writing goals

As a highly-motivated goal setter and a usually reliable goal achiever, I’m always curious about whether and how other creative people set goals. I wish I could be one of those laissez-faire writers who wanders through their day being as creative as they feel like, for a few hours or not. Unfortunately, I have to work for my supper, so my opportunity time is reduced by half. If I allow a few hours to pass without being creative, the day is lost.

That’s not to say I don’t have bad days or skip days. Some days I feel burned out from work or don’t feel well, common afflictions I feel are beneath me, but alas. Occasional travel days and holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving are also usually a wash. But on average, I spend a good amount of time writing every week; the exact number of hours per day may vary.

What other people say

In a post on Writers in the Storm, Jenny Hansen talked about her goals for 2026. Every year, the WITS bloggers choose a single word of intention for the year –such as Renew, Reset, or Joy – to act as their guiding star. I’ve tried that, but I never remember the word, so apparently this does not work for everyone. I suppose writing it down would help.

You’ve probably heard of SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) goals. That approach can steer you in the right direction, but may be too structured for creative work. Writing a novel takes as long as it takes. However, it’s also good to be specific about your intentions and to ensure they are reasonably achievable.

I like setting enough goals that I have a roadmap for my year, with some wriggle room if I want to make a detour or if life gets in the way. This doesn’t work for everyone, but I need some structure or I find it difficult to decide what to do next. Worse, if I’m working only from a vague list, I will veer into busy work or research, or work on easy tasks rather than tackling something more meaningful, but difficult.

However, I add the wriggle room because I also need the space to play and the occasional time off. Also, when my deadlines are too strict, missing them feels like a bigger problem than it really is. There have been a few Januarys when I’ve missed some self-imposed deadlines and felt like I’d blown the whole year, when in reality A – I had 11 months to catch up and B – nobody cares.

In her post, Hansen also notes that most New Year’s resolutions fail for these same reasons. Goals are too vague, there’s no plan of action, and we have an all-or-nothing mindset that keeps us from continuing when we fall short.

In Atomic Habits, James Clear recommends starting small by picking one tiny, easily achievable goal – on par with making your bed every morning or drinking a glass of water at noon – and building forward. In his habit tracker app Atoms, Clear suggests defining the mindset you want to develop or end state you want to achieve, and view your actions as strategy. For example, you goal may be “Be more creative” and your strategy is “Write for one hour every morning before work.”

In her post, Hansen shares some insights she learned from a life coaching seminar: Our brains like solving problems as much or more than they like to-do lists. This is another way of saying it’s easy to get lost in the forest when we are looking at trees.  A long list of tasks may be more daunting than helpful, but remembering why you’re doing them may help keep you motivated.

As with Clear’s advice above, it’s helpful to define the end state you wish to achieve as you create your lists. “Post to Substack on Sunday night” is a useful task, but it you attach it to the end state of “Be more connected to my community”, the task may feel more meaningful and less like drudgery.

How I track goals

My two big picture goals for the year are finishing the next draft of my novel and keeping up with my blog. To keep track, I have a daily word count goal and I have a schedule of what I’m supposed to write and when. The word count is simply an estimate of how many words I think I need to finish the book and write 60-70 blog posts, divided by 365. The schedule reminds me that I can’t just tap out words, I have to actually finish chapters and posts. I also can’t jump to a new project when I feel stuck. I could, of course, but then I risk ending the year with a lot of words written, but nothing substantial to show for it.

The dual goals have other benefits. Hitting my word count goal gives me a pleasurable dopamine spike at the end of each writing session, even better if I exceed it. Checking off chapters and posts – usually on Saturday or Sunday – gives me a sense of accomplishment and forward motion at the end of the week, adding motivation and momentum for the start of the next week, which can be dreary.

It also helps to break down big goals into component pieces. The novel is easy, of course – chapters are excellent sub-goals. When I open a new chapter, I start by breaking down the scenes and beats, including any new character or setting descriptions. I like being able to jump around. If I don’t have any particular inspiration for an opening sentence or paragraph, I skip to set building or conversation, whatever gets me into my writing head space.

My blog goal is posting every Monday, so that breaks down easily as well. I also work better when I have an idea of what I’m going to write before I start, so I keep lists of topic ideas or series to run through. Sometimes topics get moved from one week to another, or bumped altogether if I’m not feeling it.

I don’t know how your brain works, but my brain loves checking items off a list. Seeing the word count roll and the check marks accumulate motivates me to jump onto the next piece of writing. And if I finish my novel or work ahead on my blog, I get to – not have to – start writing something new.

Your turn

Do you set goals this way? How do you keep track of your progress?

---

Know anyone who’d like my blog? Please forward today’s post! I’d love to hear from them. Need more content? Join my mailing list!

 

A few weeks ago, I gave myself a report card for my 2025 writing year, which means it’s time for new goals for 2026. I don’t always hit every goal, but posting them publicly keeps me accountable. Saying it out loud ensures that I do something to move the ball forward, even if I don’t reach the pitcher’s mound. Did I say that right?

Goals

Finish my WIP. This is a spillover goal from last year. As I wrote in my performance eval a few weeks ago, I was on track to finish a ready-to-share draft of the novel until I got bogged down in the muddy middle. I cut, consolidated, replaced, and reshuffled, and now feel optimistic that my plot can carry me through the most difficult part. If not, I have a year to fix it, plus I already fixed it once, so I have a decent grasp on what it might take to pull the wagon out of the ditch, should we run off the road again. I have a daily word count goal, but the important task is finishing, not merely adding up words.

Maintain my blog and newsletter. I closed out 2025 with about 70 blog posts and that sounds about right for this year. I’ve already drafted out topics for a good portion of them, which is half the battle. I may mix in some creative nonfiction along with the craft and creativity posts, but don’t hold me to that. We’ll file that under stretch goals.

Networking and social. I will continue my weekly writing meetups and see about adding an in-person social time, if I have any takers. My monthly networking meetup is going great and I fully expect us to continue meeting. I would like have more social time but here is where time starts to crunch. In a perfect world, I would like to have a small dedicated critique group and I should (I hate that word) spend more time interacting on my social accounts. Let’s call the first 2 solid and achievable goals and the latter 2 optimistic stretch goals.

Reading. Reading isn’t exactly a writing goal, but as the man says – if you don’t have time to read, you don’t have time to write. I have 80 books on the TBR list for next year, ranging from the highbrow – Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, a collection of seven of Joan Didion’s books, the complete poems of Robert Lowell, and a translation of the Nag Hammadi (Gnostic) scriptures – to the slightly breezier Complete Stories of Kurt Vonnegut and Patricia Highsmith’s Diaries, with some murder mysteries, graphic novels, and craft books to break up the heavy lifting. I’m very much looking forward to re-reading Ethan Mordden’s Buddies series and John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. I could probably guess which books on the list won’t get read in 2026, but since I choose the books, that would be cheating. I should get through most of them.

Stretch goals

As the name implies, these are projects I’d like to work on, but won’t prioritize unless I blast through the more achievable goals. Ideally, these will be at the top to the list next year.

Draft book 2. I have a good outline for my next book, a follow-on novel to the WIP, set in the same world but with an entirely different cast. I don’t anticipate writing both books this year, but if I finish the first by the end of summer – eminently doable – then I could finish an ugly NANO-ish draft by the end of the year.

Stage book 3. I know what my next-next book will be, an expansion of a novella that I wrote a few years ago that needs more room to breath. If I need a break from – or between – book 1 and 2, I can work on what I call my Rationale document – a big picture review of the protagonist and the antagonism, what I’m writing and why, what I want to say, and what I want my readers to feel while and after reading the novel. It’s not quite an outline, though much of the document will find its way into an outline. Think of it as a vision board in a Word doc.

Art time. Every year I write down art time and every year I don’t set aside time to do any art. However, as you may recall, I spent a good chunk of September painting and setting up my craft room, so I have a drafting table, an easel, a kitchen table, and a writing desk glaring at me every time I pass by. I have paper. I have pencils. I’ve had some of my inks and paints so long they’ve probably gone crusty, but that’s ok. I like doodling and maybe I’ll get some time this year.

That’s a lot

And that’s ok. I know my priorities: the Top 3 are the WIP, my blog, and the networking group. The stretch goals are just that – fun things to pick at if I need a break or win the lottery. Compared to the Top 3, they aren’t vital to a successful year. I’ll report back next December.

What are your creative goals for 2025?

---

Know anyone who’d like my blog? Please forward today’s post! I’d love to hear from them. Need more content? Join my mailing list!

 

 

There’s never a bad time to stop and reflect on life, but the end of a calendar year lends itself to both a sense of conclusion and new beginnings. And even though March feels like it happened about three weeks ago, we’ve arrived at the end of another December. If, like me, you are time challenged, I apologize for breaking this news so abruptly. It caught me offguard too.

So let’s talk about goals. I like goals. They remind me of what’s important, keep me on track, provide evidence of progress, and break down big picture projects into manageable segments. Despite what NaNoWriMo taught two generations of writers, novels are not written in 30 days.

I usually set too many goals – writing and personal – but I’m good about prioritizing, so whatever time I have in a given week goes to the project on top. Importantly, I’m also not bound to the calendar, for a goal is only as good as the service it provides you. Historically, my roadmaps last at least 7-8 months, and sometimes I get through an entire year without tossing one out, but I will start fresh when it suits me. If my needs or circumstances change, my plans evolve with them, whether that happens in January, April, or August. This is realistic and satisfies the committee.

As part of my end of year reflection, I give myself a performance appraisal, reviewing what I accomplished, which goals I missed, and how and why. Did something sound like fun but wasn’t? Did it take more time than I anticipated? When and how did life get in the way? Was a project worth the effort and should I keep going or cut my losses? Where did I win? When was I most productive? What habits, plans, and productivity tools did the best job keeping me on track? Should I perhaps stop overthinking and lighten up a bit?

Obviously this last question is rhetorical.

I don’t beat myself up for not hitting every mark. I tend to set a few meaningful and achievable goals, along with one or two stretch goals, ie: projects that would be fun to do, but may not be realistic with my time and other resources. Every year, in a fit of ridiculous optimism, I write down “podcast” and every year I reluctantly scratch it off, usually sometime in the second quarter. Podcasts are fun but time-consuming, and likely would be no better at building my community than my blog. A podcast would also be a great way to procrastinate on my novel while still allowing me to look busy. I know how I am.

So what goals did I set last year and how did I do? In the interest of full disclosure:

Finish my novel in progress. This was my top goal for the year: to have a complete, ready for someone to read, draft of my work in progress. By the time July rolled around, I was somewhere between a quarter and a third of the way done, and had a clear outline of the rest of the book. A final manuscript was achievable. And then I started writing the middle of the book and the air went out of the tires. The main character floundered. Events pushed him hither and yon. Exciting things happened to and around him but the plot was being driven by circumstance, not desire. Important characters were about to disappear until the end of the story and I knew that wasn’t going to work. Rather than waste time writing more chapters that wouldn’t go anywhere, I went back to basics. I picked apart scenes, deleted and added, cut and consolidated characters, created a new inciting incident, and strengthened the cause and effect chain. I feel good about this new outline, but I won’t have a complete novel by the end of December. Fortunately, much of what I’ve already written is reusable or editable, so I will have a Frankendraft to work with come January.

Grade: B, because you should never feel bad about correcting course when you need to.

Outline my next novel-to-be. I lean into goal-setting and productivity tools because my mind tends to wander. I also have a hard time letting go of ideas when I get them, so I usually have a backup project going alongside my main work. The novel following this one is set in the same world, but with different characters, so plot ideas and storyworld elements will pop up as I’m working the main project, and this is a good place for some of them. Having a brainstorm document also gives me a break from the more intense WIP work when I need it (2000 words/hour is more satisfying than 200 words/per hour). The happy accident is that I’m applying the lessons learned from the above work while outlining this one. It was easier to spot developments that needed a bigger setup or better payoff, and places where the antagonism needed to hit harder. It’s not a pretty outline, but it’s a solid starting point.

Grade: A

Post regularly on my blog. I started the year with a goal of posting twice per week – Monday and Thursday – and I maintained that pace for as long as I could. After a few months, however, it was clear that while I loved blogging and connecting with my handful of readers, it was preventing me from working on my novel (see above re: procrastinating while looking busy). Part of my problem is that I can’t write short, so most of my posts run 800 – 2000 words. I also obsessively self-edit and proofread. So, I cut back to once per week. I did miss a few weeks, but I’m not a robot and this isn’t a full-time job. Or any kind of job. I don’t know about you, but my jobs pay money. Overall, though, I will end the year with 70+ blog articles, which ain’t hay.

Grade: B, because I don’t like missing deadlines, but eh – that’s life.

Expand my reach. WordPress and Substack auto-mail blog posts, but I also decided to start a newsletter, because for most people it’s easier to give me an email address than it is to remember to visit a site, sign up for yet another social account, and subscribe to a publication. I wisely decided to keep it simple, with an opening first-person message, a brief recap of what I posted on the blog, an occasional short book review, and a parting song. I set a reasonable goal of sending a new email on the first Sunday of each month and so far have published every month.

In June, based on advice from Jane Friedman, I moved my website blog to Substack as a way to increase my visibility. I don’t have a large readership, but it’s larger than what I had in January, so I’ll take that as a win. Substack also made it easier to post to social media, which I find tedious, and my follows are inching up. Go me!

Grade: A; extra credit for joining Substack

Find my tribe. Throughout my life, I’ve had intermittent success making friends with other writers. I had exactly one writer friend in college. I had a wonderful collective in California, which I stupidly traded for a start-up theater group, the less said about the better. I spent a number of years in the wilderness before finding some writer friends in western Maryland, but life eventually took us to different locales. More recently, I have tested out various critique groups, but never found one I fully vibed with. COVID ended a bunch of them. I embrace the DIY aesthetic, so when I failed to find what I needed, I knew in my heart I’d have to create it myself.

First, earlier this year I invited a bunch of my writer and wannabe writer friends to join me online for a weekly silent writing session. Show up, shut up, write. While many expressed initial enthusiasm, only a few actually managed to complete step one. We intrepid few continue to meet every Wednesday to keep each other company while we work. I’m not always in the mood, but I show up anyway, because I know the others are waiting.

In May, I attended Jane Friedman’s one-day intensive The Business of Being a Writer workshop. I don’t have grand designs on becoming a bestselling novelist or making a significant income from my writing, but it’s also important to me to have writing peers with whom I can share ideas, information, feedback, and encouragement. As I wrote to Jane before the event: I’m so excited to meet 12 other writers with the oomph to take this workshop!

My expectations were far exceeded. Jane gave each of us detailed, personalized feedback on our websites, blogs, and social media profiles, as well as tons of advice on how to align our writing, public personas, and online tools to create a brand. I went into the day planning to ask the other writers if they’d like to keep in touch but I chickened out.

Fortunately, the next week Jane gave a follow-on talk on how generative AI is affecting the creative community. After the presentation, while everyone was happily munching sandwiches and cookies, I set a yellow pad and pen on the table and asked if anyone would like to keep in touch.

Pro tip: Plan your networking around snacks.

I was not sure how or if anyone would respond, but everyone at the table added their name and email address to the list. Thanks to my RBF it probably didn’t show, but that was my first What the Fuck moment. I was prepared for disappointment, but now I was going to have to actually do this thing I’d proposed. The second WTF moment occurred during our first online meeting when 8 out of the 9 writers joined the Zoom session. As I wrote at the time in my monthly newsletter, I could invite 9 people to my funeral and not have 8 show up. This was actually happening.

Six months later, we have shared advice on book cover design, manuscripts, queries, networking, and blogging, and developed new friendships and community around our creative work. My presentations at the Manor Mill Writers Workshop were a direct result of the networking group, as the event founder Katie Ritter is also one of us. I have been so accustomed to going it alone that I wasn’t quite sure where we’d go together, but I’m deeply grateful, if slightly terrified, every time we meet. I named the group email list Masterminds, but don’t tell them. I’d hate for it to go to their heads.

Grade: A (Gold stars for everyone!)

Set aside time for drawing and painting. I like to draw and paint. I’m not good at either of these things. This is actually part of the attraction. I’m not a good artist, I have no designs on becoming a good artist, and I have no ego attached to the results. Unlike writing, I can enjoy the process of creating a crappy drawing while not caring too much about the outcome. I will proudly show off my off-kilter still life but I would rather die than show someone a piece of writing in early draft form. Also, drawing exercises an entirely different portion of my brain, the part that takes in shape, texture, and color without necessarily needing to name them. It’s quite relaxing.

I didn’t do any drawing last year.

Grade: 0, but it doesn’t matter.

So, three As, two Bs, and one zero that doesn’t matter. Not bad. As ever, there is room for improvement, but overall, this was a pretty great year, especially for finding my people. Everything else is gravy.

---

Know anyone who’d like my blog? Please forward today’s post! I’d love to hear from them.

Need more content? Join my mailing list!

I didn’t post my writing goals this past January, not because I didn’t have any, but because I wanted to focus on the journey of writing, rather than word counts and timekeeping and spreadsheets, though I did that too, behind the scenes. Also, my goals occasionally evolve during the year and – full disclosure – sometimes I simply blow them and start over.

Blogging. This year, I committed to posting on the blog twice per week, a reasonable compromise between posting daily and keeping my sanity. With the exception of last week’s  mini-break, I have posted on time every time, and usually have a few posts in the drafting stage well before it’s time to knuckle down and hit my deadline. There have been a few mornings I’ve finished posting five minutes before the post is scheduled to publish, but you don’t get extra cookies for finishing too early.

What I underestimated was my time commitment. My calendar shows I have exhausted my blog writing time for the entire year, and here we are in July. Yes, I keep track of my hours. When I have to do this for work, time tracking is a tedious bullshit chore that I resent terribly and forget to do for weeks on end. In my personal life, though, I love tracking my stats. Time allowance aside, I’ll keep posting, but I might not always post twice a week. I’m committed to posting weekly, more when I have time and something pithy to contribute.

On advice of experts, I also started a Substack, which mirrors what I post here. I’ve doubled my readership, which isn’t a high number, but that’s not nothing. I also started a monthly newsletter, and have published that on time every month, as well. I’m actually rather productive when I’m motivated and have a manageable schedule and my boss isn’t a dick.

Creative work. Conversely, I’m way low on my time allowance for non-blog creative writing. I won’t even comment on my number of creative writing hours per week, but it was much less than I planned for the year. I still have time to “catch up,” and even hitting my planned schedule won’t amount to a tremendous weekly average for the year.

Shockingly, I’m still hitting my word count goal – an average 500 a day, which can be 30 minutes or 2 hours of work, depending. I’m about a month ahead of where I should be mathematically, assuming I wrote exactly 500 words per day, no more or less. I’ve been on a good roll the last month or two and will likely hit my yearly word count goal sometime in October or November. Ideally, I’ll have 6 – 8 weeks to focus on editing without keeping track of my writing pace.

Finishing. The jury is still out, but with six months to go, I feel good about finishing my fantasy novel-in-progress and having a meaty outline/sloppy draft of the second. It is not impossible that I could finish both, but I’m not tempting fate. I think the second book will be easier to write, because I have a stronger plot foundation. I don’t expect Book 2 will need as much reorganizing and rewriting as Book 1. All the work I put into Book 1 has paid off as I’m planning Book 2 and I believe that will make the work go faster.

Community. I set a goal to get more connected with my writing friends and the community. You know that’s been an ongoing challenge. I had high hopes for A Writing Room, but the community there seems focused on poetry and memoir. The chat forum has lots of inspirational quotes and photos of tea, but not too much craft discussion. The critique board was not too active last I checked, which is a problem because members can’t post work to be critiqued until they review someone else’s work and if no one is posting, then… ?

Earlier this year, I started an online silent writing meetup with friends. We get together Wednesday evenings eastern and write together over Zoom. There aren’t many of us and a few have already dropped out, but I’m keeping it. I like having the appointment on my calendar and seeing a face or two while I write.

After Jane Friedman’s business workshop a few weeks ago, I corralled a bunch of the other writers into an informal networking group. We’ve met only once so far, but the group has settled on a semi-formal structure for future meetings, which will focus on the business side of writing. Nothing complicated: our blogs and websites, how we use social media, conferences worth attending. It’s a decent-sized group and everyone seems enthusiastic, so I have high hopes. Let’s say medium hopes. I have medium hopes but facing upwards!

Social media. A few weeks ago, I posted about my tech stack, mentioning some of the automation tools I use to share my blog posts to social media, and I’ve already stopped using them. Social media is such a freaking chore. I still post in a few places, but keeping up with it all is a huge time suck and it’s incredibly disheartening. My Facebook and Bluesky lists are nearly 100% writers or writer-adjacent people and nearly 100% of their posts are about…well, they’re not about writing, let’s leave it at that. I keep hearing that TikTok and Instagram are great for writers, and today I read that Pinterest is one writer’s secret sauce for selling books, and honestly, right now I’d like to go back in time to kick Al Gore right in his internets.

How’s your creative year going? Are you happy with your outcomes? Are you making any adjustments for the rest of the year?

---

Know anyone who’d like my blog? Please forward today’s post! I’d love to hear from them.

Need more content? Join my mailing list!

 

Like many of you, I use my time around the New Year to look back on what I did during the previous twelve months and make a plan for what I’d like to accomplish over the next twelve.

There’s no reason to limit this process to January. When my goals go off the rails, I will blank out my spreadsheets and start fresh in June or July, if I must. But January is convenient.

My biggest struggle each year is differentiating between what I want to do, what I should do, and what I can realistically do. I should exercise regularly, at least 4 – 5 hours per week. I do my best writing when I write every day, so that’s 10 – 14 hours minimum per week. This blog has been fulfilling creatively and socially. I should get through a few of the several hundred books on my TBR shelf. I’d like to take some art classes.

By the time I finish my list, my weekly schedule has some 20 hours of creative time + 10 hours of “should” time + another 10-15 of “want to do” time. And that’s not including time at work or maintaining my household.

If I were retired or could afford to pay someone to cook and clean for me, I might be able to spend that kind of time exercising, making art, writing, blogging, recording a podcast, reading, going to writing events, taking classes, traveling, going to movies and concerts, and getting together with friends. Alas, a few things must go. Maybe 2/3. Probably 80 percent.

I suspect a lot of creative people face this conundrum. We want to make art and enjoy art and see our friends and families and rest and recharge, and it all gets to be a bit much. The hard part is that I need some amount of all of those things to feel like a well-rounded human being.

How do you pick?

It’s not easy. I disappoint myself a little every January when I backburner a podcast for another year and scratch creative classes off my budget, but needs must. For me, everything flows from my writing time. Is my time better spent writing or going to a writing workshop? Writing or podcasting about writing? Writing is always my most important goal, and that helps me order the work. Of course, my family and friends are important, so I have to block out social time. After that, there’s room for a small project or two, and that’s that. I choose to be satisfied.

In a recent podcast, Tiffany Yates Martin and Joanna Penn talked about this decision-making process from the perspective of having a writing career, but their thoughts apply to the general writing life as well.

You will find copious advice about what you can, should, or must do to write a best seller or have a successful writing career, whether that means marketing and promotions, platform building, or even what you choose to write. There’s no way you can do it all without an army of assistants, and frankly, you don’t need to it all anyway.

“We have to say no to the things that don’t suit us, whether or not we’re told they are best practices,” Yates Martin says. “First of all, nothing that works for one person is going to work for every person. So if somebody is trying to set something up as the holy grail of ‘here’s the secret sauce,’ there is no secret sauce. Also, the secret sauce isn’t right for everyone.”

Your own intuition is your best tool for decoding your personal path and your boundaries. If it sounds good, but doesn’t feel right, say no. If you don’t have time or the effort doesn’t support your near-term goals, say no. Know yourself and pick the work that suits you and brings you joy. Joanna Penn says she even keeps a list of not-to-do projects that sound fun or that she “should” do, but would take up too much time or simply don’t interest her. (I should probably put “podcast” at the top of such a list…)

I don’t share too many of Joanna Penn’s interviews, because her blog focuses more on the business side of writing, which is outside my purview. However, she’s definitely worth a follow. Her interviews often include creative topics, as well as business areas, and her guests are relatable. It’s a good listen.

Did you make goals for this year? What are they? What is your intuition telling you?

 

Who am I?

I have a hard time letting go.

Not only of mementos and clutter—I toe nimbly along the line between whimsy and hoarding—but people, experiences, phases of life. It’s hard to accept that things end. Lovers leave, friendships fade, people die, old haunts shut down, a job becomes unbearable. I know I’m not alone, but I suspect I’m on the extreme end of the spectrum.

Even when things end for a good reason, part of me expects to return one day and find the situations and emotions undiminished. There is no breakup I haven’t reconsidered, no relocation I haven’t regretted, no friends I don’t miss. I daydream of hitting the lottery so I can buy up every house I’ve ever rented and re-open all my favorite long-gone joints.

I insist on going home again.

Years before I started blogging, I had my own small press. I published a few issues of some magazines and a half dozen anthologies. I set it aside when I started my last job, with the intention that the pause was only temporary. Unfortunately, that job quickly turned into both a time and emotional suck and a few months’ hiatus became a year, then two, now eight.

I always meant to get back to publishing, but now I acknowledge that it won’t happen. It could happen, but it’s very, very unlikely. I spent 20-30 hours per week reading submissions, designing books, proofreading, dealing with printers, keeping up with the website, planning for book fairs and cons, and robbing Peter to pay for it all. This did not leave much time for a social or creative life. I watched as writers who had their first paying publication in one of my collections go on to publish in high-end markets and even land book deals. That was hard, even though I loved my writers and was always very happy for them (and yes, I always thought of them as my writers…). I’ve lost touch with most of them. A few have passed. I miss them all.

But as much as I loved my small press, I also like going out once in a while and I value my writing time. I can’t have it all.

And that’s ok. Because nothing can take away the experience or the accomplishment. I had always wanted to run a small press and so I did it, A to Z, nuts and bolts, business and creative. And I have all the books on my shelf and they are currently still in print.

I’ve also learned that I can’t have everything creatively. I love to write and draw, but I’ll never be as good as I’d like to be. Running a theater group and an art gallery were on my list for a long time, but those don’t interest me as much.

I only have so much time. Many of my story ideas that will never get past the short paragraph written in my journal. There are others that I don’t have the skill to finesse. My ego would like to see my name on a Big Thinking Man Novel, but I know who I am and that’s not me. I thrive in the crevices, writing about people who could be decent if the world would let them, if they could just get the hang of it. I like those people.

I’m still learning when to give up on a story in progress. A number of years ago, I wrote a novel that I submitted to the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards (remember that?). I was invested in that story. I made it round 2 or 3, which wasn’t as good as winning, but I was still proud of it. For somewhere around 8 years, I wrote and rewrote and edited and cut and pasted, but never really pulled it together. It was an ambitious novel – cross genre, multiple POV characters, a funky story world, a setting with deep history. I always planned to go back it, but my small press took up my time and one year became two, which became ten, etc. etc.

Maybe I’ll go back to it. I’m more likely to revisit that story than I am to start publishing other people again. But if I don’t, then I accept that too. I have a folder on my laptop with ideas and story prompts I’ve been saving for 30 years. I won’t write a tenth of those, either.

This is on my mind lately, for a number of reasons. Everything ends, either the things around us or eventually…us. I’ve been struggling with the novel I started back in…honestly, I don’t even want to look at the file dates. I haven’t given up, but I’m also stuck on some foundational elements. So, now I have the question – Am I working through a challenge or am I victim to the sunk cost fallacy?

Tiffany Yates Martin talks about giving up in this recent post on her blog. “If you are letting go of a project or pursuit that no longer serves you, do it with joy, not sadness,” she wrote. “With pride, not defeat, and excitement, not resignation.” This also applies to work we won’t call “finished” but which we should release out into the world so that we can move on to something fresh. Yes, guilty.

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”

TYM confesses that she stopped writing fiction a few years ago, in favor of her work as a writing coach, teacher, and editor. She might go back to writing or she might not, but for now, she doesn’t miss it.

I’m not as bold as her – I will never give up writing. I go a little nuts when I don’t have the time or energy to write. As I told my ex years ago: “Do you want me taking dictation from the voices in my head or do you want me taking orders?” A creative Will is a happy Will.

But, I will remind myself to avoid the sunk cost fallacy when a story is not working or when it’s not serving my creativity. As long as I feel challenged by a problem, I’m ok to continue, but when I feel defeated or that I’d rather not write today, thanks – then it’s time to switch it up.

I haven’t given up on the novel in progress. There’s something about it that makes me itchy and I want to work through it. But I have back-burnered it for now. I give maybe 10% of my writing time to working out those story problems and put the rest towards some shorter projects, including a novella I’m close to wrapping up. This new project has been fun to write – one POV character, a small cast, a short timeline, and a fantasy setting so my research is minimal. I’ll post here when I have something to share.

If you’ve given up on a project, join me and do it with gusto.

Who am I?

Checking in again with a quarterly update on my creative goals for 2023. So, how did I do?

Research goals: Again this quarter, I didn’t need to do any research. N/A

Writing hours and word count goals: Life has been in the way a bit the last quarter, so I put a few things on pause. Obsessively tracking my daily hours and word count is one of them. Nothing bad is happening; simply juggling a lot of balls lately and I don’t have the bandwidth to micro-manage this many disparate projects at the same time.

Project goals: Last time I checked in, I had just completed a rough outline and draft of my novel and was ready to plunge back in, but I got stuck again while working on the tight outline. However, I’ve been reading and journaling on the theme and characters and think I have a better approach now. I realize I’m stuck in “planning” mode and need to move into decision and action mode, but I’m ok with it. Life things are settling down and I’m on vacation this week. I’ll be working through my scene list again and I suspect it’s time to chop some scenes that won’t work with my new thoughts on the book.

Blog goals: I’ve been blogging here daily and sometimes more than that. My goal is to blog daily through 2023 and then rethink what I want to do for 2024. The mere habit of writing daily has helped me generate more ideas for blog posts, which is what I needed. I’ve started blogging several times before but never felt like I had anything special to say. But now I feel like I’m finding a groove.

Learning goals: I finished Margaret Atwood’s Negotiating With the Dead, which was interesting. More lecture than learning, but she presented some intriguing notions. I attended a couple of webinars on setting creative priorities and developing a writer brand (I hate thinking of it that way, but what can you do?). I’ve also been catching a lot of writing podcasts.

 Social goals: I broke the ice and went back to the writing workshop I attended pre-COVID. I was having social anxiety about it, so I dragged a friend along, and now he feels motivated to start writing again, so win-win. I also added a profile to Stage 32, a cinema networking site, and met a few folks. I still feel like I’m only inching out into the writing community – where I used to feel much more comfortable – but progress is progress.

To hold myself accountable, I plan to check in on my writing goals for 2023. Quarterly seems like a good time to stop and take account.

Back in January, I set my writing goals for the year, including projects to complete and time goals for hours spent writing, researching, and learning.

So, how did I do?

Research goals

I haven’t done any research for my work in progress this quarter, but I didn’t need to. I’ve been working out the dead zones in my outline and concentrating on scene structure.

Grade: Dropped the class

Writing hours and word count goals

I haven’t stuck to my 10 hours per week writing time, but I’ve also not kept as good track as I should. I had been counting only time actually working on the manuscript, but that meant I’ve omitting time journaling about the novel, reading specific advice on the areas troubling me, and incorporating some of those ideas into my notes for the outline.

Grade: B. Excellent effort, but I forgot to turn in all the work.

Project goals

I happy with my progress on the novel. I completed a rough outline, then compiled a Frankenstein draft of previously written chapters and scenes based on the outline, and am now about halfway through a tight outline, focusing on the causation chain (the but-therefore). Plus, as above, I’ve been journaling ideas for narrative, heightening tension in weaker scenes, playing with the roles of the various characters, and tightening the MC’s back story. I feel good about where I am and am looking forward to getting to the actual writing-writing of the novel.

Grade: A!

Blog goals

I’ve been posting here intermittently, but have been sticking to a blog post a day. I haven’t been posting daily, because I was behind, but I’m keeping to my project of blogging about my concept of Conscious Writing. I have some book posts to write and maybe some other thematic series once I get caught up.

Grade: B-  The work is getting done, but it’s turned in late.

Learning goals

I’ve been watching the BBC Maestro series of writing seminars, starting with Alan Moore’s master class. I also finished Carol Ann Duffy’s seminar on poetry and am halfway through Ed Mercurio’s class on writing television drama.

Moore, of course, is incomparable. Duffy’s lecture series was excellent and made me want to dip my toes into poetry again. Mercurio’s class is so-so, focused on television writing that I consider somewhat formulaic, but does have some good food for thought. Edgar Wright is up next.

I also finished Chuck Palahniuk’s Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life after Which Everything Was Different, which was very good. He and I are very different kinds of writers, and not all of his advice was relevant to my work, but he shares lots of insights and exercises. I found a lot to like about the book and journaled my way through it, capturing thoughts I might incorporate into my novel.

I also finished Peter Turchi’s A Muse and a Maze: Writing as Puzzle, Mystery, and Magic. In this book, Turchi examines the similarities between puzzle-making and writing, and importantly, between writing and puzzle-solving. By puzzle, he doesn’t mean writing a mystery novel, but rather assembling pieces of writing that obscure and reveal, until you have created a meaningful experience. Intriguing premise and excellent follow-through. This one also gave me some ideas for novel, if not actual scenes then how to approach the story as a project.

Grade: A.

Social goals

This one was always going to be a struggle for me. I logged into a writing community twice during my writing nights, and even chatted with the moderator for a bit, a blogger I admire quite a bit, so that was good, if not earthshattering. I went to the library for my writing nights twice. I know that sounds lame, but going out and being around people counts as social for me. It’s a start.

Grade: D. The work I actually did was ok, but I barely made an effort.

 

So, two A’s, two B’s, and a D. Honestly, that’s about what I expected. The important goals are moving forward. The social goal is intended to push me outside my comfort zone, so it’s ok that I’m off to a cruddy start. I have the year to make hay with this one, so I’m ok with baby steps.

Since I’m making a commitment to conscious creation this year, it’s appropriate that I share my writing goals for 2023.

Some of the goals are specific and numbers based, some are task oriented and more open-ended.

Taken together, they might sound like a lot, but as a single-no-kids, they are achievable. Some of the goals support the others, so I get double points. Of course, for some writers, these might seem tepid. To each their own.

Research goals

I set a goal of 130 research hours for the next year, or about 2.5 hours a week, or about 1 library night a week. The 130 hours is less important than working the list of topics I need to research for my current novel and my next few projects.

Topics include the construction of a major highway through Maryland, some Appalachian history, radio station operations in the early 1960s, rural routes in the American South in the early 1930s, and interstate travel in the American North and Midwest in the early 1950s.

I’m not writing travelogues, but my next projects feature characters on the road, so I might as well bunch up the road research to get it out of the way. Most of the information will not see the light of day in any of the projects, but knowing how long it might take a bus to travel between major cities, as well as what small towns and road hazards they might pass along the way, will help support story timelines and milestones.

I’m also counting some reading towards my research hours, with books like John Reppion’s Spirits of Place; The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath; The Boys of Fairy Town by Jim Elledge; Young Man from the Provinces by Alan Helms; and a few others.

Writing hours and word count goals

I’ve set targets for 520 writing hours and 250,000 words by the end of the year. I’ve never kept track of writing hours, so I don’t have a baseline, but 10 hours per week seems reasonable. Some weeks will be higher and some will be lower. The word count is a bit higher than my average, but I’ve never had a problem hitting 500 words a day, so approximately 700 a day doesn’t seem insurmountable.

Both of those goals should be high enough to support my…

Project goals

With two years’ work behind me, this could be the year I finish my novel in progress. I’ve already gone thorough two iterations, both of which got messy and petered out at the halfway point. I spent the past few months working but not working on it: reading craft books and articles, studying up on my weak points, digging deeper into the main characters, experimenting with motifs and symbols, and adding, discarding, and rearranging characters and scenes.

I’m mostly confident that my new outline will get me through the messy middle. At minimum, it should get me further to the ending than I’ve reached previously.

As a stretch goal, I’d like to have a detailed outline for my next project by the end of the year.

Blog goals

I’ve tried blogging many times over the years and have never stuck to it. I don’t know how people A) find the time; B) find topics; and C) convince themselves anyone cares what they think.

Time, I can find. I like writing.

For B, I’ve found a topic with the Conscious Writing series, in which I’ll apply Gay Hendricks’ concept of Conscious Living to my writing practice. That gives me a defined topic for at least one short blog post every day of the year. I like Hendricks’ approach to living authentically and being present in the moment, and I like yammering about writing, so this may be a good way to get into the habit of blogging regularly. Organizing my thoughts on two separate but related passions also should be a good thing.

I’ve decided not to care about C.

Learning goals

I’m halfway through an online writing seminar, which I plan to finish in January. Might blog about it, might not.

I’ve also set a goal of reading six craft books; not just skimming, but spending time with the advice and seeing how it applies to my work and maybe doing some of the writing exercises or challenges, if they aren’t too stupid. Books TBD. I have about 60 on my shelf, only a few of which I’ve read cover to cover.

Social goals

Finally, I’ve set a goal of interacting with my local and online writing communities more frequently this year. I’m solitary by nature, but pre-pandemic, I participated in a local writing workshop and a writer’s hangout, where folks showed up to write but didn’t share work. The workshop has moved online but the hangout is defunct.

So, my goal for this year is to rejoin the online workshop, participate in a few targeted online forums (not Facebook or Twitter), and put out feelers for monthly in-person hangout sessions. If no one else wants to hangout in person, I’ll go by myself. I like coffee drinks and snacks.

What are your creative goals for 2023?