My Writing in 2024

Challenge: Write about your aspirations, as a creator, on Vocal in 2024.

The same New Years resolution board is up in my office from 2022. I just added 2023 to it and this year I was thinking of putting a piece of blue duck tape over those dates, writing 2024, and changing just a few things. I write for challenges never expecting to win or place.

Maybe this year I will make more of an effort to compete. I started out thinking that I might win but as time passed, I don't believe I will. That is not the way to win, I know! I have not kept track of how many challenges I have entered and it doesn't matter as my heart wasn't in it.

Because I am familiar with positive affirmations, I can tell myself "I will win a challenge," a couple of times each day until I believe it. I can place the sign in two places to remember to look at it and read it twice a day for probably six months.

It will more than likely take more than six months to convince myself I can win a challenge, but that is my goal. I prefer goal or intention to resolution.

Two others I have on my resolution board as reminders that I will keep there are; "What you resist persists!" And, "Eat an elephant one bite at a time!" I think both of those can help me with my goal for this year on Vocal.

My intent to date has been to get to a place where I feel better about my writing. Because I have been consistently getting a top story a month, I believe I have met that intent. I feel better about my writing.

Honestly, I can say that I continue to prefer reading, which is okay, as that may never change. The writers that I read on Vocal are very good. And I have noticed improvement with others that started when I started as well.

It is a nice thought to have Vocal as an accountability buddy. I'm sure it will take more than the revisit though to get me to a win or place on a challenge.

Fiction is not my strong suit and I would like to improve my fiction writing and plan to do that by writing short fiction this year. I would like to write poetry. I'm not sure what I write is classified as poetry. I write a lot of poetry forms. I can follow the directions pretty well. I'm not satisfied.

Just that should keep me busy for most of the year.

I hope to write daily. I won't always publish daily. I will be at a training beginning today and I won't be back home until late Wednesday. This happens as even though I am retired, I work part-time as a culture consultant. Much of what I do is train counselors and trainers.

The connections I make on Vocal are by reading and commenting on who reads my material. The other way is to get sort of involved in the Vocal communities on Facebook. I am not good at that though. I have 3 main Vocal Facebook groups that I will read and add stories to.

With the Vocal challenges I will have an opportunity to write material that I have not written before. I didn't expect the haiku, senryu, and villanelle to be challenge poetry forms. Even though I write poetry forms, I write more rhyming forms.

One thing about writing for Vocal, I have now been conditioned to write 600+ words per story. I have written for NaNoWriMo and that consistent 600 words per day helped me to get to 50,000 words in a month this year.

I am looking forward to having a great year of writing, where I will win a challenge! And I do enjoy writing as much as reading.