Inspired by Dean Wesley Smith’s goals posts on his journal, I think I have a good plan of action for writing in 2009. Dean’s great at breaking down huge goals and dreams into bite-sized chunks, so you aren’t overwhelmed and you can just WRITE.

So I wrote up some goals tonight — I know, working on a Saturday night, how exciting, right? But Drew and Mitch both have nasty colds that we’re hoping don’t devolve into something worse, so I skipped out on a get-together with friends to celebrate the holidays (and some other good news as well…) and stayed home to take care of my boys. and get ’em to bed at a decent time, while Lizzie went off to party. 🙂

Here are the goals I came up with to get me back on track and to stay focused in the New Year — I start small and build up to the biggies:

Daily Goal: 1500 words & 6 pages a day, at least 5 days a week (I can do about 750-1000 words per hour if I’m on a roll)

Weekly Goal: 7500 words & 30 pages per week; 375,000 words & 1500 pages per year! And that’s taking weekends off!

Yearly Goal: Write 2-3 novels per year (novels are usually 90,000 to 100,000 words long)

2009 Goals: Get 3 new novels written, revised, and ready to send out.

Five Year Goal: Make enough from writing fiction to cut Day Job hours to 3/4 or even 1/2 time. Hey, you gotta shoot high, right?

And so, after fiddling with all that goal-setting and trying to not mess with the free download of Scrivener I snagged today, I finally got some actual writing done tonight. I’m almost done with the revising portion of the novel. Soon, it’ll be new stuff, as I revamped the ending a bit, and found it easier to just re-draft the last act pretty much altogether.

Current status-o-meter: