I am back at university for another semester of fun learning!

But actually, nerves and anxiety aside, I am pretty excited about all my courses. My profs all seem very nice and capable (some even crack jokes in class!), and we are slowly starting to move into doing “real” science and “real” math, which is fun. Also the chemistry labs look really cool this semester and my Computer Science textbook is FREE! (If you haven’t been to university, you don’t know how exciting that is.) Most of my textbooks carried over from last semester so I only had to spend like $200 on lab manuals and workbooks and stuff. WOO!

But I’m not here to ramble about my first day back in class. No, my dearest readers, I am here to present to you today Beautiful People’s January edition! Hosted by Cait and Skye. If you’re totally confused about what Beautiful People is, you should follow the links to their blogs because they explain it very nicely.

BP Pic

And now for the questions:

1. What were your writing achievements last year?

Despite spending three months last year working as a missionary in Europe and another four at university, I got a fair amount of writing done. I re-wrote the novel I had been working on for the past several years, which was incredibly satisfying, I did a word blitz one day and wrote an entire (horrible) 13,000 word short story in about 12 hours, and I pottered around on a couple other projects, though nothing is past the baby stages of 5,000 words. Oh, and I started a blog. *grins*

2. Tell us about your top priority writing project for this year?

None!

Ok, fine, that is a lie. I want to get about half of my sidekick/hero flip book drafted, continue blogging, and also participate in the creative writing society at my university (which is a ton of fun and maybe I will write a post about it one of these days 😛 ).

3. List 5 areas you’d like to work the hardest to improve this year.

Dialogue, grammar, dialogue, actually getting words on the page, and dialogue. (Did I mention that my realistic dialogue skills need improvement?)

4. Are you participating in any writing challenges?

Nope. There’s this thing called passing university…

5. What’s your critique partner/beta reader situation like and do you have plans to expand this year?

So far my main beta has been my mom (I know, I know) but I don’t have plans on expanding, yet. Honestly right now I’m too busy to pump out enough stuff for betas to read. Perhaps in the far off future.

6. Do you have plans to read any writer-related books this year? Or are there specific books you want to read for research?

Hmmm, good question. I have no plans, but if a writing-related book happens along my path this summer I will definitely pick it up with great enthusiasm. And as for research, who needs books when you have Wikipedia, right? Right.

7. Pick one character you want to get to know better, and how are you going to achieve this?

I can’t pick one, so I will pick two: Hunter and Sydney (read more here and here). Hopefully I will be able to flesh out a few of the kinks in their characters this coming year.

8. Do you plan to edit or query, and what’s your plan of attack?

Hahahahahahahahaha, that is hilarious.

*ahem*

I might (might (might)) edit part of my still-to-be-titled long-term novel, or revisit another novel that I gave up on because the plot deteriorated into a black hole of plot flaws, but my main focus, as I said before, is getting some words down in my current WIP.

9. Toni Morrison once said, “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”  What are the books that you want to see more of, and what “holes” do you think need filling in the literary world?

Good Christian fiction that is not incredibly preachy, predictable, or cheesy (I know there is good Christian fiction out there, but it is sometimes really hard to find, especially science fiction and dystopian). It’s a hole I try to fill every time I put my fingers on my keyboard to write.

10. What do you hope to have achieved by the end of 2016?

I do this thing sometimes where I set myself very unattainable goals (like be perfect at absolutely everything), and then I become sad and frustrated when I don’t meet them. Any progress at all is good progress, so I hope that by the end of 2016 I will have had fun with my writing, whatever and how much it happens to be.

Tell me your writing (or other creative project) goals in the comments below!

That’s all, folks! 😀