The Year of Living Dangerously – Cahoon edition

A few months ago, the PRO liaison for RWA issued a challenge. Make 2011 the year of living dangerously in your writing. She suggested trying a new market, sending your work out to agents and editors, or try writing a new genre.

I’ve been thinking about this challenge a lot. How can I stretch out of my comfort area and take a chance? And this is what I’ve come up with for now. I’ll update this list as new challenges arise.

Side note: I was listening to a speaker on making plans. She said you only have to plan three steps. Three. Because by the time you have accomplished those three steps, new pathways have opened up and it’s time to plan three more. Three that you might not have known about before you took those three steps.

January living dangerously steps:

Sign up for Missouri writer’s conference. This April conference is with in driving distance – no need for overnight accommodations and they have fiction and essay presenters who I can learn from and one of my dream agents taking pitches. And I get to meet a cozy mystery author I love.

Send off a short story to Women’s World. This is a tight market. 800 word stories have to be emotional, tightly written and satisfying. I’ve learned my draft is way over the story limits and my challenge is cutting word length.

Commit to attending RWA nationals. Still working out the money bugs on this one. But as Kevin Costner’s character learned in Field of Dreams, if you plan it, it will come. (Paraphrasing just a bit.)

Volunteer to give a coffee talk presentation for our local chapter. Generational Characters. This one is harder. I’ve got a topic, some of the research material, and the date. Now to just write the darn training. You would think since I used to do this for a living I wouldn’t be so nervous.

But I guess that’s what the year of living dangerously is all about. To stretch. To grow. And to take chances.

What challenges have you taken on lately?

Happy New Year!

It is with great joy and fear that I look to this next year. Having made such drastic changes to my life in 300+, I wonder what 2007 will bring. I have been thinking a lot about my goals and dreams for this year and have waxed poeticly about them in a list of SMART (I hope) goals at work. But I really want to focus on two.

1- Be healthier at the end of 2007 than I am in the beginning. Steps to include limiting worry, losing weight (at least 20 pounds this year), exercising 3-5 times weekly, limiting alcohol and sweets, and eating healthy foods, like fruits and veggies 3-5 day and 3 servings of dairy a day.

and 2-Write more! I have set up a writers notebook with a calendar and writing opportunities listed on each month. I have joined the Open Doors newsletter staff at work and had one article published. I think this will teach me more about real journalism processes. I have drafted a children's mystery story for the Highlights contest due this month. And I will pick one novel I've started to finish this year. I think it will be Hunt Road, the story of Greg, an amature slueth and reluctant medium who follows the trail of a murderous wife beater to solve the death of a local drunk, who has no one else to stand up for him, finding love along the way. Ok, so my hook needs a little more work. Like why does anyone care?

The other project I will finish within the next three months (see a deadline, I can set them, I just have problems with the execution), is a story for True Confessions. I think using some of my experiences from my real life, like the time I lived with the child molester who controlled my life for a year, should be able to give me some writing fodder for this gendre. You would think with the number of these I read during my childhood, they should be easy to write!

Anyway, those are my focus goals. Of course, I set getting my budget under control (not totally in my court), increasing my pay at work and getting a promotion?, and a few others as well. But I will be happy to follow the path set for me above.

And now, I need to go exercise. Hope your day is filled with exciting planning and careful execution.