2010 Writing Goals & What I Learned in 2009

A year ago right now, I was making a list of goals for 2009 and at the last second, as sort of a joke, I threw in "Write a novel." Even though my biggest goal for the year was to focus on writing, I meant screenwriting, and the idea of writing a book seemed ridiculous. Still, I had always known that one day I would write one - I have the notebooks full of cheesy teen romance I wrote back in elementary school as proof. I just thought it would be one day when I was older and wiser and had something very literary to say about the world or something. You know, something profound. I thought I would write the literary equivalent of an indie film.

Anyway, after reading the Twilight Saga (the first books I'd read since the last Harry Potter save for a couple Kathy Reichs books - she is awesome, you should read her!) and having it reignite my love for all things YA. While at the same time having the epiphany that almost all my film ideas involved teenagers for a reason, I thought well, hey, maybe it's time to give that book thing a try. I mean, I was going to focus on writing this year anyway.

So I stuck "Write a novel" at the bottom of the list and I snorted at my own ridiculousness. I didn't just write screenplays because I loved movies. I wrote screenplays because they are SUPER SHORT and I was lazy/terrified at the thought of trying to write over a 100 pages of like, comeplete sentences. It really seemed impossible to me. I was so used to cutting stuff out to write a film that I had no idea how to put stuff in.

I won't bore you with a month by month rundown of 2009 but suffice it to say that two (great) false starts later, I had an idea burning in my brain and NaNoWriMo staring me in the face. Thanks to those two false starts I had already written over 40,000 words. 50,000 didn't seem so scary anymore. Plus, I knew exactly how this story ended, making for a much easier trip. NaNoWriMo and the awesome YA community, especially at the blueboards, made me realize that it is really possible for me to write a book.

So here I am, the last day of 2009 and I have a very, very rough, first draft of a novel just waiting to be revised. One impossible goal accomplished! And I can say with all honesty to anyone reading this and wondering if they could ever write something as big and scary as a book:

If I can do it, you can do it!

Now with trumpets and fanfare, here are my goals for 2010 that are within my control!

2010 Resolutions

• Revise WIP #2 until it's ready for queries.
  
• Write best query letter in the whole wide world.
  
• Query agents.
  
• Finish WIP #1.
  
• Write a screenplay.
  
• Shoot a film. (A short is okay.)
  
• Shoot at least one music video.
  
• Write 1000 words (minimum) a day, six days a week.
  
• Write at least a first draft of two more YA novels. (Preferably from ideas I've already got written down.)
  
• Attend a writing conference or workshop.
  
• Read 100 books. (At least 40 of these should be from my own bookshelves!)
  
• Become more involved in the YA blogging community. There are so many great YA writer blogs out there!
  

Then of course the ones that are not so much in my control:

• Sign with the perfect agent for me and my career goals.
  
• Sell my book to an awesome publishing house that totally gets my book, loves it and knows how to market it.

If you made it all the way to the end of this post, please have a SAFE and Happy New Year's Eve!