No New Year’s Resolutions: Just Goals

sport-659547_1280Every year I set myself writing goals. And every year I fall short.

Some of that are things beyond my control, like family issues: cancer and death have a way of shaking things up and resetting your priorities.

Some of my failure has been a simple lack of discipline. Or should I call myself out for what it is: laziness.

Some of my tricks for staying on track work, when I use them. Like to-do lists. Or tracking how many hours I’m actually working.

But then things fall apart when family crises arise. Or when I come to a task I don’t want to do, and fritter my time away, procrastinating.

When just last week I put off writing an email I didn’t want to write. But I didn’t want to start anything else, knowing this was the most important thing I needed to accomplish.

I would have been must better served to finish my Christmas shopping. That would have least been productive.

So the lesson I learned in 2015 is any productivity is better than none. And having achieved something, not matter how small, I’m more inspired to tackle a tougher task.

This year, I’m going to set the goals again. They aren’t New Year’s resolutions, to be made and forgotten by Epiphany. Goals. Serious goals I intend to achieve. This is the year I’m not going to fall short.

So here they are:

  1. Finish drafting Stinging Power, #3 in my fantasy quartet
  2. Finish revising Raising Fear, #1 in the quartet
  3. Edit Raising Fear
  4. Publish Raising Fear
  5. Revise Wanting Justice, #2 in the quartet
  6. Edit Wanting Justice
  7. Blog weekly
  8. Track my productivity and hold myself to a serious work schedule
  9. Find critique partners

And just for grins…

  1. Participate in NaNoWriMo, even though I’ve finished my quartet and have no ideas at all for what I’d write about.

So breaking this into quarters:

January-March

  • Finishing drafting Stinging Power
  • Finish revising Raising Fear
  • Figure out a way to track productivity and get started
  • Post 13 blog posts
  • Look for critique partners

April-June

  • Edit Raising Fear
  • Keep tracking productivity and make adjustments as needed
  • Post 13 blog posts
  • Look for critique partners

July-September

  • Publish Raising Fear
  • Revise Wanting Justice
  • Outline NaNo novel
  • Keep tracking productivity and make adjustments as needed
  • Post 13 blog posts
  • Look for critique partners

October-December

  • Draft NaNo novel
  • Edit Wanting Justice
  • Promote Raising Fear
  • Keep tracking productivity and make adjustments as needed
  • Post 13 blog posts
  • Look for critique partners

I’m determined that this is the year I finally get my first novel published. The only way to do is to keep trying.

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