archie’s ambitious pre-30 writing goal that can also get you inspired too, maybe?

I am turning the big three-zero in 2019, can you believe it?
I know, I seem so wise for one so young… lol?
No, but seriously – I’m pretty flabbergasted by that age.

Of course, turning 30 is a big milestone that not everyone has the privilege or good luck to ever reach, so naturally, this needs to be something celebrated with big fanfare.

But still… 30?

I’ve always associated that number, and that decade of life, with old characters on 90’s television shows that I grew up watching.

I have already had a quarter-life crisis – which I seriously believe is important (albeit a brutal experience to endure through) to helping me re-examine what I was doing with my life, where I was going and who I was going to become.
So as far as any “golly-that’s-a-lot-of-candles-on-my-birthday-cake” panic attacks, it is with some serious relief that I can say to you, reader, that I feel emotionally well-prepared for reaching this new age.

However – I won’t let this checkpoint in life pass by without trying to make the most of it.
Why not aim to achieve some major progress in my relatively new writing career?

As I briefly explained in my post about why I blog as a writer, I am partially using this platform to help motivate some accountability from myself. Which is a good system, because I can try to make it less about guilt (for not doing what I said I would do) and try to make it a healthy opportunity to challenge myself by using your readership as some encouragement (especially on those gloomy days we writer’s ask “who cares if I write?”).

In full sincerity, I find myself very impressed by authors who publicize their progress on forthcoming novels, sharing the highs and the lows with full disclosure. It seems to invoke a certain degree of fear to wager such a bet, but as I often try to remember: courage is not the absence of fear, but taking action in spite of it.

I will post more about these topics of fear and courage, failure and achievement, and also more about my many stories in the works – all at varying levels of completion (some short stories needing one last revision, others still in their infancy) and many written for different genres and audiences (some for early readers and kids on subjects of magic and mental health, others for adults on subjects of alienation and companionship).

Until then, I am keeping this post here short and to the point…

So – my big goal that I am setting for myself to accomplish, before September 2019, is to have a full draft of a novel (let’s call it at 75,000 words) ready for others to test-read and offer feedback. That is going to look like: finish revising and condensing my story notes, then producing the first draft for myself to get it all onto paper, and then going through once or twice more after to help make sure it is as ready as possible for my beta readers.

Exciting!

How about you?
Do you have any lofty dream or realistic goal that you need one more push of encouragement to get cracking on?
Need some inspiring advice to get you going?

Comment or message me to tell me about it and we can both aim to make our future (old) selves really proud of what we decided to do today, right now.

Until we meet again,
archie.