Always quirky, sometimes sweet speculative fiction

2013 Rounded Up Plus Goals For 2014

The cover of Oomph, the first publication I received an acceptance letter from

The cover of Oomph, the first publication I received an acceptance letter from

I started 2012 expecting little then achieving lots, so when I made my goals list for 2013 I aimed high. A tiny bit too high, but that’s no matter I still achieved plenty. My 2013 achievements include:

  • Being Shortlisted in a Writing competition (2013 Redlitzer)
  • Being published for the first time (and going to the gala event to launch the anthology)
  • Being published for the second time
  • I wrote 2 novellas(14,000 and 17,000), 8 short stories (defining short as under 10,000 words as half of these stories are between 5-8,000) and 5 flash fiction pieces (four of which you can read right now by clicking the ‘Free Fiction‘ tab in the menu above. To learn more about these stories you can check them out in my ‘Current Projects‘ page.
  • Learned how hard it can be to edit a novel you wrote in two months as compared to a novel you spent years tinkering with.
  • Wrote roughly 80,000 new words in novels (split between Key,Clocks, Quests and this years NaNo novel Between Blinks). When added to my short stories written this year I have a total word count of 146,400.
  • Learned it’s not always about what you write in new words, but that there’s a lot of editing, proofing, and effort writing submissions and sending them that takes up your time as well. Now I will no longer be discouraged if I don’t have a high word count for the month as long as I can see I was still working hard.
  • Became listed on Goodreads and Amazon as an author (still get all squiggly in the tummy about that)
  • Went to a lot of writers’ festivals

Did a fair bit of learning didn’t I? ;p

2013 felt a bit like the year of the short story to me, because I wrote so many, and 2012 was all about the novels, so this year I’m thinking of trying to find a middle ground in 2014, so my goals are as follows:

Goal #1: Finish editing ‘Written By The Stars’ and start submitting it. This goal rolled over from last year because it was harder than I thought and I kept getting distracted by shiny new ideas

Goal #2: Finish first draft of Key, Clocks, Quests. and totally come up with a better name for it.

Goal #3: Keep writing and submitting short stories.

Goal #4: Keep learning.

Yes, it’s a shorter list than last year, hopefully so I can hit all the targets this year instead of just some, and you can be sure if I hit all my goals I’ll add a few new ones.

Well everyone, I hope you have a happy (and productive) new year 😀

2 Comments

  1. Mary Tod

    What a great year, Kirstie. I admire how focused and goal oriented you are!
    Mary Tod recently posted..2013 – what a year!My Profile

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