Please, be serious now

Earlier this week, I reached the halfway point in my WIP. That's right: halfway. Get the balloons out people, it's time to celebrate!

Since I'm at the halfway milestone, I decided it would be a good place to take a breather and look back at what I've written. Normally after every chapter I get someone to go over it and correct typos and such, but I haven't with this story. The people who I used to turn to for advice on my writing have (gasp!) outgrown their desire to write and have gone on to pursue completely different things. Like jobs, other interests, boyfriends. A life.

Because I was looking at my writing seriously for the first time since my "One day a girl went to the shops and didn't end up at the shops instead she..." days, I've noticed a few things about my writing. Bad things. Like, my sentences don't always make sense because I'm trying too hard to make a unique metaphor. And I overuse the word "but". And the narrator's voice is all over the place.

But However, all of this is easily fixable (I hope). It won't be long until I've completely finished the first draft and then we'll see how my writing fares from there. My sensei Sharena recently posted about making deadlines and (more or less) sticking to them. Which got me to thinking: shouldn't I make myself a deadline?

I'm nineteen now, and I totally feel way more grown up than I did at eighteen. I've actually started applying for jobs! Okay so I did only look at ones that wanted me to work once a week but still, it's a start. There's a whole bunch of reasons I could come up with that work against the argument for my new-found maturity but I'm going to ignore them for the sake of this blog post.

Turning nineteen made me look at some of the goals I set for myself over the next few years. They include 'move out of my mum's house', 'learn how to drive', 'go to Japan' (written down twice, for good measure), 'win a prestigious award', 'finish third year with a good grade'...

Anyway, some of them are practical things, like driving and some are a bit more eccentric, like owning a pet goose and naming him Ferdy. Don't ask. But what made me kind of sad about some of my goals, which I set during 2011, is that they want me to finish specific stories and send them to publishers. Oh, Past Terri, she knows not what she does to my soul, for the stories she wanted published I see now as un-publishable. They would have to be completely reworked before they were anywhere near ready for other people's eyes to be cast upon them.

Of course, it's good that I have some goals to work towards. I remember hearing this guy give a talk about motivation at some event thingy and he said something like (gawd, I have a head for details) "you're more likely to achieve your bigger dream if you set smaller goals that lead up to it, rather than just hoping for it to become reality". In other words it's no use doing your best to pass your chemistry exam because it won't help you become a better interior designer. Or something. My analogies aren't the best today, but you get what I'm talking about.

The fact that some of my goals are no longer relevant is somewhat of a problem. Not in the sense that I have to amend this issue, but that it happened without me realising it. It's taught me that I have to pay more attention to what I want to achieve and make sure I won't change my mind about it later on. Of course, saying that and doing it are two different things all together. I'm certain I only moved on from my un-publishable stories because I had outgrown them - pointing towards the suggestion I made earlier about becoming more mature.

...Anyway, I finally realised that all this waffling is me getting off the point I was aiming for in my fourth paragraph which is that I'm setting myself a deadline. I shall finish the first draft of my WIP before Christmas. Or cry trying.