Be accountable for your writing: my #ROW80 Round 3 goals

“I am always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.”~Winston Churchill, English statesman

Here we go again.
A Round of Words in 80 Days, Round 3 for 2016 runs from July 4 – Sept 22, 2016. I’m in it to begin it.

Doing this again; bring it on!

I revisited the ROW80 site to read the “rules” of this challenge again. The key idea here is measurable goals, and that’s the part I struggle with. Kait Nolan’s post from 2011 resonated with me. When you keep items too broad, “these aren’t goals they’re end results.”

I love the breakdown that Raeanne G. Roy has. Her goals are a FABulous list of specific and achievable items. Maybe that’s the part I don’t publically list because I don’t want to bore everyone with all those individual steps to reach that Big Goal.

I need a balance of wishful idea with specific action steps, and I am responsible for them. I can make the time if something is important enough. What is most important to me now?

What will make me happy to complete this summer? Overall, what do I want?

I want to feel less stress and more motivated with my writing. For me, that means cleaning out the clutter in my life, physically and metaphorically. That means catching up and keeping up. That’s three of my goals for #ROW80 Round 3:

1–Update my blog.
This is a broad goal I’ve broken down into smaller to-dos and brain-dumps in my planner. This list includes:

1a–No draft posts.
1b–Let go of old posts.
1c–Finish all Pages (for now).
1d–Migrate older posts to new site.

This also includes mechanical stuff like: explore widgets; video posting help; Mailchimp newsletter; green Follow button; and email current subscribers and followers.

Dare to Dream!

2–Deal with 5-10 emails/day: 5 new and 5 old.
Whatever action I need to take, take it: read that blogpost; reply to sender; file; print; make notes; forward…but in the end, it’s no longer in my Inbox. Use hashmarks to show my progress!

3–Deal with my phone photos: save, print, delete.
This is an ugly, hot mess. It’s good that I purchased the highest GB phone available. I did that specifically for photos and videos, apps being a secondary consideration. It’s embarrassing and shocking the number of photos I have saved. Let’s just say that the quantity is six digits. Some of these are for blog posts, some are actual photos I want to save and scrapbook. Too many are duplicates for social media posts. When you’re staging the perfect image, there’s no reason not to take 25 photos to get the best one. I have to work out an achievable schedule to wrangle this.

Moving on to goals that I was successful with and want to continue doing:

4–Maintain current social media schedule, revise/update as needed.
This includes posting, reading blogs, commenting, reading books and replying.

5–Keep in touch with friends and family through phone calls and letters.
If I make two phone calls and write two letters each week, that’s not a bad way to maintain connections.

My final goal is something that should supersede all others, but right now isn’t:

6–Write: current WIPs; edit drafts; new stories; and just for fun
Yeah, the idea of this Round of Words is to be accountable for writing, hence the word “words” in the title. Blogging doesn’t count for me.

How do I make this a measurable 80 days? Maybe my weekend post will look ahead to the week the way I do in my planner–seriously, I love playing with stickers!–and list out week-goals that relate to the overall Big Goal. It all relates somehow.