New Year’s Resolutions

It is a New Year and even though it feels kind of overwhelming to be thinking about resolutions at all I am going to take a stab at it. It helps that I’ve already got a schedule through April.

There are a couple of carryovers from last year, and I’ll get through those. But mostly these are new goals (eek) so let’s look at that.

• Finish Daughter of Madness. This is the big elephant in the room. I’m hoping for an April release date. I am excited for folks to read this book, but it’s been in the works for a while now and I’m very interested in shifting gears to something else.
• Finish APM. I may have mentioned this project before. It’s something I’ve been scribbling off and on for a few months now, and the goal is to get a draft wrapped up by March.
• Successfully attend Futurescapes. Did I tell you all I got into this workshop? No? Well APM is the thing I will be work-shopping there, thus the need to have it finished in March. I told you it’s going to be a busy few months.
• Successfully attend my planned events, RAI and MystiCon. These always both simultaneously inspire and take a lot out of me, so we will see how it goes! We’ve already started on MystiCon programming, actually.
• Figure out my next novel project and start on it. Right now I’m on the fence about what project to pursue next. The next Creation Saga book is obviously high on the list, but I’ve had a couple of new novel ideas kicking around for a while and I would like to get started on them. I’ve also been researching doing a serialized novel or novella project for release on Patreon or Gumroad. A lot of this decision is going to depend on what happens between now and April, and whether or not people continue to support my Patreon, which I need to overhaul to comply with a more realistic projection of how much time I will be spending on it and what I can produce.
• Be better at not over-committing myself, and on following through. I like to juggle things, and I like to be busy. I also enjoy my free time and alone time. It’s a conundrum. Keeping a good balance of juggling so that I don’t get bored and stay productive, and rest so that I don’t get burnt out and stay productive, is really hard. It might be easier if these were the only projects I were juggling. They’re not, and that will probably never be the case. Personal life, and, more often, work life will continue to intrude. I have to find a way to make all of those things balance, and it’s a constant negotiation. It’s one I’ve failed at the end of this year. We have to push ourselves and take chances, so I’m not exactly upset about failing that recently, but life is a marathon, not a sprint, or at least we hope it is. I’ve been sprinting this year and I need to learn to respect my limits.
• Keep up with my short story craft. One of the things I’ve been glad of this year is that I’ve been exploring new mediums, including short stories. I am not a natural short story writer, I don’t think. It’s hard to tell for sure, of course, but so far I’ve been short listed twice and never successfully sold something. Considering my production rate, I don’t think those are terrible numbers, but having a short story publication under my belt can only help both my self-publishing sales and my chance of diversifying my income and market reach through traditional publishing. All of which is to say that getting a short story published, or five, would be great. So I’m going to keep chipping away at that and hope it works out.

Okay, those are my goals! There are decidedly less than last year for sanity purposes. I look forward to chiming in on my progress in June!

Hope you all have a great 2018! Let me know if you have any fun goals for this year.

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