A One-Year Plan

A friend of mine posted in her Live Journal about a question a co-worker asked her. What did she want to be doing in five years. That question got me thinking. I read the responses to her post, and posted a response myself, but today I began to consider what "I" wanted to be doing in five years; heck, what I wanted to be doing in One year. I know that circumstances may change, my interests may change but still, I should try to be working toward something. I also watched Nova last night, which aired a program about regular people, young, old, overweight, medically questionable, all preparing, over a nine month period, to run the Boston Marathon. They knew what they were working toward. Not everyone accomplished their goal, but they all worked,, hard, focused, toward it. Shouldn't I be working toward something, too?

So where do I want to be in one year? What do I want to be doing? I know that I want to write. Isn't that why I created this blog? To write? To practice? To figure out what my voice is, what my view is, what I have to say that is so different from anyone else. To do that, I need to write. And write. So that's what I'm going to do. I've been harboring some story ideas and want to get those ideas down on paper. Two of the stories are fan fiction, one story is for a novel. No, I don't think this will be "The Great American Novel." I don't have expectations that high and mighty. But it's a story, a quest, that sits with me, and walks with me, and ponders with me as I go about my life. It's a story of friendship, of life, of finding your way with the grace and dignity, the knowledge and intuition it takes to not screw things up too much.

And so I'm going to write, maybe not every day, but most days. I'm not going to try for perfection, there's no such thing. I'm not even going to try for good, that can come later. That's what revision is for. But to revise, to get to that stage, there needs to be something there, something to revise. And that's where I am. And that's where I start, where I begin a one year journey toward writing. My goal in the year isn't to get published, but to get finished. To start the three stories I've got in my head now, to finish those stories. By finishing these stories I make a step toward being what I hope to someday be: a writer.