Challenge: Write a letter to yourself telling you what you need to improve in the coming 6 months.
Yay, introspection and setting goals! My favorite things!
Dear Me,
Do you really need to rewatch Brooklyn Nine-Nine for a sixth time? You’ve got writing and other self-improvement tasks to be doing, and you really don’t need to watch Cheddar steal the belt again even though it’s really cute and the Halloween episodes are some of the best and—
Uhh, that got off topic. Let’s try that again:
Dear Me,
It’s time to stop messing around and to start getting stuff done. Soon you’ll be an actual adult with car insurance payments and electric bills and worries about making ends meet, and it’ll be even harder to focus on writing, so you’d better get a jump on your writing career now before it becomes unfinished and forgotten like that mosaic of the New York skyline in your garage. “I do mosaics,” you say, like a liar (John Mulaney, anyone?). You’ve got an outline of a few skyscrapers. Sit down—
Hm, maybe that’s a little too aggressive. How about we just go with a list of goals instead?
- Finish the experimental rewrite of my manuscript (more on that later)
- Submit to at least three writing contests
- Launch the “Devil’s Road Trip” series here (more on this later, too)
- Come up with a regular blogging schedule and stick to it
With this list, I’ve tried to strike a balance between setting goals challenging enough that I actually improve while also not being too ambitious. I have a tendency to overshoot when I set goals, and that just ends with soul-crushing defeat disappointment. This time, I’ll be more realistic.
I realized while writing this that the end of the year is in about six months, so these goals will bring me to 2019. (What? 2019? Already??) Maybe I’ll do another post around New Year’s to give an update and set goals for the next six months. We’ll see.
In an effort to start the summer strong, I’m doing Writer’s Digest’s 12-Day Plan.
Miles Away 