Writing Goals for 2011

Having my own business has skewed my sense of time. For me, 2010 stuff didn’t end on December 31. I still have tax things to gather for my accountant, and I’ll also be doing some organizing and cleaning out since next week is somewhat quiet. Not snow days quiet, thank goodness, but still a little slow, as things tend to be this time of the year.

Whereas others have already done their examining and generating of writing goals for 2011, the best I’ve done is a hasty list put together while waiting for an appointment. I have, however, been reading some stuff and have realized that, in 2010, I made the following mistakes. It pains me to admit them, but I need to confess before I can move on to my goals. They fall under the general heading of missed opportunities:

1. I stopped posting as part of the #fridayflash and #tuesdayserial groups on Twitter. It happened after I read a blog post by a Twitter writer I greatly admire asking “who are you writing for?” The audiences of those groups are mostly other writers, and I wanted to reach readers. So, I bailed on both, and I stopped writing for everyone. I also cut myself off from a source of support and encouragement.

2. I didn’t follow through on connections I made with other writers. Admittedly, most of these were associated with the Georgia Romance Writers conference and Village Writers Group meeting at the beginning of October, when I was moving my office. If you’ve never moved a business, it’s a detail-frought organizational nightmare, and I’ll admit it, I got overwhelmed. My natural anxious tendencies also took over, which didn’t help.

So there you have it. I’m a writing dumbass. Oh, well, time to move on…

Here are my writing goals for 2011:

1. Write one new short story per month plus one #fridayflash per month.

2. Have at least five stories under submission at a time with less than one week turnaround in case of rejection.

3. Send out five queries a month for Wolf Vector novel. Same rule for rejections.

4. Have a total of at least ten submissions of any type out per month. This follows logically from adding the previous two. Yes, that math major in me creeps out occasionally.

5. Re-work Perchance to Dream as a YA novel. It’s wanted to be from the beginning.

6. Revise A Perfect Man to be query-ready by summer.

7. One post per week on each blog. This includes the professional blog.

8. Online news site column (more about that later).

9. One self-published book review per month. A Bert the Catfish interview with an author if I have the time and Bert pays attention for once.

10. Continue with mystery novel collaboration.

There! I’m not ambitious or anything, am I? I’ve been beating myself up (see the theme?) about what I haven’t accomplished. Don’t get me wrong – I’ve been very happy for my Twitter friends who have gotten stories published and landed book deals – but I’ve skirted the edge of the “I haven’t found the right luck” trap, and it’s time to move on. That’s my other theme. No one is going to do it but me. I’ll keep you posted on the progress, at least once per week.

Ohyeah, I’m going to get started on these goals immediately, but I’m giving myself the week to get things out. I’ve already got a story under construction.

Oh, don’t worry, I didn’t forget your goodies. How about some brownies?