Fanfic New Year's Resolutions

[Negrek]

Iiiiit's that time of year again! Do you have any new year's resolutions relating to fanfic? Read more? Write more? Try something new? Or something else entirely?

This year I think I'm going to try shooting for writing 30,000 words per month, except for November, when the goal will be 50k instead, heh. I considered doing a daily writing goal, but I'm just abysmal at doing anything on a daily schedule. This way I can skip days just fine as long as I make it up later, which has always worked well for NaNo.

I am pretty sure I've never actually managed to keep any of my fanfic writing resolutions, though, so we'll see how it goes.

 

[Kutie Pie]

Y'know what, I've been thinking about it a lot these last few months, and I might actually return to reviewing this year. Maybe not necessarily on this forum (but it's not out of the question), but for sure I will on FanFiction.net, as the last time I left a review for anything on that site was September of last year. I don't have a set goal as to how many reviews I may do this year, but as long as I do it, it shouldn't matter how many reviews I do.

And to make sure that happens, I feel I should at least give a heads-up (as well as admit to myself) that no, I'm not going to hold back on my thoughts. That's what I think killed my motivation to review was that I felt pressured in having to "tone down" or "sugarcoat" my voice, because that felt to me like I had to lie or treat someone like a child while critiquing. And maybe I do need to work on my vocabulary and stuff, but I do do my best to give advice while critiquing no matter how many times I run that imaginary red ink through, and that to me is what matters the most in the end. And I honestly do miss giving advice to and encouraging new writers, no matter how frustrating it got at times.

As for when it comes to my own work, I'm not good about keeping to a schedule, and I doubt I'll ever get to work it out to a reasonable point, so I just can't make promises, let alone resolutions when it comes to my own pacing and scheduling. I should probably be much more open about it, though, so it doesn't feel like I'm just giving empty promises because I really and truly do feel so bad about the gap in between updates.

 

[DeliriousAbsol]

I definitely need to read more. I might try to read and review at LEAST once a week and see if I can keep it up.

Regards writing, I seem to be pretty good at keeping on top of it unless I have a lot on (this past week or so has been an example of that. Barely written at all!) I think I'll aim to maintain my goal of a minimum of 1000 words per writing session, which will hopefully allow me to be able to complete a chapter a week.

Not so much a resolution, but this year I do want to finish Reboot and hopefully make a start on an original story.

 

[Nerdy McNerdface]

Easy for me: I wanna write much more. I have a weird block going on right now and I wanna break out of it this year.

 

[NovaBrunswick]

Maybe try to finish off my Sun & Moon fanfic. Since Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon are now out, I might mix in some references to them.

 

[Griff4815]

I'm definitely going to try to write more and get back to my more regular writing schedule.

 

[diamondpearl876]

In general, write more and read more.

Specifically, catch up on the rewrites of Love and Other Nightmares (which is about 6-7 chapters) and pick up some new fics that I haven't before. Does it count if I've already done the latter but started very shortly before 2018 started?

 

[Ambyssin]

To not let the topic creator keep sweeping the rug out from under my feet at the last possible second.I kid, I kid.

I would definitely like to try and finish drafting Guiding Light (or, at least, the rest of the main story) before the end of August, since that's when I'll have hit the one-year mark at my current job and expect my workload to get larger as a result.

 

[The Teller]

Small goal: I'd like to finish the Aether Foundation chapter for The Grunt Anthology sometime this year.

Big goal: I think it's time to make another original story again, as in, not a fanfic. I just gotta find a plot I like.

 

[Cometstarlight]

Write more, read more.

But to be more specific: finally get around to writing the PMD fanfic I've had rolling around in my mind since before the release of X and Y. There's also quite a few fanfics I've been meaning to read here on Serebii and before I go back to college, I really should get around to reading them.

 

[straydelta]

Not really big on New Year's Resolutions because I never stick to them even in the slightest bit, but I really do want to write more and read more. I'm out of school for a while before I move on to graduate school, so I need to keep up my skills.

I have two fanfics I really want to work on (one's Pokémon, the other is Transformers), and two original story ideas, so maybe I could push myself to write something for each once at least once a week? And I'm not yet sure what I want to read - I might start picking novels off my shelf and just read whatever I haven't gotten around to reading yet. Might start with one a month and work my way up. I'm so bad with discipline honestly that I have a hard time sticking to any sort of goals. :/ I'm a procrastinator who works best under pressure - if there's a looming deadline of TOMORROW and there's consequences to not finishing (i.e. BAD GRADES), then suddenly I find the motivation to finish my goals, but...otherwise? Not so much.

To those who are good at sticking to goals...how do you do it? Do you reward yourselves? Do you set aside a certain time each day/week to do something?

 

[Bay]

I hope to finish Foul Play this year since I got some stuff planned already, just I seem to sometimes thought up different directions where I want to take it before going from point A to B haha. Maybe also write some Ace Attorney fanficiton since I saved up a lot of AA prompts from Dreamwidth and thought those would be fun to write.

Reading more would be nice too. I don't think I'm having too much problem with reading fanfics yet, but there are a lot I would like to still read. I too would also love to read more published books, only managed to read one or two last year.

 

[bobandbill]

My hobby writing was thrown out last year thanks to a thesis (so my spare writing time was mostly on Daily) but that's finished now! So:

- review more regularly on the sites I am on
- revive the drabble dex
- finally go back to A Change of the Season christ that's gotten dusty.
- more articles on PC Daily that isn't just news and game guides.

Also read more books as I have a backlog of them.

 

[Mrs. Lovett]

I have a thesis to work on too, but mine's just getting started, so that will have to be my main writing project for the first half of this year. Then I have an original story idea that's been in my mind for nearly four years now and that I'm super close to finishing in rough-draft form. I would love to get that done this year. But I'm disappointed that I've hardly worked on my fics or been on the forums lately, so I'm going to set aside at least some time for that, at the very least in order to read and review some more of the stories around here.

 

[DarkerShining]

Well, I guess my writing goals for this new year is:

- Keep making progress on PMD: Reflecting Balance. (Chapter 54 is nearly done, by the way, so keep an eye out for that sometime soon.)
- Hopefully manage to make progress on and post some other stories besides Reflecting Balance.
- Keep working on improving my writing skills as I keep writing.

 

[Knightfall]

I would like to shake off the long hiatus I've been in due to college. Write far more and rebuild my rusty skills, read some of the lovely works here that I've missed, and to come back into the community.

Best of luck to you all with your resolutions.

Knightfall signing off... ;005;

 

[Agent Tectonic]

Suppose my goals would be to get back to being active here as a whole. Writing down my stretch of a trilogy at long last instead of fantasizing about it, review more both to help others and to better review my own work in the process, and just get to know the community more. Been away for so long, I'm sure there are many people to swap, share and innovate ideas and just say, "hello, how's it going?" to new and... less than new folks on the block. Wouldn't want to say anyone is old here. :|

 

[Chibi Pika]

I'm really excited to see so many returning faces in this thread. ^^ Hope to see you all around here throughout 2018!

As for myself, I got a lot done in 2017, so I can't really say that I want to do more in 2018, just that I want to be more steady with it. Like, both my writing and reviewing tended to be kind of feast or famine. One month I'd post 2 chapters and review 40 fics, and then the next I'd read nothing and post nothing. I'd like it to a little bit less extreme. I also would like to get more involved in running events on the forum.

 

[roule]

Update ELEMENT and snowstorm on the yellow sea.

 

[The Great Butler]

There's 12 months in a year, and I used to at one time be capable of publishing a new chapter every four to six weeks. I'm hoping to publish the entire Olivine City arc of The Angel of Reckoning this year, which would total six chapters.