I think New Year’s resolutions are neat in theory. Lose weight. Be more social. Read x amount of books. But they’re just so hard to keep! For example, I wrote in 2017 that I had three main writing goals: publish my novel, write and publish an original short story, and blog every week.
I only accomplished one of these—publishing my novel All Things Together in June. I wrote some parts of a story, but largely focused on other pursuits. And while I blogged through mid-April, I ran out of things to say after a while. Or more truthfully, I felt that nobody was interested in what I had to say and this led me to ignore my self-imposed deadlines.
I completely skipped writing goals for 2018. To my surprise, I actually accomplished more that year. I was able to finish editing my short story Let’s Be Legends, successfully completed National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in November, and worked on a memoir.
But for 2019, I’m going to try again with my writing goals. And I have a lot of them. Some aren’t actually writing, but getting things I’ve already published out into the world more. I have a couple of projects lined up that should accomplish this. I’ll be able to share more about these in the future, I hope.
What are my writing goals for 2019? Let’s take a look at them.
- Blog once a month: I tried the once-a-week blog in 2017, and failed. This year, I’m going for quality over quantity. Of course, I might blog more than once a month, but I’m holding myself to putting twelve good posts out.
- Guest blog once a month: Additionally, I’d like to submit material to other blogs once a month.
- Publish two short stories: The first will be published on February 21, 2019. The second? Who knows! But I’m working on a story at the moment that I think will be ready for the last quarter of the year. Look for an excerpt later this year.
- Get five Kindle reviews for my published stories: This should be easy, I hope. Most of my stories are already reviewed, but I don’t want to rest on my laurels. I’ll be reaching out to review blogs to see if they’d be interested in reviewing them. If you’ve read my stories and would like to help, you can read how to leave a Kindle review here.
- Celebrate National Poetry Month in April by writing 30 poems, one for each day.
- Participate in NaNoWriMo: I already have my idea. I’ll spend the summer outlining and work each day in November.
I’ll keep you all updated on my progress throughout the year in each monthly blog. I think these are all doable, and I hope to have a good report come December.
What kinds of writing goals (or just regular goals!) do you have for 2019? Share them in a comment below, or tweet them to me at @TheWriterSean. Let’s work on them together!