Vocal Writing Aspirations

My writing aspirations on Vocal for this year is to increase my usage of the platform, not just completing the challenges but also reading and commenting on other creators’ stories. This past year I have not completed many challenges, or I have done a draft but not submitted the story within the time allowed for that challenge, time management is something I need to work on this year. It can be difficult to manage my own time as I work as a home carer and do shift work and can be working all day and I also have my little girl to look after as well.

I need to write every day and submit and be active on vocal every other day to create a habit of being more present and to build a following of my own. I find that first thing in the morning when the house is quiet before everyone is awake and before the day starts is the best time for me to write. This is my most productive time of the day, if I can make it a habit to write every day in these early hours, I will accomplish two of my writing goals which are to be more active on vocal and to become a more competent writer.

I am excited about who I might discover on vocal as I don’t follow any fellow writers and I need to support other writers. Writing can be a lonely pursuit and having other people critique your work and pinpoint aspects of where to improve analytically is what every writer wants, feedback on the story they wrote. I find it difficult to ask friends and family to read my writing as I am self-conscious about my writing, but I feel it’s a safe and encouraging community on vocal to share my work. I would like to do a collaborative project with a fellow writer, but I would want to build up my writing skills beforehand to build up my confidence in my writing. I think submitting regularly to vocal and doing the challenges will push me out of my comfort zone and make me a better writer by trying different writing techniques and different challenges will shape my writing.

I would like to explore other genres like poetry, thriller, and cosy mystery writing, I have some ideas for a cosy mystery series which I think would be good for self-publication. I am working on a haunted house story currently and I want to rewrite one of my stories from the wall challenge as I think this could have been a lot better. I am also working on a Christmas story about a magical toy shop that only appears at Christmas. I have played around with lots of different genres since starting my English literature with creative writing degree through Open University, the degree has helped and boosted my confidence and it was on the forum of the creative writing course that I found out about Vocal and how it can help want-to-be writers. I will be finishing my degree course this summer and might sign up to do a master’s in creative writing in October this year, but I will have to wait and see what happens.

I want 2024 to be my year on Vocal, more active, submit more writing become a much more confident, competent writer and hopefully build up a following within the year too. In addition, I want to start my writing blog to complement my time on vocal and my writing blog will include extracts from my stories and writing help for fellow want-to-be writers, hopefully, I can build this up and start a newsletter as well.