In my previous post, I owned my mistakes and took note of my progress and growth. Today, I would like to set some realistic goals for myself. I am resigned to continuing to write in 10 minute bursts, but I am looking to experiment with how that plays out. I feel like I should narrow my focus a bit to work towards completing my projects as opposed to just writing for its own sake.
What are my goals? I have stated them repeatedly, I will state them once more. With my new mindset, I hope to make better strides towards meeting these goals. I am going to work towards completing the following projects this year:
- The book of breastfeeding poems
- Superheroes Get Hungry, Too
Oh my. That’s it? What has been taking me so long? Well, not to make excuses for myself, but I feel so burnt out all the time, that I like the stamina to really push through and write a bunch at once. Besides that, I do have other interests; interests that are a lot more enjoyable then forcing myself to work more when I am tired of working so much all the time. As much as I love writing, it is work. It is work I love and work I would love to get paid for, so I am thinking I need to really treat it like a job. If I work each week, for 50 minutes at either the artwork for Superheroes Get Hungry, Too and the remaining poems for the breastfeeding book, it shouldn’t be too long before I am down with them. Maybe a few months? I am talking about making storyboards for SGHT, which clearly isn’t writing, so maybe I should focus on putting the work for the breastfeeding book as my top priority. Here is an idea, I can bump it up to 12 minutes, Monday through Friday to put in one hour each week. That certainly sounds better. Being that these are both going to be picture books, they require the extra work of planning for the visuals as well. I had not anticipated that at all. I might feel suffocated writing about only one subject all week long, so I am going to give myself the freedom to do up to two off topic days or writing each week.
In conclusion, when I return in the New Year, I will be putting in an hour of writing every week. The main objective being to finish my poems for the breastfeeding book. I will allow myself two days each week to stray from writing the breastfeeding book. I do not know how long it might take me to finish the poems. After I am done with them, I will reassess to focus on finishing up my storyboard art for Superheroes Get Hungry, Too.
This sounds like a decent plan to me. With Heaven’s help and my hard work I will meet my goals this year and publish both of these books.
MJ Muñoz 