April showers bring new writing goals

At the beginning of January, like most writers, I established some writing goals for the year. I took a look at those goals today and am happy to be able to say that I'm doing well with most of them, like blogging every day and contributing daily to two other writing sites.

The only writing goal that I seem to be having trouble with is my current novel. Now, traditionallyI feel that I'm better at writing short pieces: character sketches, flash fiction, etc. I have written novels before, so I don't think I'm freezing because the story is longer than what I do most often. Still, I'm not entirely sure why my current project is going so slowly. Maybe I'm too close to the idea, and fear is keeping me from working on the book as diligently as I should. Or maybe it's that self-doubt that I wrote about in yesterday's post. Whatever it is, it has succeeded in frustrating me and keeping me from telling the story I want to tell.

Well, I'm through with that.

My goal for April is to shake off whatever it is that is keeping me from working on my novel. I'm going to put much more focus on that piece, devoting more of my time--especially my more productive morning writing hours (something I mentioned in a previous post)--to getting a good start on my first draft. I will tell the story.

I have to.

I'll continue writing the other pieces I love, and I'll continue blogging. But my focus, my heart for April, needs to be on my WIP.

And it will be.

That's my goal.