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Make 2000 a Year to Reach Your Goals

© Roxianne Moore

Make 2000 a Year to Reach Your Goals

What are your writing goals for the coming year? For the coming decade?

I sat down and made up a list of goals I'd like to achieve within the next decade, and what I'd do this year to move closer to achieving them. This year's goals include:

1. Find a good writing workshop
2. Get a critique partner for my novel
3. Continue researching and plotting my historical novel
4. Find a mentor or research partner for my historical novel
5. Finish a rough draft of the novel by year's end
6. Publish my articles in at least five new magazine markets this year
7. Expand my newspaper or business writing to bring in a steady income

I don't know about the rest of you, but one thing I need to keep me writing is a good writers group and plenty of feedback. I do belong to one good group, a rather large group of women who meet monthly. But it's not a workshop environment, and I don't presently have a good critique partner. Since I couldn't find any workshops in my area, I decided to start one at the community center. But that probably won't be enough to give me the support I need because I expect more novices than experienced writers.

A mentor is more than a teacher. In fact, many mentors won't teach you the basics of your craft. What they will do is supplement all that book-learning, much of which has no basis in the real world of publishing, with the nuts and bolts of how things really get done. They may help you find an agent, start that dreaded research, or avoid ‘sagging middle syndrome.' Most of all, a mentor will encourage you to keep going, and give you the one-on-one attention you won't get in any writing class. I've had a number of mentors over the years, though many wouldn't give themselves that title. One of the best was a newspaper editor who showed me how to research and write quickly. Her feedback and advice, while often negative and offered in a very unfriendly way, made my writing tighter and gave it more energy. Without her, I doubt I'd still be writing for newspapers today, and I probably wouldn't have branched out into writing for magazines.

But finding the right mentor can be a long process. If you're looking only in your immediate area, you may never find a good match. But the online community improves your chances of finding a good mentor. My own search method has always been haphazard, and most of my mentors over the years have been found by chance. But if I want to reach my goals, I can't wait for chance to deliver the right mentor to my doorstep. So where to find mentors?

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