Launching Writing Career

The new year for me is a good time to reflect on the previous year and refocus, start on the right foot as it were. 2012 was great, I hit a few milestones, I began shopping Coal Belly and I finished The Stars Were Right. Not bad, but it’s time to take this a step further. I have decided that 2013 is going to be a very productive year for me and I have narrowed my focus down to two specific goals:

  1. Really focus on getting published (trying both traditional and self routes.)
  2. Try to finish not one but two manuscripts.

That’s a lot in a year, but I think I can do it. However there’s one distraction that constantly crops up, hence, the purge.

Yesterday I woke up and began to tackle my single greatest time-sink that would prevent me from achieving these two goals – video games. I love ’em, I have a whole blog about ’em (which will probably be going away soon.)

The thing is as much as I enjoy gaming I love writing more. Outside of my day job my time is limited. If I want to make a serious go at writing that’s where I need to put 100% my free time. It’s far to easy to put aside working on my next tale and spend hours upon hours playing games. I caught myself doing it a lot in past weeks and it’s time to stop. If I am going to achieve my goals then I need to redouble my efforts take steps to not distract myself. So sorry video games, you gotta go.

So… as I write this, I’m watching Steam slowly remove a bunch of games from my hard drive and I canceled a few preorders that were sitting out there like time-sink landmines waiting to come along and steal a weekend or two of productivity.

Sort of related: here’s a video Ze Frank posted when he restarted A Show it’s something I find incredible encouraging and anytime I begin a new manuscript or start down a new path I re-watch it. Keep in mind it’s NSFW (language.) Maybe you’ll find it encouraging as well:

How about you? Are you setting goals for yourself? You doing anything to help you achieve those goals? What’s 2013 hold for you?

4 Comments

  1. Way to commit yourself. I have also given up video games pretty much for the same reason. They really do suck up a lot of time. I find myself missing them from time to time, but the longer I stay away, the easier it is for me to forget them.

    I got my goals almost all done. Two manuscripts in one year! Wow!

    Good luck to you!

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    1. Thanks Dan. I feel like I’ll slip a few times but if I can stay the course and keep games off my desktop and out of my xbox’s drive for a while I think it’ll free up a lot more time for me.

      Yeah, two manuscripts. (Eeep!) I finished Stars in about 6 months, I think I can do the same with Old Broken Road (I’m 10k in already) and I have some ideas brewing for a third book as well – I find with a solid outline I work much faster than when I just try to wing it.

      Thanks for the well wishes, and good luck to you as well!

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  2. Great goals and a really inspiring post! And thanks for the follow, too!

    I’m setting similar goals for 2013, and also trying to commit as close to 100% of my free time as possible to my art/writing…which means trying to get my time-suck habits under control, too…*cough* avclub.com *cough*… So I’m going to follow along with your progress for inspiration :)

    (Oh, almost forgot to say, love the title and synopsis of “Stars Were Right” — as a Lovecraft fan, my interest was piqued right away…hopefully I’ll be buying it from the bookstore in 2014!)

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