Yes it seems somewhat cliche, but there is good reason for taking stock of writing successes, failures and plans at the new year – and not just because it’s the most convenient time for buying diaries and such to aid with the planning.
Regular visitors may have noticed that all my energies go into one thing for the duration of NaNoWriMo, and there is barely enough time to get any traction on something else before the Christmas break, so January makes a useful jumping off point for new plans. And this year I have plans! But first, let’s see how well I did last year, shall we?
Publishing.
Well, the Countless as the Stars e-book made it on to amazon at long last! And to go with that, the shop page on the website… well, it came and went, if we’re honest, but it’s back now mainly to shift the remaining first edition paperbacks, and with linkies to the amazon page for ebooks. It’s still not as clean or useful as I would like, but at least it’s there, and working.
Writing.
Well, the Ambivalence Chronicles are growing, thanks in large part to NaNoWriMo and actually managing to write 50,000 words that didn’t all suck during last November. So that was a bonus; but it was also all the writing of any note I got finished.
Editing.
The Countless ebook ended up taking far more of my editing time than I expected, so I didn’t finish the planned second ebook (currently a secret project in need of a codename!).
2015 plans.
I have taken a much more intentional approach to writing and publishing stuff for this year, and actually have monthly goals as well as overall goals for the year. But one step at a time, eh? First, the goals for the year:
Publish at least 3 ebooks. Ambitious, I know, but they are already written in some form (well, NaNoWriMo form, to be specific, so still some work to do!). At least two will be in the Ambivalence Chronicles, and are deliberately short (probably 20-25k per volume). The others will be based on past NaNo projects, but whether they will end up longer or shorter than the initial 50k remains to be seen.
Enter the Writers of the Future contest. I’ve been messing about with speculative fiction ideas for years, knowing that this is a thing, and knowing that it would be an awesome opportunity should I ever polish my work to a sufficient standard to be recognised, but I’ve never actually submitted anything to it. Which is clearly ridiculous, so I inteend to enter at least one piece for it this year – and not get too disheartened and vow never to do so again if it fails to catch anyone’s attention.
Write more regularly. I can’t write daily outside of NaNo, real life simply does not allow that, and the only way to maintain consistency is to recognise that and work with it. I can do something – blogging, editing, pre-writing – every day, but to impose a daily word limit will end up counter productive I think. So a weekly one it is – although I haven’t set one yet. I may just see how many actual new words I can write by the end of this week and work on maintaining that.
Coming soon…
Ah yes, I mentioned monthly goals too didn’t I? Well here are January’s specific goals:
1. Finish editing the secret project.
2. Write at least one short story.
3. Plan a story for Writers of the Future.
And on that bombshell, I should be editing…