No, it has nothing to do with a projected hoped-for word count. (Although between NaNoWriMo in November and the two Camp session, plus other writing, I’m looking at writing over 200,000 words this year, maybe 250k, which would be a quarter of a million words. (I never looked at it like that before. It’s kind of awesome.)
But the title has nothing to do with that.
I’m not sure how many of you have seen people posting their “Word for the Year.” I asked a friend and she’d never heard of it so maybe it’s more of a journal thing than a writing thing.
But anyhow, basically, as I understand it, it’s a way to summarize what you want to be or work toward that year. One word, rather than a list of resolutions that no one keeps for more than a few weeks.
This is my first year doing it and I actually have two, although they do go hand in hand.
One is “Create.”
This not only applies to writing, but to other crafts as well, things that I enjoy doing (or want to learn to do) that have taken a back seat to writing for the last several years. (And who knows what else may come of that word?)
The other is “Focus.”
I need to stay focused on my goals and not dashing off to a billion other shiny things. My main goal right now is to release Onyx Sun this year. Yes, I am working on the Academy of the Accord series as well, but until Onyx Sun is off my plate I’ll be torn between the two projects and not fully focused on either, which means I won’t make much progress on either because no matter which one I’m working on I’ll feel guilty for not working on the other.
(I should maybe make a goal about run on sentences while I’m at it.)
So the two do go hand in hand but there doesn’t seem to be one word that combines the two, so I’m going to have two words for the year. (I’m kind of a rebel that way.)
For more information about choosing a word, see:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephenie-zamora/choosing-your-guiding-word-for-2016_b_8885498.html
Novel Notes 