Goals for 2017

It’s time for new year’s resolutions and goals that I’m totally gonna fail at but I can’t resist on setting. There is a sick satisfaction on paving the way in detail for a whole year, then two months in, forget about the damn map you so enthusiastically drew, set another path as reality strikes you with obstacles and new ideas, and in the end of year, realize you’ve ended up to a whole new planet where nothing is horrible but, well, you have to admit that you’re not where you wanted to be.

Yeah, that’s what I did last year. I have a beautiful powerpoint slide titled 2016 GOALS which I haven’t taken a look at since February. I did yesterday, of course, because to set new goals you need to see if you achieved the old ones. Ha ha, yeah, no.

Overall, though, I did well.

I finished a revision of #angstyspaceopera, I wrote the first draft of a new novel (let’s call it #weirdishsicifi), I made started this blog and I was committed to it, I submitted one short story to online sff magazines and I read 86/70 books. I didn’t query any of the books (which was the overall goal), I didn’t focus on short stories as I’d like and I didn’t write 250k words (it was close to 220k). But I did play around with writing prompts and had fun with writing for myself and my friends and I loved the process.

Thinking about it, it was a good year despite everything but I’d lied if I said I wouldn’t like for it to be better. Considering, though, that I’m still learning how to do the writing thing and discovering myself as a writer, all progress is acceptable and welcome.

For this year, my goals are:

• To go again for 250k words.
• To query #weirdishsicif.
• Outline and start writing the book that I fell in love with during NaNoWriMo (#thatpinkbook).
• Outline the trilogy that follows that book.
• Write short stories and submit them.
• Write more consistently for this blog.
• Read 75 books.
• To not downplay my writing.

On a more personal level, I’d like to:

• Focus more on getting creative, go outside and be inspired.

I was thinking of starting a bullet journal just to make sure I’m having fun and I’m not recycling the same tired ideas when I can’t write of feeling guilty about not writing –leading to not getting out because I have to write-resulting to doing nothing because I didn’t do anything but I didn’t write either-getting more depressed in the end.

I know for a fact that I work better when I break down my tasks and things to do in smaller tasks, and write them down to see them. It helps, like getting rid of the thoughts of things to do, leaving space for doing the actual things.

Cheers to a creative and productive year!