Happy New Year for Writing

Happy New Year everyone! This year is going to be a pretty big year for me. I graduated in December, so there are some pretty important steps I'm taking this year: I'm officially moving out on my own. I've been in my own apartment in Provo while I go to BYU, but when I move it will be the first time I'm really away from my family. I'll be getting a real job. Hopefully, considering the economy. I've been working for a professor at BYU part-time, but I'll be doing whatever I can to find a good full-time job to support my writing habit. And last but not least, I'll be getting ready to apply to graduate school. My plan is to move to Eugene, Oregon, because my top choice for graduate school is the University of Oregon. Its number 8 in the nation, studio based two year program that provides teaching positions and graduate tuition wavers. Exactly what I want. I also plan on applying for the University of Wyoming and Washington University in St. Louis for the same reasons. I will apply to these programs a year from now. The University of Oregon had over 720 applicants last year and accepts 12, so my chances are next to nothing, but I have and will have a writing sample that I am proud of and a willingness to work hard and learn fast. So if I don't get accepted, which I almost definitely won't, that only means I work on writing on my own and apply again next year. That is the plan, anyway. Thank you for indulging my personal spiel of a post, but I hope you can get understanding or at least a sense of kindred struggles from my personal writerly journey.

What are your writing goals for the new year? I plan on applying for the MFA programs like I said, and working on creating new pieces and carefully editing existing ones in preparation for that. I also have a novel thats almost ready to advance from the planning stages and I plan to finish that this year, hopefully as soon as this summer. We'll see how that goes.

Again, I'd love to know what your writing goals are for the year, if you have any. If you don't but want ideas, here are some:
-Set a certain daily word count (1000 is a good rule of thumb)
-Write a certain number of short stories or poems
-Submit to a certain number of magazines
-Submit your novel to a certain number of agents/editors
-Finish existing projects
-Start an online marketing campaign

I hope this can be of some use to you all. Make 2011 your best writing year yet. I don't mean that in a pep-talky kind of way, I mean it in a you really can do it if you work your butt off and sometimes it will be incredibly difficult but if you stick with it you really can accomplish what you want to kind of way. Go for it, even if its scary, and I hope you let me know about all your wins, misses and other adventures in writing.