2016 Failures

I am somewhat not hesitant to call a failure a failure. My mom taught me that as long as you make your best effort you have nothing to blame yourself for. Now, I tried. I setup the best goals that I thought I had to complete and didn’t complete them. I can make excuses, but the point is, I setup a goal and I failed. But instead of excusing myself, or not confronting the results, I want to look into the eye of my failed projects and ask like an abandoned lover “where did we go wrong?”

So here are a couple of things I planned for that I didn’t fully complete:

• Writing Novel #1: I still love the idea of my first long-story, but I was greatly unprepared to write it. I sort of pants my way through this story (a contemporary adaptation of the Ass), but failed to complete the manuscript when the structure fell apart. I realized that I needed more planning.
  • Lesson learnt: I decided to ditch the YA genre, and focus instead on a genre I was more passionate about (this realization coincided with reading Write to Market)
• Not publishing my 7 Plan: This is a plan for the decade ahead that I haven’t completed yet. I guess it will be a 8 year plan by the time I publish it.
  • Lesson learnt? Oh, man. I’m still digesting this one. I’ll get back to you with something.
• Writing the first draft of my Novel #2 during NaNoWriMo: I wrote 35K words, but couldn’t get myself to write another 15K words )
  • Lesson learnt? NaNoWriMo forced the realization that I couldn’t write the book yet without more preparation. At least I learnt the lesson in just 3 weeks (unlike book #1). Now I have a plan.

Not that bad, not that bad.