitions; these exclude events run by the OLL.
4. Partake in NaNoWriMo.

Now these, I believe, are goals that I can manage - at a stretch, no less. The novel is already in progress - a week in and I'm at 3,000 words already (Prologue and Chapter One inclusive) - and I've started one short story and resurrected another within the past month. (I haven't actually finished the short story, which seems like cheating, but I'll get round to it.) As far as competitions go, I'm writing a poem for a particular competition presently. Considering that the deadline's literally months away, I'll be happy to mull over the lines slowly for a while and create some really nice stanzas. The other four competitions are yet to be selected. However, I have one tiny problem - NaNoWriMo.

NaNoWriMo, for those unaware, occurs in November every year. It's an annual event run by the Office of Letters and Light (OLL), and the aim is to write a 50,000 word novel in a month. Now the problem is not the challenge itself - after all, I completed it last year, albeit with only a couple of hours to spare - but the time at which it happens. My schedule for November is loaded, so much so that it may just be too much to take on the challenge of novelling. However, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. NaNoWriMo is months away, though rest assured, it'll leap out at me when I'm unawares.

With these commitments in place - and now several dozen people aware of them and able to keep me on track - I'm sure to do much more in the way of writing. Those several dozen people know who they are. If I stray, I'm sure they'll beat me back into shape with sharp rebukes. After all, keeping my honour and my word are great incentives if nothing else is.

Off to devise a way of keeping myself on track, this is a rather tired and beleagured Author signing off. Now where are those Hayfever tablets...?

Finished the Frenzy

Well, Script Frenzy is now officially over, and has been for several days now. And guess what? 101 pages!

While I may have completed Script Frenzy, I'm nowhere near finishing off my script and am going to have to ax 45 pages immediately. It sucks, but it's the truth. Thirty days and 101 pages just isn't enough space, unfortunately. However, this being the first script I have ever written, I think I've done pretty well.

So what's next? Well, I have other aims for the rest of this year. I want to participate in either or both of NaNoWriMo and Camp NaNoWrimo, the difference being that one occurs in June and the other in November. I'd also like to enter at least five competitions in the rest of this year - if I win money, I can officially say that I'm a professional writer. Asides from all that, I think I'll try and write a short story each week.

Now you pretty much know what my plan is for the rest of 2012. I'm off to get some sleep - Screnzy really takes it out of you.

With tired regards,
   A Rather Satisfied Screnzier