Last year was all about word count and getting myself out there. I wrote about a half million words last year.  I started my own website, got on Twitter, and participated in a blog-hop, an advent calendar, and Nanowrimo. I also started tracking down writers for a local writers group–much easier than I thought it would be–and gave some of my work to people in real life.  You know. The kind of people who won’t disappear forever if they hate my writing.

So, at the end of the year, I have significantly more raw words than I did at the beginning of the year. I have… uhm… a lot of raw words. I have two books worth of Lepterians, one from the very beginning of the year, and one from Nano.  I have a couple of mystery/thrillers.

Revision is a trickier goal to track.  With writing, you just count your words and off you go. When you revise, you have no idea what needs to be done until you’re in there, and there’s no clear stopping point.

The most basic goal I can think of is to do something every day.

1.) I am going to work on revision every day. I’m going to put a minimum time on that, because I need to know if I’m meeting my goals.  I think I’ll start with twenty minutes, because that sounds like something I’m sure I can do.

My next few goals have to do with production OF REVISED and POLISHED WORK.

2.) I am going to finish revising my first thriller manuscript by April 30th.

3.) I am going to continue revising and posting updates to the Science Fiction Experiment on my blog. This is one with a lot of accountability. I want to increase the number of chapters I post, and I want to revise this more quickly.

4.) I want to evaluate my other projects and decide which of them are worth revising. I have a weird collection of finished and almost-finished things that I’ve been writing this year, and a decision has to be made. Depending on how goal #1 goes, this could be a non-issue.  I might get to all of them. I might not.

And then, I have my writing goals.

This year, my goal was to write 1,000 words a day.  And by and large, I’ve surpassed that. I’m at 500k or so right now, and I’m suddenly realizing that’s an awful lot of words. Five or six books worth, if you divide it out. Seven, if I were writing in shorter genres.

No wonder I’m not sure I can revise it all!

My writing goals are going to be smaller, this year.

5.) 500 words per day AND

6.) Those 500 words should be distributed in ONE scene. Not five. Not twenty. And certainly not little chips scattered all over my Ywriter Software.