One year's goals should be influenced by what happened the year before. Even though my first three goals last year involved generating new writing, I am not pleased with how successful I was with reaching them. I'm going to be more careful about creating objectives for those writing goals this year. I'm far more specific about how many things I'm going to do and when I'm going to do them and even when I'm going to work on them.
Notice also that I have six goals, as I did last year. Half of those goals don't involve writing but, rather, the business of writing. This is a big issue for writers. A writer can be very busy while doing little writing.
And, finally, I cannot say this too often: Goals are what you want to do. Objectives are the tasks you undertake to meet those goals.
Goal 1. Generate New Work: Complete a draft of the so-called mummy book
Objectives:
- Commit the bulk of each week's work to this project for the first quarter of the year.
- Revise the first nine chapters that I completed last year in order to bring myself up to speed with this project.
- Plan scenes and chapters ahead in order to speed up the work and make it generally easier.
- Plan scenes around action, character, theme, revealing new information, and moving story forward.
- Bring pages of this project to my monthly writers' group.
Goal 2. Generate New Work: Complete two to three short pieces
Objectives:
- Set aside a few days a month specifically for this type of writing
- January--Go through files and journals and pick a few pieces to work on
Goal 3. Generate New Work: Do another revision of adult Becoming Greg and Emma
Objectives:
- Shoot for starting this in June. A summer unit.
Goal 4. Make submissions
Objectives:
- Submit The Fletcher Farm Body to a specific editor by the end of January.
- Commit a few units of time every Friday (limiting this kind of work to Fridays) to researching short story/essay markets.
- Maintain a Friday Marketing Research file in journal to speed up work on preceding objective.
- Submit a short work every month to avoid binge research/submissions. (Binging takes time away from writing and requires a big effort to bring myself back up to speed with the writing projects I've put aside in order to binge.)
- Follow short story writers and essayists on Twitter to note where they are publishing.
- Begin agent search for Becoming Greg and Emma.
Goal 5. Continue to work on community building
Objectives:
- Connecticut Children's Lit Calendar
- Get Connecticut Children's Lit Calendar newsletter going by March.
- Attend Marketing Your Brand (NESCBWI) program on March 7.
- As part of Friday promotional work, find new ways to promote workshops I offer. (I try to limit promo work to Fridays.)
- Continue activities with 10-Minute Novelists groups
- Continue building Twitter presence.
- Now that the Facebook Author page is gone, be more proactive with blog, content and promotion.
- Improve my skills as writers' group member.
Goal 6. Continue marketing Saving the Planet & Stuff eBook
Objectives:
- Use Twitter to make a presence for myself with groups with environmental interests.
- Continue the Environmental Book Club whenever possible.
- Look into taking book down from Barnes & Noble and Kobo to take advantage of Kindle. marketing for books exclusive to that company.
- Look into the expense involved with printing a paper edition. (This would involved negotiating with the cover artist, since our contract only involves a digital edition.)
- Check out 10 Tips for Selling Your Book on Amazon
- Contact more bloggers/sites for promotional opportunities when appropriate.
So that's pretty much what I expect to be doing this year. Oh, wait. But not next week. Next week I'll be on retreat.
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