Hello, and welcome! I am ZmunkZ, or if you prefer, Mike. I am educated in physics and mathematics, I work in software and databases, and I am a student of VFX, writing, 3D CGI, guitar, poker, and a variety of other things. This site is where I go to talk to myself. Note: the FDA has ruled this site unsafe for casual or professional consumption.Last year I made a similar post. Before I set down my goals for 2019, let’s see how I did:
- [2018] In April, my wife is expecting our second son. I hope to make sense of life with two kids running around.
- [2018] I’d like to get back to the gym, or at least, feel guilty about not getting back to the gym.
- [2018] I’d like to finish the current draft of my NiP by mid summer, and send it for beta feedback to my inner circle of critters.
- [2018] I’d like to complete any rewrites, as well as a polish pass before year’s end, allowing me to begin either 1) submitting to traditional houses, or 2) sourcing covers and editors for self-publication.
The first one I accomplished, and it was no easy feat. I’m a straight-up family dad now, I guess, with my time and energy generally monopolized by two wild boys. I also succeeded in the second task: I definitely felt guilty about not getting back to the gym. Excellent, 2 for 2.
I set myself up for failure a bit, since goal #4 was contingent on the completion of goal #3… and I whiffed goal 3 by an embarrassing margin. At the end of 2017, my word count on Lunhina was ~68.5K out of a projected 170K. Today, I am sitting on ~115K out of a projected 350K.
You might be thinking, “350K!? What the hell is wrong with you?”
Yes.
In any event, I added 46K words to the novel (not including some rewrites), which averages 3,800/month, or 136/day. At that rate, to reach the word count I have outlined, it will take me a further 5.1 years. So obviously this ship has gone well off course.
Informed by this data, here are my goals for 2019:
- Start working out at least 3 times a week.
- Get my shit together with Lunhina and finishing SOMETHING, either a self-contained “part 1” for the larger story, or the full story re-outlined to normal novel length.
- Write at least 2000 words per week (a.k.a., double my current pathetic counts).
That is all. I’m keeping it simple, and focusing on two things I really want to accomplish: something for my physical health, and something for my mental health. Both of these things tend to take a back seat to — what I judge to be — more important things, such as my family, my work and finances, and some of my personal relationships. I don’t have any specific goals in those areas since I tend to give them most of my waking attention already. Here, I’m shooting for the things I should be able to keep in balance with everything else, but in practice don’t.
What are your goals for the year?
Well, good work for the words you DID get written last year. Good luck with your new goals for writing! How’s it going so far? Gotten 4k written this year yet? And seriously, good luck with the working out. I’m in the exact same boat on that front. Joined a three month gym fitness challenge in the hopes that competition will spark some hidden drive to keep working out regularly. At least long enough that I can engrain new habits to keep up.
Rambling a bit, as is my way, but I watched a fairly profound fitness video by a dude Jeff Cavaliere, over at AthleanX.com. He was talking about why goals are useless with working out, because you don’t necessarily know the “why” with a goal, just a “what”. He reckons that to work out consistently and to make it a lifelong habit, you need a why. A really deep why. When he started, his why was because he wanted to get to know his older brother more, and his older brother worked out. So working out too gave him a chance to build a relationship with family. A friend of mine works out and does a lot of martial arts because if his family is ever threatened, he will be physically fit and capable of protecting them.
It was kind of a lightbulb moment for me, I mean, as writers we work SO hard to give all our characters really solid “whys” to everything they do, because we know if a character doesn’t have that, then they have no depth, no drive, no reason to go through hell and back. I mean, can you imagine a character being willing to sacrifice everything to save others without a solid why?
Yet how often do we actually really nut out the whys in our own lives? How often do we expect ourselves to go through the sacrifice required to be fit or produce a novel without a why?
I know I don’t have many whys, and as a result, I give up at the first sign of resistance.
So with that said, my big 2019 resolution is dig deep and find out the whys for why I want to be fit and why I want to be a successful author.