Happy New Year!

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Yes, I am alive :) Sorry It’s been a month since I’ve posted. Julie was in town for a lovely long visit, plus the usual holiday stuff kept me away.

How is everyone’s writing going? Have you kicked off your goals for 2016?

I got together with my publishing team and plotted out what I’m publishing in 2016. Unfortunately, it’s all under my pen name so I can build up that audience and money. I do plan on writing more in the fairy tale series I started with Rapunzel: Stay at Home Mom, but I think I’ve mentioned that to do that the way I want will take a lot of money for the illustrations.

I will be publishing some fantasy romance under the pen name this year. If you’re curious about those stories, just drop me a line and I’ll tell you about them.

So what does that mean for Enchanted Spark? My plan is to do Monday blogs still. I have one about endings I’ve wanted to get up for awhile now and some blogs about what it feels like to be writing consistently. I also would like you guys to guest blog for me. There’s about half a dozen of you who post comments regularly. Some of the comments are real gems about the writing process, but I fear they get lost to the casual reader who skims through the main posts. So you can either raise your hand via sending me an email about a post you’d like to do, or you can wait for me to call on you like a teacher in class 😉 Seriously, though, I’d like this to become a blog where you guys contribute and it feels more like a discussion group.

When we plotted out what we’re publishing in 2016, Julie said that I had about three years worth of stuff coming out in one year. She’s right, but as an indie writer I think it’s really important to keep my name visible as much as possible. Being on the New Release list on some sites is a really good way to do that. That means I’m going to be writing a lot. I want to hit 15,000 word counts consistently each week. Something that helps me stay on track is bragging about how much I’ve done or shamefully posting that I’m still at zero for the week. So I’m bringing back mid-week Spark Checks on Wednesdays and posting Spark Tally every Saturday. I hope you join me! And if you’re new, please pipe in!

That’s all for today. Please post your writing goals in the comments below and come back Wednesday for Spark Check!

 

10 thoughts on “Happy New Year!”

  1. As far as writing goals are concerned, I haven’t plotted those out quite yet, but definitely I want to write and submit more. I’m kind of discouraged as last year’s goals were such a dismal failure. I am currently working on a fairy tale story for Enchanted Conversation’s contest. I definitely want to finish, FINISH my eternal winter novel. It’s starting to become an eternal novel. Have a great new year, everyone.

    • Hopefully this year will be smoother sailing for your personal life. I know that can wreck all writing goals. I think I have a story I need to read by you, so I’m looking forward to that! Good luck with the novel!

  2. Yea we’re back! I hope everyone had a restful break and are ready to get back to writing.

    I too had a definite lull for two weeks around Christmas. But for the past two weeks I have been back in the chair. Probably 1500 words and edits this week. But more importantly I finished chapter 5 edits and worked out correcting the pacing problem of my opening. In about a week I will be sending off all five chapters to my betas. That will be a third of the novel done with initial edits. The middle third is actually the strongest written in my draft so the hope is it goes faster (a lot of knocking on wood here). I have set goals on all this editing and on prepping for an agent search. And I agree, this site is a big help to me in meeting my goals.

    For the future, maybe throw out some topics and like a book group, we each send in our thoughts in a paragraph or two that can be a joint offering. Takes the pressure off everyone for a full discussion. Although I will think about individual topics that might make a good post.

    • Glad to hear you are already back writing! Sounds like things are going really well.

      I like your idea about throwing out a topic of discussion. Maybe I’ll do a free for all Friday kind of thing where I post a topic, people comment and I repost the discussion on Sunday or something like that. I will think on it!

  4. Welcome back, Melinda! I’m very excited to read your upcoming stories.

    As for my goals for 2016: Arena is coming out in April, I’ve got to finish editing and revising the sequel, and I’d like to publish more short stories this year. I only did one last year.

    I’d also be happy to do a guest post!

  5. Welcome back and happy new year!

    I’m still trying to get caught up on a number of things and get back into a regular schedule.

    I have no idea what my word count is right now, but it’s not great. I’m trying to find a balance — set goals that are realistic enough that I can reach them pretty often while still pushing myself to do more.