As we head into 2021 I am looking back at last year’s goals, what went well, what didn’t. One of the repeating themes I am seeing is I tried to bite off too many varied project worlds. All in all it was a good first year back to writing, and one that has kept me writing into 2021 so I must be doing something right.
In 2020 I set 5 writing goals, and the rest were super loose, so I won’t go into them
- Finish editing ‘Ride the Rainbow’, and send it to an agent
- Write a new Novel with HTWAN course
- Revise and Publish 3 short stories
- Create regular blog and social posts
- Publish a new short story
0% – CANCELLED – Finish editing Ride the Rainbow and send it to an agent
Not far into the year I had to re-think this goal. Ride the Rainbow became this huge potential world and series I wanted to write more books in, and I wanted to self publish it. To give myself some time to make sure I was making the right call I stepped away from it and focused on another goal in my list, While doing that I further realised that if I worked on this project, and all the rest, I would spread myself too thin. So it got parked, probably until after 2021.
100% – MODIFIED – Write a new Novel with HTWAN course
I actually wrote 2 entire novels this year, but I didn’t use HTWAN. I plan to work through this course, but I need to edit the novels I completed in 2020 first.
66% – PARTIALY COMPLETED – Revise and Publish 3 short stories
I re-wrote my 3 previously published short stories in 2020, but I only got 2 of them re-published. Wishing for Truths was a standalone story and stayed that way. But as I worked on Earth Bound and Second Sight, I realised both wanted to be a series. I tried to work on both, and I quickly realised that I wasn’t able to split my focus that well. Since I already published Second Sight, I wanted to write that series first. Earth bound is revised and damn near ready to go, but I held it back until I wrote the other 4 Novella’s in the series I planned.
100% – COMPLETE – Create regular blog and social posts
I did a good job of fairly regularly posting over the last year, though next year I will hopefully start getting focused on the stories I am writing more.
100% – COMPLETE – Publish a new short story
I didn’t self-published something new, but I published 3 flash fictions on my blog, 1 Halloween pod cast, 1 anthology for Covid, 1 Christmas calendar and I put out several submissions but I had not heard back on them. So I am pretty pleased with what I got done.
Over the year my focus changed, and with it so did my goals. Next year I will focus in on 2 Core Story worlds, and I hope that should make staying on target easy. But if 2020 taught me anything, it was that the plan is allowed to change. Life happens, what we want changes. What was right from me in January 2020 is not the same as it is now. Be flexible.