2022 Writing Goals

Can you believe it’s 2022? I can’t. I don’t understand it. My brain does not compute.

Anyway, it being the new year I guess I need some goals? Or something? So here’s my best stab.

My number one goal for 2022 is to finish the very rough draft of Alabaster and sit that aside to work on other stuff. I started Alabaster with the idea of doing maybe a Patreon series, or an eventual collection of modern, dark folktale retellings. I might still do that. But this story has honestly been agonizing to write and I think it needs some time to rest. I’m noodling on a third novella in the same vein, but for now I want to focus on novel projects, so I’m just going to side eye it for a while longer and take notes when they pop into my head.

My bigger goal, in terms of time commitment, and the one you’ve all probably been screaming about, is to work towards a first draft of the third and final Creation Saga book. I’ve already got some outlining and the like done, and actually started on some initial words back in October, but at the moment I have no idea how this project will go for sure. That said, I’m excited to finally be starting on it officially! Unfortunately, the early books of The Creation Saga didn’t sell well — I have a lot of thoughts about why this is, and maybe I’ll do a post on it at some point — but this means that I have been hesitant to put the work into the final book and have been more focused on other projects. But I’ve always wanted to finish the series, and I will keep you updated on my progress.

One of my big goals from last year was to step up my submission and query game, and that will carry over into this year as I look for a buyer for last year’s completed projects (TFK and White Wedding). I’ve registered for Futurescapes 2022, and will be using that workshop to get my query packet for TFK together. I’ll also be building agent lists, and then I will need to actually send out submissions. And I am still technically querying The Zombie Book, so I will need to make some decisions about when and if that project gets trunked at some point as well. Lots going on on this front, and I hope I’ll have more to report in the new year!

Lastly, one of the things I did not make progress on last year was the rewrite of an old WIP I had planned, and so working on that might be something to focus on in my theoretical free time this year. We shall see.

Anyway, 2022 promises to be very busy. I’m fairly certain I won’t make the same progress I made in 2021 — having three months to work certainly jumped me forward — and not all of the goals will be met. But they’re good guiding stars for the coming year!