I’ve been playing the “what if?” game in my head a lot over the past couple of months as we finally closed on a house, renovated it, moved out of the old place. Not much time for writing, lots of time for thinking in there.

What I’m thinking is that it’s time for some changes.  For the past handful of years I’ve been trying to build a coaching business.  As always, I thought I had to do something else and have my writing on the side.  But my writing has suffered for that idea, and I really don’t like it. I want to have my writing be my main focus.  Yes, I have a day job. But after that I want the writing to be my big thing.  I will probably still teach some classes and maybe still lead the writing retreat I’ve been dreaming up.  But I want to be a writer first.

I don’t entirely know how this is going to look.  I’m thinking about things like pen names and new websites.  For now, I’m going to stick with this site and dive back into writing.

I’m taking a 14-week short story class that starts at the end of January.  Then in late April, right as the long class wraps up, I’m taking a weekend-long short story intensive. And then I’m going to submit stories!  In the long class, the final assignment is actually to write cover letters for our stories so we can send them out.  This feels like a pretty good start to focusing on my writing.

I’m also planning on getting back to being a regular ROW80 participant.  Round 1 of 2016 starts tomorrow.  Here are my goals:

• Write at least three days a week
• Focus on story writing and description work (I tend to be sketchy on my descriptions, so I need more practice on that) more than on free writing
• Go to PDX Writers Saturday workshops at least once a month
• Post regularly for ROW80 and check in on other blogs

This feels like a pretty good list to get the year started, and I feel like these goals all blend well with the class work I’ll be doing.  I’ll be back on Wednesday to check in.