Late March: Six Goals Accomplished

I don't want my New Year's Resolutions to exist only in the shadow of the new year. I don't want January to pass and my goals and resolutions to fade away with winter. These aren't things I just said to myself in January. These are things I want to do. Things I am going to keep working towards.

Late March. Another goal. 6 down.

I had a few goals related to short stories. One was to finish a rough draft of a particular short story... one which I haven't started. The other two short story goals were to finish a second draft of rough drafts that I had previously written and published on Vocal. I did one. This was the other one. The story was "Sepia Skies" which I had published on Vocal around three years ago.

I was proud of it, but after rereading it, I knew it needed a serious overhaul. It's a crime-mystery, which isn't a genre I typically write in, but I enjoy. I loved the premise and plot that I had come up with, but I realized in rereading it, it didn't let the reader hang long enough. It's a mystery, there needs to be a lot of guessing, both by the reader and the characters. I had glossed over a lot of what could have existed.

As you can see, the original was 8,248 words... one of my longest short stories on Vocal. Not necessarily one of my longest of all the stories I've written. They do have that 10,000 word cap. But this story just had so much more that I could have added.

So, I went through it, adding in some here and there. Adding details and extra scenes to flesh it out. And then most importantly, I reached one point of the story where it just sped up in pace. I slowed it down. I added WAY more around the 3/4 mark, lengthening it out before arriving at the conclusion. I had wrapped it up too quickly originally. The detectives solved the murder too quickly. There needed to be more tension, more suspicion, more failure, more agitation. And so on a second pass through, I added all of that, while also converting it from present tense to past tense... which just made it better too.

And now, 17,526 words. More than twice as long. Twice as better? Eh, maybe three times as better. I enjoyed rereading it myself even more, it felt more like a proper mystery. Normally, I wouldn't want to leave something sitting for a few years before doing an edit on it, but giving my stories (and scripts) time before going to do an edit, I always feel is valuable. More time away gives me more perspective when I come back to it. More of an ability to be honest with my own work.

I'm so glad to have accomplished another goal! And I am glad that this story was able to live here on Vocal for so long, but it is time to take the old one down. The new version, I have plans for it, as I do with many of my stories here. Some of my stories I'd like to just stay here on Vocal. But I realize with many of them that I have different goals and dreams for them, so after revamping them, I bring them down and me and the goals search the vast landscape together, searching for our destiny.

(Or something less Lord-of-the-Ringsy.)

All in all, this one took me less than a week's worth of work. I sat down and read through it while taking notes, and then I dove back in on Page 1 and reworked it until I was satisfied with the new product. Sometimes these goals seem daunting... but they aren't really. Writing a second draft of a short story required me to sit down, focus, be dedicated... but once I start doing that, it's hard to stop. I enjoy it so much. And in the end, I just need to give myself time to sit down with my project, even if it's just a little bit each day, allow myself to keep chipping away at it.

I'm not going to write some big, fat lie and say, "I wasn't productive before my list of goals." That would be the biggest lie I told in all of 2025. I am extremely productive. For several years now, I have been. I'm not trying to brag. I just turned a corner and realized how much I wanted things and how hard I had to work in order to achieve them. And I just started doing it. I have organized and prioritized and dedicated myself to working on a lot of my projects... which I love, by the way. Sometimes, I feel like I was lazy, like I wasn't productive. And I will stop and assess why I feel that way. And usually it's because I didn't do one of the five things I had planned for that day. No joke. One time, several months ago, I told myself that I wasn't as productive as I should have been on that day. Meanwhile, I had finished a script for one YouTube channel that I write for, written the first half of a different script for a different YouTube channel, submitted a story to a publication, and written around 1,500 words on the project I was working on. What I hadn't done, written out a synopsis for a separate project that had been finished.

How ridiculous, right? Oh no, I only did 4 things... not 5. But I've realized, it's because I've made myself work harder... over and over... that now it has become the norm. I will have an extremely productive day by most standards, but feel like I did less than I can because it was less than what I normally do. But that's good... it's made me be consistent.

However, I wasn't always as organized as I wanted to be. Sometimes I felt dizzy, my eyes searching everywhere, trying to figure out which of my many projects that I have lined up should be getting my attention. This list of goals has helped with THAT. And because of it... I'm a little more productive. That's what I want. To just be as productive as I can be.

Brief pause to savor the moment of having accomplished another goal.

...

Now, on to working on the next one.

(Spoiler alert: I already started yesterday.)