Well all, it’s day one of my October Poetry Pre-NaNoWriMo Endeavor. My goal is 10,000 words of new poetry for the month, coming to 323 words of new poetry every day. This isn’t officially associated with NaNoWriMo like the officail NaNoWriMo is, so there’s no online platform for me to track my progress or earn badges to reaching different milestones. I’m doing this to see if I can keep on task and on schedule without an official online tracker. I love that NaNoWriMo and Camp NaNoWriMo exist as resources for writers, but I also want to make sure that I can focus myself on my own and get a large amount of writing done in a specific space of time.

And even if I don’t reach the 10,000 word mark, I know that I will get writing done. Even if I only get half of this goal, that’s still 5,000 words of new poetry I didn’t have before and I will consider that a win. But I am also shooting for the 10,000 mark because October is magical, autumn is magical, and I want to use that magic to create. There’s also so much crap going on in the world that I think this will allow me to purge my body of excess energy and restlessness. And, of course, the more we write, the better writers we become, so there are benefits to this all around.

I’ve been thinking, too, about what my long term goals are as a writer and a poet, specifically. I used to have the goal of writing one novel that made it onto the National Best Sellers list. I think I still have that goal, although my fiction is taking a bit of a backseat right now. I write speculative fiction (fantasy, sci-fi, magical realism, etc) and, in light of the current issues in pop culture regarding various speculative fiction writers (I’m thinking specifically of J.K. Rowling being a TERF), I want my fiction to do better than the examples that have been given by Rowling and other cishet writers. To accomplish this, I need to read. I need to think. And I need to overhaul my fiction.

I also have a goal of writing collections of essays, of really examining the different forms of the essay and the ways that memoir and essay can blend and overlap and dissect from each other to create deeply transformative prose. This won’t be an easy process. It will take time, as everything does with art, and it will take intentional, purposeful studying and struggle. I’ve had dozens of essays published already, and I’m thrilled with that, but I know I can go deeper in my writing than I have. I know I can find ways to get at the truths of what I want to say where so often I only press up against those truths. There are many stories I have to tell about myself and my life and my experiences, and I want my nonfiction to be safe for those parts of me while also being real and truthful. I would love to write even one collection of essays that accomplishes this and, if I’m honest, having that collection published by Graywolf Press would be a dream come true.

As a poet, I’ve only barely begun to make goals for myself. In January, I could hardly do more than give myself the goal of writing 150 poems, let alone even see beyond that. I didn’t think I would write that many poems but I knew if I could, I’d potentially have enough for one or two short manuscripts, and that on its own was thrilling. Now it’s October, I’ve written 350 poems, I’m about to head into a 2 month stretch of time where my goal is to write 30,000 total word of new poetry, and I’ve been working on starting my creative thesis: a manuscript of poetry. So my new goals as a poet are: to writer 10,000 words of poetry this month, to write 20,000-25,000 words of poetry next month, to finish my M.F.A. with a polished manuscript of poetry ready to be sent to poetry publishers, to continue writing, revising, and submitting my poems for publication, and most recently…to one day be a Poet Laureate of Oregon.

Big deal, right?

I don’t believe in dreaming small. I may not ever be a Poet Laureate, and that’s fine. But damn it, I’m going to write and write and write and write and I’m going to apply to every literary opportunity I can and I am going to give myself every opportunity I can find. I’m going to try my hardest. I’m going to give my best. And we’ll see where my writing takes me.