I started this year expecting little. I was determined to move forward with my writing, but last year had not been kind to me and I wasn’t dreaming big. Now, as I write my summary of writing accomplishments for this year I’m surprising myself.

  • I created an author website (you’re on it)
  • I turned my epic fantasy trilogy into a quartet, splitting book one into two books and doing rewrites and revisions to make the new book one complete (now out waiting on an agent *fingers crossed*).
  • I wrote a stand-alone novel, cross-dimensional fantasy of 65,000 words, have done a 10,000 word re-write so far, but not a full revision, so it’s still in second draft stage. (Working title: Written By The Stars)
  • Wrote 58,000 words on ANOTHER stand-alone novel for NaNoWriMo which is epic fantasy. (Working title: Key, Clocks and Quests)
  • Joined a fantastic writers critique group (fantastic both in the fact it is speculative fiction we write and critique and the fact everyone there is fantastic).
  • Attended my first (and second) writers’ festival
  • Wrote and entered a short story into the Supanova 10th Anniversary competition (I love Supanova so much I really hope I can be a part of it!)
  • Have written several new short stories, most of which are part of my fairy tale re-imagining series.
  • Have beta-read my first novel of another writer’s work.

So all-in-all a fairly productive year as far as an emerging author’s life goes.

Of course a good year needs to be followed with another, so here are my goals for next year:

  1. Finish re-writes/revisions on book 2 of the Storybook Perfect quartet, get it up to standard.
  2. Finish revisions on ‘Written By The Stars’(the 65,000 word novel mentioned before) and start querying with that novel too (If I haven’t landed an agent with current query). If I can afford it, I’d love to buy a manuscript assessment on it as well, both for the novel itself and also to learn from it for further stories.
  3. Complete first draft of Keys, Clocks and Quests (the NaNoWriMo novel). If I have time get it up to snuff too, but I’ve been aiming fairly high so far.
  4. Complete another first draft of a new story (what will I choose? So many ideas!). I’ll probably start it during NaNoWriMo(or Camp NaNoWriMo, I recently signed up) to give me a good boost.
  5. Enter more competitions and start submitting to journals and zines. I haven’t written many short stories, so probably make some more too (got a few ideas, as always the problem is keeping it small)
  6. Start a newsletter with a freebie incentive – I have to write that freebie incentive as well.

I’m not going light on the goals as you can see. If I can achieve what I did this year with no goals set down for myself, what can I achieve this coming year if I do have goals? Let’s see!

 

What goals have you set yourself? They don’t have to be writing related. Do you have any resolutions you’re determined to finally achieve next year?