The List Never Ends

So, after seeing Shadow's goals, I thought it'd be fun to list mine, since I don't tend to talk about my explicit writing goals. I have writing industry goals: getting the next issue of Island Writer out, getting Theory Train a money-making enterprise, finding more editing work. And publishing.

But before I publish, I need to finish writing the stories.

My baby, and the furthest along right now, is Alexander, the first story in a series I'm fondly calling the Zimmerverse. It's almost forty thousand words long, and the first half is undergoing its second revision with the help of the Lolwhat critique group on Google Docs. By the end of this year I want Alexander finished and ready to go to press. I'm not sure yet whether I'll submit to publishing houses or do it myself: part of that may depend on how much blog traffic I'm getting at the time.

I also want to win the Faulkner Prism, which might be a bit more ambitious, since it does rely on winning contests consistently over the course of the summer, which is also the busy season at work. Part of that goal is writing a quality short story or poem every month for the next three, and then every two weeks until September. I managed it reasonably well last summer, but I was also considerably less busy, so we'll see how it goes.

I'm also participating in three collaborations, with my friends Tristan, Lynn, and Mason. The one with Tristan suffers for want of plot, which we're working on, the one with Lynn is proceeding quite well, if slowly, since we're both busy and have other writing projects, and the one with Mason has mostly devolved onto me, since he moved on after we finished the first in what was meant to be a series.

In the past few months, I've also decided that I want to write a werewolf romance novel. I have 2500 words and a folder full of research. It's progressing, but I don't have a definite end-date. I may try to get the first draft done during this year's NaNoWriMo, as November is a slow month in bike stores.

I'm also working on a semi-auto-biographical spy novel set in post-apocalyptic China -yes, there is emphasis on the 'semi' aspect- and a long-ish running story about gods. I want more of those done, though the Zimmerverse is my highest priority right now.