Hey ho, squiders, I hope one and all have survived the holidays and are now making the transition into normal life in a mostly successful manner.
(I won my office’s Fantasy Football championship. That doesn’t have to do with anything specifically, it’s just kinda fun. Especially since Yahoo–which is what the league is run through–gave me a D on my draft and told me I’d end up 7th out of 8th.)
Despite feeling kind of bleh about the idea of goals and arbitrary passages of time and whatnot, I did eventually give in and lay out a general idea for the year. I’m re-introducing non-writing goals (which I didn’t do last year in an attempt to force more writing time, to mixed results) for reading (though I did read my normal 50 books last year–more details on that Thursday or Friday), video games, and art (completely abandoned in 2023).
Writing goals ended up being kind of a combination of last year (NOTHING EXCEPT MY BOOK 1 REVISION RARGH) and previous years. 2023 wasn’t too shabby all things considered, but I did feel like I could have done more if I hadn’t been quite so focused. Sometimes it doesn’t hurt to have a side project to go to if your main one is driving you crazy, you know?
So, for 2024, big projects are working the same as last year–one needs to be finished before we move on to the next. And hopefully we’ll actually finish something.
Book 1 is still the priority, but I’m 75K in (with 40K or so through my critique groups, and the winter marathon starting next week) of a potential 120K, and the later parts of the book have always been in better condition than the early stuff. Then submission materials for it, and, fingers crossed, maybe we’ll get an agent for it by the end of the year (not counting that as a goal, though–should never set goals that rely on other people doing something, that way lies madness).
If Book 1 gets finished, we’ll move to Rings Among the Stars (a scifi horror novella set on a decrepit space station), and then on to Not So Bloody Murder, which is the first book of a paranormal cozy mystery series.
Last year I think I got five revision projects deep, which is crazy pants and apparently I was very optimistic.?Trying to be more realistic this year. RatS is in pretty good shape, just needs some tweaking on the ending, which my betas found a little unrealistic, and NSBM needs a little more meat in the second half of Act 2. I have some beta comments to go over there (which I haven’t looked at yet) and I bought myself a red herrings class through Writer’s Digest to help.
Anyway.
I’m adding in some side projects as well, things that should be easy to do around my revisions and make me feel better about my list of accomplishments at the end of the year. There’s five:
- Publish Deep and Blue as a complete novella – Deep and Blue is a scifi novella with some horror elements (my fav, not going to lie) that was originally published as a serial over on Turtleduck Press in…2021, I think. I’m going to combine it into a single story and release it widely. Needs a cover, mostly.
- Write some RaTs entries (one a quarter) – RaTs is a prompt system WriYe runs. I’ve used it on and off over the years to do background scenes and side character viewpoints of various universes, which has proved very useful as I go back through Book 1. I’ve traditionally done it monthly, but that does tend to take away from useable big project time, so I’m cutting it down.
- SkillShare classes – I think I posted about how SkillShare closed three of my classes back in February because of “lack of engagement” (see above about relying on other people to do things). I wonder if they got a ton of negative feedback because as far as I know they haven’t cut any other classes since then. Anyway, I’ve been reposting the classes, and have one left to put up. Then, assuming SkillShare doesn’t do anything to piss me off again, I’ll do a new class over the summer.
- Short Story Challenge – I’m out of short stories. Haven’t written any in a while, as I’ve been focusing on novellas (which can be published serially). I’d like to try my hand at some new ones. Probably set a month later in the year to do a new one a week and see what we end up with.
- New Novella Project – Last year I wrote Across Worlds with You as a side project and had a great time, and before that was Deep and Blue and Rings Among the Stars. I’m really digging the novella format, and I’d like to do another one this year, either for posting serially or publishing more traditionally.
As for non-writing goals, for reading I’m doing my standard 50 books a year, which breaks down to four a month (five two months). I’m adding in a requirement to have one book come off my TBR lists (at my library and Goodreads) and one book be one I own, so as to cut down on books just sitting around.
For art, I found a “sketch a week” challenge, so I’m going to give that a try, with the addition of working through an art book (like, a how to book) once every other month. Later in the year, depending on how I’m feeling and how things are going, I may also incorporate learning how to write music.
I’m also going to add back in a video game goal. I tend to hoard games on Steam, and I need to play through some of them instead of just buying more. I’d like to play 20 hours a month, with most of the focus being on the Steam games. (I play Just Dance on the Switch quite a bit, which does not count, and also sometimes play other games there and on the PS5.)
That’s me for 2024! For January specifically I’m continuing the Book 1 revision (the winter critique marathon starts next Monday), working on a cover for Deep and Blue, and re-posting that last SkillShare class. The other goals are ongoing (4 books, 4 pieces of art, video games) but I have picked out the two books for the challenge (a book on older pagan-related Christmas mythology that I’ve had for three years now, and a book off my TBR about DNA solving cold cases) and selected a few Steam games to focus on (two of which I’m partially through).
Hopefully this is all achievable! I hope 2024 is treating you well thus far, and that you achieve all your goals as well!
