Hello! At the start of 2021, I published a post as part of a Top Ten Tuesday that covered some of my writing goals for 2021. I thought today, I would check in and see how I am progressing through them.
I want to become more consistent with my writing.
The first resolution was to become more consistent with my writing. So far I am definitely more consistent than I was last year, however the last couple of months I have been really struggling with getting back into it after a little break. I have been posting some writing updates, and in my latest update I spoke about how I am getting down about myself about the content I am writing. Interestingly, in my original resolution post, I stated that I didn’t care how good the quality was to begin with but I just needed to write write write! Maybe I need to go back and take that old advise.
I want to journal more.
This one has not been going so well. I still really want to journal more. It is on my mind that I should do it a lot, but I can never seem to actually sit down and journal. Going forward, I am going to try to incorporate into my morning or nighttime routine so that I can get some of my thoughts out of my head and onto some paper.
Outline my WIP.
This one is a big half and half! So in my original post, I vaguely described the struggles I was having with my WIP and I admitted that an outline was necessary. However, a couple of days – or maybe even the day the original post was published – I abandoned this WIP. It was a contemporary novel that I have been holding onto for a long time. I created the characters when I was 15/16, however the story no longer aligned with my beliefs and I realised the original story was actually quite harmful. For NaNoWriMo 2020, I decided to try and write their story again, but in a different setting and plot. Except, I could never come up with a good plot. So in January 2021, when I wrote the original pos, I finally admitted to myself that I needed to think this through more. Of course, all my plans for the contemporary went out the window when I started working on my fantasy novels. With this rewrite of my Rapunzel retelling, I have outlined half of it so far, so I sort of have reached this goal!
Stop writing the same sections of and over again.
Yes! I have stopped doing this! It was such a difficult thing for me to move forward when writing. I used to just want to edit edit edit. Now though, I am excited about what is to come later in the story and want to write it so I keep moving forward. I’ve also let go of this infatuation that the draft has to be perfect – it does not, especially in the beginning stages.
Improve my descriptive writing.
I definitely think I have improved this; especially as I move further into my rewrite my descriptions are really improving. They still need some work, as does all of my writing, but I am really happy with the progress I am making.
Start working on a retelling.
I remember when I added this one to the original post thinking ‘this is a little bit of a stretch’. I had been wanting to focus on my contemporary but I kept thinking about Beauty and the Beast and how I wanted to write a story about that. Funnily enough, I sat down after writing this post and said to myself that I would just bullet point my ideas about this Beauty and the Beast retelling idea. For whatever reason, I decided when I started bullet pointing that I should explore other retellings and then end with Beauty and the Beast. My idea behind that was so that I wouldn’t get too distracted by Beauty and the Beast that I didn’t explore my other options. Ironically, the first idea that I started jotting down was Rapunzel and I never made it past that idea. That book is fully written in its first draft and I am working on the rewrite. So you could say that I started working on it!
Write down all of my ideas!
I have thankfully gotten back into this habit! My phone notes are filling up again and there are post it notes all over my house with random words on that my future self will eventually have to figure out the meaning to!
Continue being consistent with poetry.
I do not write nearly as much poetry as I used to. I used to write a few poems daily – or at least have some lines scrawled on a piece of paper or in my notes app in my phone. Recently I haven’t been doing this as much, but I am still writing poems every couple of weeks which is consistent enough for me currently.
Take part in NaNoWriMo.
NaNoWriMo hasn’t come around again yet, but I did take part in Camp NaNoWriMo April and I plan on taking part in July to some extent!
Have at least 80,000 words for my WIP.
In the original post I expressed that this was going to be a stretch. It is wild to me that I set this goal for the year and within the first quarter of the year I achieved this! Overall for the year so far, I would estimate that I have written about 140,000 words which is wild to me!
I actually feel so much better about my writing progress after going back through my goals for the year. I still have work to do and thinks to work on before the year is out but I am feeling quite proud of myself for what I have achieved so far.
Did you set any goals for the year? How are you progressing? Let me know! I want to hear all about your goals and how they are going – if that is writing, reading or anything else, let me know!
Kira Jeanette 
Good luck with all of these!
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Thank you!
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Love this and good luck for the rest of the year ❤
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Thank you!
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