2011 New Year's Resolutions Report Card

I had two resolutions in 2011:

Keep an Activity Log

I am going to give myself an A- for this. I actually do have an activity log! For the entire year! But I would forget to keep it updated for several weeks in a row, and then go back and stare at a calendar and my journals to try to reconstruct what I'd been up to in those weeks. Several of the columns are of dubious accuracy; I know I've exercised a lot more often than I've actually recorded, for one. The "HS" column is my "happiness scale", and going back to reconstruct that was pretty iffy. And, while I'll grant that I don't write in this LJ regularly, I am still pretty sure I spent more than five hours writing the year's 72 LJ entries.

All this given, I think the data gives a reasonable approximation of most of my creative activities for the year. So, some statistics!

In 2011, I spent about 188 hours on "creative activities that counted", a category which includes:

* Writing original fiction
* Writing World Tree fanfiction (delight_in_wt, to be specific
* Drawing and painting, including 23 hours messing with custom My Little Ponies(tm) (the third custom MLP I attempted broke my spirit when I tried to do clothing. Clothing for an inflexible pony figurine is hard.)
* Preparing for the World Tree sessions

The big winner for the year was Delight: I spent 66 hours writing entries for her community. Another 40+ hours went to game prep. Original fiction received about 30 hours across all categories, most of that on the perenially unfinished Sign and Sacrifice.

Frankly, 188 hours seems rather pitiful, especially compared to the 1500+ hours I spent at my day job. The amount of time spent on original fiction -- in a whole year! -- is even sadder.

On the other hand, 188 hours averages to about 30 minutes a day. That was my original goal back in January ... although my original January goal did not include some of the activities I spent much of my time on this year. When I decided to let the drawing/painting/ponies count, I was supposed to go up to averaging about 40 minutes a day. Oops.

My other resolution was:

Do a significant amount of writing

I was supposed to define what "significant" meant at some later point. I never did. Oops. I guess I'll decide now! This is later, right? telnar always told me that the best way to make sure you achieve your goals is to look back at whatever you did and then decide that was your goal.

The year's word counts were:

Sign and Sacrifice: 20,821
Misc. other original fiction: Around 4,200
Delight: 48,422
World Tree Game Prep: Unsure, probably around 15,000
Misc. other game prep: Around 4,500

So around 92,000 words. Sounds like a significant amount to me!

Interestingly, my estimated conversion of minutes-to-words was that 1 hour = 800 words. Based on word counts and time worked for S&S and Delight, my average word count was 757 per hour.

I was also supposed to figure out goals on a month-by-month basis. In practice, I set a goal in January and made it, then set a goal for February, never changed it, made it for five or six months, acknowledged in September that I was blowing it every month, still didn't change it, and continued to not make it for the rest of the year. So ... nice theory, in practice, not so much difference.

Nominally, I guess I hit my goals, but I am not particularly satisfied with the year's work. On the one hand, I want to write more original fiction. On the other, I like writing Delight and I like running the World Tree game, which is into its third year now. (!) These things take creative energy, and for me, they take much the same creative energy that writing original fiction does.

To be honest, I don't really know why I want to write more original fiction. Because my inner 12-year-old still thinks she will get rich as a writer of original fiction? Because I want more people to read my work, and game prep is only appreciated by the players, while Delight is never going to have more than a small subset of Sythyry's audience? Because fanfiction is cheating? I dunno.

Anyway, that's more a topic for my goals in 2012.

New Year's Resolutions 2012

My resolutions are really just goals, but calling it a resolution is traditional, so okay.

Keep an Activity Log
I liked having this from last year, and using a spreadsheet makes it relatively easy to maintain. So I'll stick with it.

Keep Score

This is one idea to incorporate a few different factors:

Everything Counts

One of my friends has been wrestling with the last book in the trilogy he's been writing. He comments now and again about having an idea for Thing That Isn't the Trilogy, but doesn't usually act on it because it's not what he Should Be Writing. I found myself thinking: "I like reading what he writes. I just want him to write stuff, and I don't care that much if it continues Existing Story or not."

That's not true for all authors -- some writers have some stuff I like and some stuff I don't, and as a reader I'd rather they worked on the stuff I liked. But it was true for him.

And, to a large degree, it's true for me. There's some stuff I want to finish more than others, but there's nothing that I wish didn't exist.

So really, I want everything to count. Journal entries, fanfic, sketches, roleplay prep, everything I do that takes creative energy -- it all matters.

Some Things Count More than Others

But even though everything counts, there are some projects that I really want to be able to look back on and say "I did that!" So I want an incentive system that reflects that.

Tracking Time

Generally, I prefer tracking time-spent to words-written, or other concrete measures of success. This is because (a) the two are fungible in practice: if I devote time to working on something, I will make progress on it, and (b) psychologically, my brain doesn't believe (a). If I don't feel like writing, I can generally convince myself to try to write for 20 minutes anyway. But convincing myself to keep trying to write until I've written 250 words is excruciating. Even though the results in both cases are nearly identical. This is my brain. YMMV.

Tracking Results

On the other hand, if I do feel like writing, I'll often snatch minutes -- while walking, or at work, or at the grocery store -- to do some writing, and it's not really practical to track minutes in these situations. So tracking words, or progress, is good in those situations.

In general, tracking progress works if the project is something I'm eager to do, and tracking time spent works if it's something I'm eager to have done.

So: score keeping! Points for all creative activities! Scoring as follows:

Standard Points

• 1 minute = 1 standard point.


• 12 words = 1 standard point.

Bonus points

• Creator's Choice Bonus: Every 30 standard points in a Creator's Choice activity = 10 bonus points.


• Audience's Choice Bonus: Every 30 standard points in an Audience's Choice activity = 10 bonus points.

Completion points (Scored whenever I actually finish something)

• Sketch: 10 completion points


• Icon/Art Card: 25 completion points


• Colored image: 100 completion points


• Complex/large finished painting: 1000 completion points


• Journal entry*: 10 completion points


• Original fiction entry: 20 completion points


• Story outline: 100 completion points


• Short Story: 1,000 completion points


• Long Story: 10,000 completion points

* Very short posts / links don't count as an entry.

Subject to Revision
If I realize that my incentives are out of whack, or I have something else I want to add, I'll change this system

Initial Goal
I am really not sure how this is going to work out. So my January goal is 50 total points per day, with the same caveat as last year -- I can get ahead but I can't fall behind.

My score so far today is:

750 words (most of this morning's entry was written yesterday): 62 points
2 journal entries: 20 completion points

I'm already ahead!

...

I'll have to revise either my goal or my scoring system if I consistently blog instead of writing fiction, but what the heck, I'll let myself get a head start for now.

Audience's Choice

I said I'd give myself a bonus for Creator's Choice and Audience's Choice activities.

My picks for January are Sign and Sacrifice and Birthright, which probably very few would vote for because most of you have never read anything of them.

But, for the Audience's Choice, a poll:

[Poll #1807721]

Audience's Choice will be both:

a) whatever gets the most votes
b) one other activity selected from everything else that got votes, drawn by lots (everything gets entered into a drawing a number of times based on the number of votes it got, and one thing gets drawn). This way even the write-in votes will have a chance of winning.

I reserve the right to do a new poll in February, or change my polling method, depending on whether or not I come up wih a selection process I like better. :)