Mocha Mind

Have you set your writing goals for the new year? Often the question is not “What are my goals?” but “How do I determine my goals?” Where do you even begin? Use these guidelines to set up your 2010 goals.

* Set a daily (yes, I said daily) writing goal by number of words, paragraphs or pages.

* Set a number of books, articles, stories or poems you would like to complete by the end of the year and work backwards to schedule your time. For example, if you would like to complete six stories, schedule completion of a story every two months.

* Set weekly goals
- A day to edit
- A day to start a new piece
- A day to work on a piece in progress
- A day to revise
- A day to submit work or queries to markets
- A day to research new markets
- A day to write something outside of your usual genre
You can substitute other goals as they suit you.

* If you blog, set a number of posts you will publish each week.

* If you freelance, set an earning ($) goal for the year or per month.

* If there are areas of writing where you need work, sign up for courses, seminars or workshops for each area. Schedule them throughout the year.

Review your goals periodically. You may want to revise them as circumstances change. Reward yourself throughout the year as you achieve your goals, even the small ones. This keeps you motivated. Above all, keep writing and have a great year!

-Gioya McRae

© Gioya McRae 2010

Recently, Amazon.com and Penguin Group (USA) announced the third annual Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, an international competition seeking fresh new writing voices. CreateSpace will once again host the submission platform for the contest.

What should I do now?

1. Prepare your entry: Visit www.createspace.com/abna and review the submission guidelines, helpful tutorials, and official contest rules.
2. Sign up to receive contest notifications with helpful tools and tips for preparing your entry.
3. Connect with other authors and discuss the contest.

Prizes: Two Grand Prize winners, one in each of our two categories, will receive a full publishing contract with Penguin including a $15,000 advance

Categories: General Fiction and Young Adult Fiction

What type of works are eligible?
- Unpublished novel manuscripts
- Self-published novels (new this year!)

Submission Period: begins 1/25/10 and ends 2/7/10, or when the first 5,000 entries have been received in each category, whichever comes first

The Seventh Glass Woman Prize will be awarded for a work of short fiction or creative non-fiction (prose) written by a woman.

Length: between 50 and 5,000 words.

Prizes:
The top prize for the seventh Glass Woman Prize award is US $600 and possible
(but not obligatory) online publication; I will also award one
runner up prize of $100 and one runner up prize of $50, together
with possible (but not obligatory) online publication.

Criteria:
Subject is open, but must be of significance to women. My criterion is
passion, excellence, and authenticity in the woman’s writing
voice.  Previously published work and simultaneous submissions
are OK.  Previous Glass Woman Prize winners are welcome to
submit again.  Copyright is retained by the author.

NO ENTRY FEE
Deadline: March 21, 2010.

For more details please visit www.sigriddaughter.com/GlassWomanPrize.htm

We’re looking for fiction that is unique, stories with
characters we’ll remember, plots that leave us thinking.
The contest is open to anyone, any race, any country, any
continent. The only caveat? The main character must be of
African descent.

The contest runs from October 1 – December
31, 2009, winner announced February 1, 2010. Entries must
be 1,500 words or less. First Place: $500. Genre Winners:
$25 Borders Gift Card. Each winner will have his story
and a feature article published on myafricandiaspora.com .
The winners and top three entries in each genre will have
their short stories published in a short story collection
at the end of the year.

For more info, please visit www.myafricandiaspora.com

Writer’s Digest’s 101 Best Websites is now accepting nominations for next year’s list. If you have a favorite writers’ site, please nominate it for the ‘Writer’s Digest’s 101 Best Sites of The Year’!

To nominate a website for 2010, please send your nomination to: writersdig@fwpubs.com with “101 Websites” as the subject line. January1, 2010 is the deadline.

For more details, please visit www.writersdigest.com

What do you get when you mix power-hungry scientists, high-powered government officials and innocent children? Find out in Thomas Roberts’ new riveting novel, The Five.

Set in the year 2020, The Five is a compelling, prophetic sci-fi novel where scientists use electrodes to feed educational data into babies’ brains as a means of controlling their development. But children grow up. Now who’s in control?

Centered on a father and son; a group of scientists; a wise, old Indian spirit guide; and of course, ‘The Five’, Roberts’ intricate plot draws you into a corporate scientific experiment hidden away in the cold, crisp mountains of Colorado. What, at first, seems to be beneficial progress in child education morphs into a power struggle that reaches worldwide proportions.

Using skillfully employed flashbacks, Roberts tells a tale of scientific intrigue, domination and destruction that keeps you guessing until the last page.

Although at times the detailed scientific explanations and techno-speak distract from the main story, Roberts well-crafted plot navigates you through the delicate terrain between science and civilization.

If you’re ready to question the value of science versus the need for humanity, The Five is the book for you.

For more information on Thomas Roberts and The Five, please visit www.fivethebook.com

©2009 Gioya McRae, Author of From Pen to Prose

The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.

- Anais Nin

Discovering New Mysteries is now accepting submissions of
original plays, screenplays, teleplays, and short stories
for both adult and youth audiences. A panel of professional readers will
blindly review the submissions and narrow the field to the
final mysteries, who-dunnits, cops-n-robbers, courtroom
dramas, thrillers, suspense or adventures.

Deadline: August 30, 2009
Entry Fee: NONE
Prizes: Nearly $20,000 in cash prizes for winners + prestigious Angie Awards

For more details, please visit http://www.newmysteries.org/submission_guidelines