Pre New Year Goals

This past year has been good for me in my personal life and writing life. The two greatest things that have happened to me personally are 1) Reaching four years of marriage. 2) Witnessing the birth of my first child, a little boy, Christian Thomas Hankins. Friends and family say that I spat him out and they call him my twin, which is something I can’t deny, because he does look just like me. All my wife did was carry him.

Writing wise this year, my love for film and screenwriting really stole my focus and pushed my manuscript WIPs off to the back burners. All in all it was a good thing, because I was able to spend the whole year reading scripts, meeting screenwriters, and learning how to write screenplays. I finished the first draft of one script “Things People Do” and formulated the concepts for at least five others.

Normally I don’t set goals for the new year, but this time I figured “Why not?”

I’ve been working on my goals for 2011 and have come up with a few things I really would like to achieve. Nothing really major, just a basic run through.

1. Finish my fantasy novel “AMACHI – Warrior”: This is the story that screenwriting pushed to the back burner in 2010. It’s the first in a series about a young female warrior searching for her family amidst the enslavement of her people. I really like this story and want to finish the entire series, but I have to get through book one first, right?

2. Finish the screenplay for “Things People Do”. I’m set to start the 2nd draft on Jan 1 and have been good about not touching the script until then. hopefully, it’ll only take me a couple of months to finish the 2nd draft, which is almost like a brand new screenplay, because I have another script waiting in cue. It’s a love story, a first for me, called “Starlight” which I’d like to finish in 2011 as well. I’ve already hammered out the concept and the outline for it.

3. Web-serial: I have an idea for a web-serial that I want to write and post to my blog chapter by chapter just for fun. So far, it’s Sci-Fi called [M]8ty. I’m still working on the concept, so I might switch to one of my more developed stories if I can’t make something of it.

4. Blogging: Will switch up my blogging schedule. This year I posted project journals three times a week. I may cut it down to two, which will give me more room to throw in a random writing post here and there. Oh yeah, and add the web-serial that I mentioned above.

5. Networking: More tweeting on my twitter, more meeting great people, more sharing what I know while simultaneously learning from others.

6. Also, when working on multiple projects I alternate between them weekly. I think in 2011 I’ll start switching out monthly instead and see how that works out for me.

So that’s my basic outline for 2011. Anybody have some goals they want to share?