December Writing Goals: Finish the Damn Thing!

November was all about National Novel Writing Month, with my novel becoming the centre of my attention – and it still is, or should be. I need to maintain the momentum in December and finish the freaking thing.

November Results

1. Finish NaNoWriMo

This was the main goal, the centre of my attention, and everything following kind of flowed from that and was subordinate to this goal. So it’s a bloody good thing that I finished it, finished 50,000 words and have a huge chunk of novel, my longest work, to keep working on.

2. Write every day

In order to maintain momentum, I didn’t want to miss a day of writing and write every day. I managed to do this up until I finished on the 21st and in the last week missed two days of writing. So 28 out of 30 days is pretty damn close.

3. Write in a new setting

I knocked off this goal in the first week, writing in both a pub and a café. I find writing in these new settings good for motivation because you go to these places with the intention of writing. I should definitely do this again.

4. Finish The Slap (Cultural Goal)

I really fell behind in reading during November, but in week 3 did do a large chunk, which revived some momentum toward my novel. I’m nowhere near finishing however.

5. Research something! (Political Research Goal)

Aside from watching a few videos on YouTube about rioting and police brutality, and reading an article on Wikipedia about wheat silos, I didn’t get any major research done.

6. Write at least three posts a week (Blogging Goal)

Blogging fell way off during November and all of the things said about posting frequency affecting traffic were confirmed true with a pretty major drop in traffic this month. This could also be from not reading other blogs, and not getting the return traffic from that. I did manage to post 2 or 3 times a week, though, not including my 365 Photo Challenge posts.

So for all the goals that I didn’t quite make, November was overwhelmingly my most productive month ever in the history of me as a writer. Hopefully this will mean a great leap forward in consistent writing progress.

I’ll probably write a National Novel Writing Month wrap-up post at some point.

December Goals

December is kind of a silly month where things get busy and time for solitary activities dwindles, but I don’t want to stop doing anything entirely, mainly because I have this unfinished novel glaring at me.

1. Add at least 10,000 words toward Barbarism – I’d like to add more but I don’t want to heap too much pressure on myself and lead myself to burn out. 10,000 words means at least 500 words a day, 4 days a week and some extra.
2. Edit and Submit Evicted – This story needs editing and to be sent out in the big wide world.
3. Write 2,000 words toward a new story – Working on one project all month can be a bit stale so hopefully, inspired by my Political Research Goal, I can get down something fresh to keep keen.
4. Finish The Slap (Cultural Goal) – End of the year. I need a decent amount of finished books and this one is a bit dense so need to get through it before I never do.
5. Finish Sexuality and Socialism (Political Research Goal) – Been sucked into Sherry Wolf’s book on LGBT politics and its relation to Marxism. I want to finish it to influence the sexuality elements in Barbarism as well as a short story that has homophobia as a central theme. It’s also pretty short anyway.
6. Write some ‘Best of 2009′ or end of year type posts (Blogging Goal) – I want to wrap up the year with some posts that sum up 2009 and some of the best moments of it, hopefully tapping into the mood of the season. These posts should be sparser and lighter given people might be busy.

I’m trying to maintain a balance of adapting to the time of year, as well as not giving myself an excuse to slack off and not do anything.

How do you approach the end of year? Do you use the holidays to do more or do you give yourself a break?