January 2013 Update

Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

In my December update, I talked about doing a DecWriMo and continuing on with my unfinished NaNo novel . . . Yeah. That didn't happen. Color you shocked, right?

Once again, I procrastinated and putzed around, and the next thing I knew, I was knee-deep in short stories again.

Someday, I'm going to write, polish, and submit a novel . . . but today is not someday.

It is, however, a new year. And I have drawn up this year's list of resolutions: things I'd like to accomplish this year but probably won't, LOL.

#1) Write and finish at least six new short stories.

#2) Get better at social media; my focus is Blog/Twitter/Facebook. This is a goal that's been on my list every year since I started on social media, and though I've definitely improved at it, there's still more room for improvement.

#3) Self-publish. I’m old-school, so I want to do most of my publishing via traditional methods. However, I have a few reprints that I’d like to self-publish since it’s so terribly hard to find markets for reprints. Plus, I’d just like to take the whole “indie author experience” for a test drive and see how it works. However, I’m a bit intimidated by all the work it takes to “go indie.” (create your own cover, do your own marketing and promotion, etc.).

#4) Read 24 books. Yes, this is a decrease from prior-year goals, but given that I’ve got so much other work planned, I think it’s better to err to the side of caution. I currently have 500+ books in my kindle library, so I should be done reading them all in 20 years or so.

#5) A novel--any novel, for the love of god--done. I have plenty of choices here, so I should be able to accomplish it. If not my Macha novel (which is done, but I just keep rewriting it instead of polishing it), then either my Cryptozoologist novel (which is in the "completed first draft" stage) or this year's NaNo novel (which isn't even a completed first draft yet). Given my track record, I'm not going to set the bar too high on this one. Macha or the Crypto novel needs to be ready to submit, or I need to end the year with a finished first draft of my NaNo novel. One of those needs to happen!

Of course, the first week of January has already come and gone, and I haven't made any progress toward any of the items on the list, LOL. I'm in the process of finishing and revising a few orphan stories (stories I wrote that were set aside and forgotten) and finishing the first draft of a story I started back in October and abandoned during NaNo and deer season.

I'm shooting for having the new story ("From Little Acorns Grow . . .") done by the end of the month. And then I can start working on the resolutions list.

Happy New Year, and may we all do better with our resolutions this year!