The year to accomplish the impossible

[Sonata]

Lose Weight

Since my senior year of high school I've put on roughly 120 pounds, and at least half of those were gained in the past 6 or 7 months. I've got a cruise booked for me, my girlfriend and my grandma to go on in November so I'm hoping by then I can go from 320 to at the very least 240ish. If I can get lower, or at least burn off some more fat and tone up my tummy I think all in all that would be enough for this year.

Get published

Whether it's refining a handful of short stories and self-publishing them on amazon for pennies, or finally drawing the lines between all the bullet points of my novel and winning the submission games with a publisher, I will have my name out there on something writing related before the year is through.

Recording

- I will record at least one let's play this year.
- I will finish and record the duet that me and my girlfriend have been working on for the past couple of months.

Work Goals

- I will become an OS, and hopefully an assistant manager before the year is through. Because salary and paid days off are nice.
- I will have made and saved up enough money to survive comfortably from December 31, 2017 until at the very least, July 2017.
- I will try to work at least one week of 60 hours every month, and 50 hours every other week. Gotta get that OT.

Education

While not necessarily the biggest of things right now, maybe in September or October it would be nice to finally get my GED. But really only if I'm being considered for assistant manager, otherwise it's more or less pointless to think about a GED until 2018 or so.

Fun

I want to beat a new game every other week. I have a library that just continuously grows and never shrinks even by the smallest of amounts. So I'm going to buckle down and vow not to buy any new games this year until I beat the majority of the ones that I have. Until of course, Breath of the wild or something else exciting comes out that I just have to have.

 

[gimmepie]

Do you have any plans in place for achieving any of these goals? It's all well and good to know what you want but it's hard to achieve things if you haven't decided how you're going to.

 

[Sonata]

Well I mean most of it is just working with what I've already got and just finding the energy and mindset to do it. I don't really care about my education just yet, and the whole games and music stuff I've got a pretty decent pc mic and a headset that can connect to pc and ps4 so I'm set there. As far as work goes, I should be getting OS training this month or the next since I was promised it 4 or so months ago and it's just been constantly getting pushed back. This week I've already got 54 hours and I still have an 8 hour shift tomorrow to do so that's my 60 hour week for this month down. And if I put back $500 a month I'll have enough to pay for the cruise by the end of August so no worries there.

The biggest and hardest to achieve goals for me are the weight loss and the publishing. I have a schedule made up for the gym so that I can evenly balance the amount of muscle I gain and how much I tone it so I'm not just gaining for weeks on end and then taking one day to tone. Based the schedule off of the workout routine we did for APC in high school as well as some of the routines I've found online and in gyms like Planet Fitness, Anytime Fitness and Gold's gym.

And as for writing, the easier option would be to just self publish some short stories on Amazon and other similar places. I've already looked into some places online that you can send your writing in to have it critiqued and edited, I'm just not quite ready to drop the cash on it since I know if I take in a collection and have someone check over it I'll probably get a better deal. But I also don't really want to take the easy route. I've been researching and some people have said that since digital is getting bigger and printed word is becoming obsolete, it's better to start out by putting your name out on something like amazon so you can have something else to show to a publisher or an agent so they'll be more willing to take the risk and invest in your story. However, other people have said if you write well enough and present your story correctly you should be able to get an agent to co-operate with you even if you don't have any prior experience. And since most, if not all, publishers want to talk to and read entries from known and trusted agents rather than accept hundreds and thousands of entries from random Joes on a daily basis... I think you get the point. It comes down to if I think I write well enough and if I've actually just read over everything enough times to ensure it is the best that it can be whether it's the short stories or the novel that I tackle first. Which just means I need to practice writing more which likely won't be an option until the late summer or early fall.

 

[gimmepie]

Well I mean most of it is just working with what I've already got and just finding the energy and mindset to do it. I don't really care about my education just yet, and the whole games and music stuff I've got a pretty decent pc mic and a headset that can connect to pc and ps4 so I'm set there. As far as work goes, I should be getting OS training this month or the next since I was promised it 4 or so months ago and it's just been constantly getting pushed back. This week I've already got 54 hours and I still have an 8 hour shift tomorrow to do so that's my 60 hour week for this month down. And if I put back $500 a month I'll have enough to pay for the cruise by the end of August so no worries there.

The biggest and hardest to achieve goals for me are the weight loss and the publishing. I have a schedule made up for the gym so that I can evenly balance the amount of muscle I gain and how much I tone it so I'm not just gaining for weeks on end and then taking one day to tone. Based the schedule off of the workout routine we did for APC in high school as well as some of the routines I've found online and in gyms like Planet Fitness, Anytime Fitness and Gold's gym.

And as for writing, the easier option would be to just self publish some short stories on Amazon and other similar places. I've already looked into some places online that you can send your writing in to have it critiqued and edited, I'm just not quite ready to drop the cash on it since I know if I take in a collection and have someone check over it I'll probably get a better deal. But I also don't really want to take the easy route. I've been researching and some people have said that since digital is getting bigger and printed word is becoming obsolete, it's better to start out by putting your name out on something like amazon so you can have something else to show to a publisher or an agent so they'll be more willing to take the risk and invest in your story. However, other people have said if you write well enough and present your story correctly you should be able to get an agent to co-operate with you even if you don't have any prior experience. And since most, if not all, publishers want to talk to and read entries from known and trusted agents rather than accept hundreds and thousands of entries from random Joes on a daily basis... I think you get the point. It comes down to if I think I write well enough and if I've actually just read over everything enough times to ensure it is the best that it can be whether it's the short stories or the novel that I tackle first. Which just means I need to practice writing more which likely won't be an option until the late summer or early fall.

If you ask me, it's better to start with the short stories and build your way up to the novel but I'm not an expert here or anything since I've not been published yet either lol.

 

[Devil in the Mirror]

I'm a writer, too. Got myself a fancy degree from a university to prove it and... nothing else. I've been thinking of trying to self-publish something on Amazon for a while as well. I'm working on novel ideas, but I think writing a book that's a collection of short stories and poems a la Lyrical Ballads might be a good way to start too. In high school I actually was working on something of that nature and it was a lot of fun. Maybe we'll both get something published in 2017. :3

 

[Sonata]

I'm a writer, too. Got myself a fancy degree from a university to prove it and... nothing else. I've been thinking of trying to self-publish something on Amazon for a while as well. I'm working on novel ideas, but I think writing a book that's a collection of short stories and poems a la Lyrical Ballads might be a good way to start too. In high school I actually was working on something of that nature and it was a lot of fun. Maybe we'll both get something published in 2017. :3

Hopefully :) best of luck to you in 2017 as well.

If you ask me, it's better to start with the short stories and build your way up to the novel but I'm not an expert here or anything since I've not been published yet either lol.

Yeah. Well I mean with what I've got now I just need about 3 or 4 more shortish stories in order to make a collection worth publishing, most of the work there is just rereading what I've already made and editing it all into something worth sellingetting haha. A mother idea I had would be similar to that. I've had a story called the 22 that goes with the novel I've got planned. It's supposed to tell the beginning of the world I've made and show the journey of this group of 22 people as they journey through the world and encounter all the things that either don't exist anymore by the time of the main novel or the things that just wouldnot make sense to include in the main novel but still exist in the world. I'd thought to release it after the novel is published but thinking about it this morning I could release it in parts for the main characters of the group. Three or four chapters for x character in a part and just sell it for some mundane amount of money. Since there's so many characters and it's just world building (which is one of my most favorite things) it would be fun and could have the potential to build up to something greater.

 

[Aquacorde]

heyo so im here to nag you about getting into shape! well not really nag just want to know how it's going so far?

 

[Bay]

The job was pretty mediocre and about a very tiny section about rock and roll culture in our city, he then used this on his resume and became a something that I don't know the term in english, what he does is correct, spell-check and re-word books, articles, and whatnot.

I think the term you're looking for is copy-editor. I know a few folks that do that for a living. (thumbs up) But yeah, Johnny's suggestion could be something you can try O'aka.

 

[Sonata]

heyo so im here to nag you about getting into shape! well not really nag just want to know how it's going so far?

Weeeellll, I went to go to the gym and I guess I have about 150 in charges still on my account since I missed one payment back in mid 2016 and they just stopped charging me altogether after that and just compiled it into one nice lump sum. Soooo I won't be going to the gym for at least another month while I wait to build up some more cash to pay that off with.

Are you dead set on publishing a story or would you mold your goals if somewhat related to writing? You already have a job so you might not care about it so much, but working daily as a writer, even if it's for the silliest of areas, might help and broaden your horizons a lot. I know this first hand because of a friend that started as you, eventually got a job in a newspapers. The job was pretty mediocre and about a very tiny section about rock and roll culture in our city, he then used this on his resume and became a something that I don't know the term in english, what he does is correct, spell-check and re-word books, articles, and whatnot. After a few years on the field he published a book that in my opinion was very good, might not've been his big break, but it's a story I felt it was worth sharing. Hope this helps (somehow).

Yeah I'm pretty set on publishing a sizable story of my own. I don't actually have a lot of interests that I'd enjoy writing about enough to do a blog or newspaper articles or anything like that. I don't know. I just don't really see myself being involved in writing if it's not as an author of a series since there's other dreams I do/did have that I can still pursue with a little more effort if writing does end up falling through.

And actually, at the moment I've completed the outline for two of the first three books in a rather large scale operation I've got going on in my mind. Now it's just a matter of keeping up with the one RP I'm in while also finding time to at least write out the bigger moments of the first book and then eventually connecting those with basically everything else.