Many of you are probably familiar with Masterclass, the subscription-based website where luminaries from a wide array of specialties—typically business, lifestyle, and the arts—offer in-depth, high-production-value courses you can take from the comfort of your home. Writing instructors on the platform include, among many others, Margaret Atwood, RL Stine, James Patterson, Walter Mosley, Neil Gaiman, David Baldacci, Joyce Carol Oates, Salman Rushdie, Amy Tan, and NK Jemisin.
While obviously the best content lives behind the paywall, Masterclass.com offers some excellent free content as well. As 2022 draws to a close and countless writers around the globe begin to make goals (dare I say resolutions?) for the new year, here is a link to “5 Tips for Setting Achievable Writing Goals.” And while you’re there, consider splitting the cost of their 2-for-1 offer with your BWB (Best Writing Buddy).
If you care to shower me with praise or boil me in oil, here’s a goals update (verbatum, with explanatory notes meant for you in *asterisks*) as sent to my small press publisher (XYZ):
“1 Do a helluva job on Pinching Zwieback (*a coll of short stories sched. for spring 2023*): from getting it finalized to supporting it with marketing and contributing as an author as much as possible (enlisting all of my thousands of cousins)…
2 Get my (*written and mentored*) debut novel polished to a dazzling degree and query it to XYZ (*who hold first refusal rights*) as my next literary venture…
3 Once the novel is out… 🙂 Gather any new short stories that have promise and, if the grant I am seeking has been awarded by that point, use the resultant, curated body of work to get a proposal ready for a possible second collection.
This above is prolly about a four-year plan with many IFs attached.”
Of course… my goals would be framed differently if I had a lit agent.
I welcome your comments; oil as required.
allfornow, Mitch