Dear Me...2012

Dear me,

This new year is starting with a bang, and I want to resolve myself to completing as many writing goals as I can this year. I've recently come back to writing.com and I'm really glad I did! I've loved every minute of it and feel like I'm getting really involved in a lot of different things. However, not enough.

I have a few writing goals for myself this year.

I have recently written a short story, one that I'm particularly proud of that came to me after the snippet of a dream which left me feeling terrified of a door. I followed through on the dream and wrote the story. I'm proud of myself for finishing it as well as writing a fully coherent story of mystery and intrigue. I want to try and get this published. It would be a really big step for me but it's something I really want to pursue.

So within this there are a few smaller steps I would need to take, including finding out how to go about getting published, finding publishers local to me and being able to write a cover letter good enough that encourages an editor to read my piece. I also need to revise my piece, proof read it, make sure of no errors and tidy it up. So that is my first goal.

My second goal is to generally read more. I want to make more time for myself to read the books I want to read but I also want to take more in on the site, try new genres that I normally wouldn't and check out more ports. I want to be able to appreciate the people that I have around me in this wonderful community, to read what they have to say and make new friends along the way. So I'm going to read more on the site and review more, offering my insight but also hoping to take from it what I can, to learn and expand my own writing.

My third goal is to write more. I often find it difficult to convince myself to write. I'm not sure what it is. I think sometimes I doubt my ability. I read other people's work and I can hear a voice in the back of my mind that tells me not to bother, I'll never be able to write as good as that. I sometimes begin to write something but feel unable to finish it and this has resulted in there being several unfinished pieces of work in my portfolio. I don't want that. This year I'm going to try and write more, believe in my abilities and finish pieces. I want to try and take part in more contests and activities on the site; I find that they increase my inspiration and offer something different to what would normally manifest in my mind.

Finally, I want to make sure that I return all reviews that I receive. I have a system where my emails stay in my main inbox until I've returned the review, and then I move them into a different folder. So far it's working but over the Christmas I fell behind a little because I wasn't on the site as much. I need to catch up with this. I also want to try and make a start on the review forum I used to have. It's currently a private item because I found that people were posting requesting reviews and because I wasn't using the site much they were getting missed. While I've done some of them I want to check back through them and catch the ones I missed.

And these are my goals for writing.com 2012. Let's just hope I realise them!

Me