2017 Goals Third Quarter Report: Shine Cycle
Another quarter, and another month, has flown by. I began my quarterly “check” of my goals for the year with Saturday’s post, but reserved some of my goals for separate consideration, as I did after the first and second quarters. Today, a look at my goals related to the Shine Cycle, my fantasy series-in-preparation.
Monthly Goals
Before I get to the year-long objectives and goals, here are the goals I set at the end of August for the month:
Remember to write a quarterly goals check at the end of September
I remembered, but dithered on whether to write this post last week or now, and decided on “now.” So I count this as a definite “check.”
For “snowflake step 7” for The Invasion, create “character charts” for all remaining major characters.
Done.
Make consistent progress: I’ll count this as a success if each week I accomplish 21 “points” in my task tracker, though I’m hoping to average more like twice that.
Done: The average has been hovering near 50 “points,” and the lowest recently was 38.
Get at least a quarter of the way into my by-scene outline (six of the 24 “sequences” or equivalent currently identified)
Done, but only just: I believe I’ve gotten through seven “sequences.”
Write at least three character histories.
Again, done, but only just: I had little difficulty with two, then the third gave me much more trouble than I’d expected.
Yearly Goals: So Far
Next, here are the goals I set for the Shine Cycle for the year. For each one, I’ll comment as to how I’m doing on it so far and how likely I think I am to accomplish it by the end of the year. (I’ll again omit the one goal that was accomplished in January.)
Outlining
Objective: Finish a complete and detailed outline of my chosen story.
Goal: In my iterative outlining, outline that story by scene
I’ve now made a good beginning on this. While I don’t think I’ll have finished the outline by the end of October, in time to attempt NaNoWriMo, I should finish this step well before the end of the year.
Goal: Follow the “snowflake method” to at least Step 7 for that story.
As mentioned above, I finished “snowflake step 7” this past month.
Character Development
Objective: Have a biography, history, description, and “character logline” or “motivation summary” for every named character.
Goal: Write at least fifteen character biographies or histories.
The three character histories I wrote this past month were my only progress on this goal this quarter, bringing me to a total of nine this year. My task tracker thinks I’ll get through ten more histories and biographies in the next three months, I’ll upgrade my expectations on this front from “possible but not likely” to “quite possible.”
Goal: Create “character loglines” or “motivation summaries” for at least five characters.
I wrote one more of these this quarter, for a total of nine. My task tracker thinks I’ll get through five more this year. So as I said three months ago, “fifteen looks possible.”
Worldbuilding
Objective: Create sufficiently-complete, sufficiently-detailed, maps of the worlds and areas with which the Shine Cycle is concerned.
Objective: Develop each race and culture that the Shine Cycle is concerned with sufficiently to portray it distinctly and excite potential readers’ interest.
As I mentioned both three and six months ago, I keep steadily adding tasks for specific details required for these objectives to my task tracker … just near the bottom of the queue, so there’s no progress to report. Unless (as I rather hope) something causes me to have to disrupt my methods, though, I expect to get to actually working on goals related to these objectives next year.
Stretch Goal: Get at least half-way through the “race fractalling system” for elves.
I explained last quarter why I couldn’t possibly get to this goal this year; if I had settled on The Invasion as my sole “plotting” target for the year two weeks earlier, this spot in the list of goals would have been filled with something else.
On the other hand, between my “doubling up” of some of the simpler “create tasks for …” tasks and my improved productivity “velocity” of late, my task tracker’s estimate of when I’ll start this goal has shortened from January 2019 to January 2018.
Actual Prose
Goal: Get at least a quarter of the way through the first draft of the story I decide to focus on this year, or 25,000 words in, whichever comes first.
Stretch Goal: Get at least half-way through the first draft, or 50,000 words in the story I’m focusing on this year.
As I’ve said in previous “quarterly reports,” I consider these unlikely, but I now consider getting to the point of having The Invasion a quarter written (in its first draft of the current conception) by the end of December possible.
Blogging
Objective: Regularly post substantive Shine Cycle-related content here, as an incentive to continued progress and to attract interested future readers.
Goal: Post at least twelve Shine Cycle-related posts (not including writing status updates, year-end retrospectives, and the like) to this blog.
Stretch Goal: Post at least eighteen Shine Cycle-related posts (with the same exclusions) to this blog.
Stretch Goal: Post at least one Shine Cycle-related post (with the same exclusions) to this blog every month.
The total count of posts that have appeared so far and what I’ve already written and scheduled for the future stands at fifteen so far. So, goal accomplished, and if I can keep up on character histories eighteen seems even more within my reach. And since I already have a character profile scheduled to run next week, and material for another that just needs to be assembled, one a month is also feasible.
Objective: Create blog posts using “worldbuilding” material created using the various “systems” and question sets.
Goal: In the process of transferring material from my answers to “the Wrede questions” to “background essays,” reduce the length of (the temporary copy of) the former by at least half. It currently stands at about 1500 lines and 36,000 words.
Stretch Goal: Finish transferring material from my answers to “the Wrede questions” into “background essays” and schedule the first post using that material to run on this blog.
I thought about this a couple of times in the last month or so, but have no more progress to report than last quarter.
Next Month
After a disastrous first quarter, I’ve definitely made up some of the ground I lost. God willing, I hope to continue to make progress in the next few weeks. Here’s what I think I may be able to accomplish in the next month:
Make consistent progress: I’ll count this as a success if each week I accomplish 27 “points” in my task tracker, though I’m hoping to average more like twice that.
Write “character histories” for at least two characters.
Create a “character logline” or “motivation summary” for at least two characters.
Outline at least eleven of the identified sequences of The Invasion by scene.
We’ll see.
Writer friends, how are your goals for the year going?
Filed under: Status updates
