My Good Girl Writer To-Do List

2013 was a weird writing year for me.  I careened from "three thousand words a day is a cinch!" to "oh my god, I can't even look at a Word file this week.  Or next week."  I'm going to be working for more consistency in 2014.  Funnily enough, the one project to which I was most able to adhere to deadlines was posting stories to this blog.  Does it make me money?  No.  Do I feel good doing it?  Yes.  The blog story is a way of working in new genres, improving my ability and making people happy, so it's going to continue.  Hopefully the paying stuff will flow a little better as well.

I'm writing down my list of prospective projects for the year here, in part so it's public record and I can't be a shyster about it, in part so my readerwife and various friends will be able to nudge me when I need it.  Plus, hey, you might be interested to see what I've got lined up for this next year.

1) M/M fantasy epic--which I started writing in August, with the intention of submitting to Riptide for their anniversary open call.  Then the flood happened, and I damaged my knee and we fought with FEMA and it was all I could do to haul my keister into work every day.  I'm trying to finish it this month.  Think of it as a vastly reimagined retelling of The Little Mermaid.

2) Write Camellia with my co-author Caitlin Ricci by March 1st.  It's an F/F BDSM erotic romance.  Yes, I'm branching out.  We wrote a novel together last year that needs major editing, but I'm hoping to get that done early on as well.  Lots of hope happening here:)  This one has kinky Japanese tea ceremonies.  That was fun to research.

3) Write Season Two of Cambion.  Oh my god, I don't have enough of it plotted.  I don't know where SMP stands with getting it out.  I don't even have the first episode written yet.  This is the last bloody time I'm doing a serial, I got so much shit last time from people who didn't want to wait, or forgot between episodes and didn't want to reread.  Needless to say, I'm working up my motivation on this one.

4) Steampunk alt. history action/adventure/romance M/F New Adult novel.  Yeah, what?  Huh?  Think of it as a steampunk version of The Philadelphia Project.  I want to get it done by September so I can pitch to agents at the RMFW conference then.  I really would like an agent.  And a book deal.  How about it, 2014?

5) Self-publishing something.  What, I'm not sure yet.  I'll probably start with packaging up Full Credit, making it a pretty cover and putting it out there for free while I write the sequel to it.  I had The Captain edited by a professional, and they had suggestions about reworking the entire last third of it and redoing this and improving that and...while all things I know I should consider, I just can't muster the will to tear it apart right now.  Sometime, but not right now.

6) Keeping up with The Academy.  Yes, this is a big deal to me.  It's my mental health story, it needs to be out there.

7) Various short stories, anthology calls, possible another story for the Goodreads M/M group event this year, possibly even writing my first ever fanfic...and it's not for Sherlock, which stunned me, but no.

So, big goals.  All told I'm probably looking at around 300-350 thousand words this year.  That's around a thousand words a day.  I think I can do it.  1k a day is very doable.  I've just got to commit, and this list is part of that.  Have fun setting your own goals for 2014, darlins, and Happy New Year!