The (Real) New Beginning

My new year's resolutions have turned out to be impossible to follow. Work, moving out, refereeing, and just daily life. I have spent the last six months not writing at all. January hasn't been my rebirth, surprisingly July has. In the middle of the FIFA World Cup, I started writing again.

I set myself a weekly routine that I will try to follow as much as I can, and that very blog post is part of it. Every Thursday, I will publish a new blog post on here, about anything that I will think is interesting enough to be shared. Other tasks are writing at least six hundred words on Mondays and Tuesdays, and maybe on Sundays. Fridays will be dedicated to the rewriting process for stories that need to be edited and rebuilt.

My Wednesdays will be about another one of my goal, still related to writing, but on another level. I'm creating a website that allow people to share their own Science-Fiction and Fantasy short stories online. The site will allow feedback in the means of commentaries and grades. I will first develop it in French, and depending on its success and my motivation, I probably will transpose it to English a few months after the French version's first launching.

That website has been on my mind for a while, and I think my new motivation to write and to develop that website has been brought by the purchase of my new laptop. I only had a desktop before, which always fulfilled me as a gamer, but the freedom a laptop gives you to work wherever you want was something I needed, I realize now.

I haven't mentioned what my Saturdays will be about: nothing. To be more precise, I won't impose myself anything to do of that kind on Saturdays. I will enjoy the company of my beautiful wife and my silly cat. If inspiration strikes me, I'm not stopping myself from writing or working on the website, but I think Saturdays will very much be about relaxing as much as possible.

I still have a job after all, I'm still a soccer referee, and a soccer player. I'm still a gamer, even though my implication on video games have decreased a lot during the past few years. But I'll always enjoy a good Starcraft, Football Manager or even an oldie like Baldur's Gate.

I mentioned my wife earlier, and I need to say that I am very proud that her photography business makes her people, even if it's not always easy, doing all she does in a foreign language, in a foreign country. You can see her work on her website and on Facebook. Amazing is one of the words that describe it. (Example on the left).

Enough ramble for tonight. See you next Thursday, or you can insult me if I don't write another post next week.

One resolution, a few goals for the new year

2013 was a very difficult year to go through. In spite of my new job, the financial struggles have paved our road with no breaks, and when the light could be seen at the end of the tunnel, some new unforeseen problems would come up. That ended up with a third flat tire of the year on December 31st.

I've decided that I won't let that slow me down in my writing. Years ago, I used to write regularly enough that I had a few short stories (some not that short) saved on my computer. I lost it all the hard way when my hard drive died and I had no backup of everything I had written.

2014 will be a rebirth. My resolution is to write daily. No matter on what subject, on what medium, for what purpose: a minimum of 600 words a day will be my requirement. These words can go towards posts for this blog, short stories or maybe even for bigger tales. This number can seem rather low, but it is only a minimum. The challenge will be not to miss a day, with my daily job, my personal life and my other activities - I think there of refereeing and reading.

Linked to that first quantitative goal, another will be to have at least one story finished per quarter. So, on December 31st of this year, I will need to have at the very minimum four full stories - beginning, middle and end.

Still related to the writing process, one blog post a week minimum. I want this blog to allow me to improve my English writing skills, and to express myself freely.

Finally, I want to challenge myself on another level. Creating full stories is good, but I want to submit at least one story to a professional editor - more likely a magazine or a website. For 2014, submitting will be enough. I guess acceptance will be a goal for 2015.

"Slowly, but steadily!" will be my motto.