creative and business goals for 2022 revised
Who knew life would throw so many curveballs within the first 12 days of this year? With KrA still bed-bound, D on online-school so far, (and even though schools are reopening, we're considering keeping him home for another couple of weeks), I have broken most of the streaks – both writing and non-writing-related – I committed to at the beginning of this year.
So here I am, not even 12 days into the new year, revising my goals from when I wrote about them a fortnight ago.
- Creative Goals
(1) Write 1,000 words per day on a daily basis.
Still my #1 goal, and I've already fallen off this bandwagon, distracted by other stuff. So here I am, pulling myself back on to this wagon.
(2) Editing, cover design, and publishing for 1 hour/day.
I haven't made much headway on this front, instead spending this time on writing #Instapoetry or checking social media at all random hours of the day. My time on social media has been on an all-time high so far this year, so it's time for me to cut back on that one.
(3) Work on #talesfordreamers and #Instapoetry.
I'm giving up on daily #Instapoetry. Aside from the writing of the poetry, I've been spending too much time thoroughly distracted on social media. I thought I'd have a handle on that, but I clearly don't, and I don't want to waste more time trying to fight the unconquerable. Social media is designed to keep us glued to our screens and our networks, and I've been a fool to think I can just dip in and out in a minute without getting sucked into the quagmire. So I'm stepping back. I'll still be writing poetry, but I won't rush to post it on Instagram. Instead, I'll publish a compilation later this year.
(4) Take Becca Syme's course on Strengths for Writers
Maybe. Maybe not. I'm still keen on this one, but I'm also keeping a big eye on budget, and trying to regain focus on writing and publishing without jumping on to every new, shiny thing that comes my way. So let's take a rain check on this one later in the year.
- Business Goals
(1) Publish wide
This remains a key focus area!
(Right now, my books are primarily on Amazon. One of them is on Kobo. One of them is only in eBook format.
As I write and publish more, I'm aiming to put my works on more platforms. Apple, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, and so on. I'm still debating between going direct on these major platforms versus utilizing D2D for some of these as well as for other smaller platforms. So this is definitely a big focus area for me this year.)
(2) Start sending out a monthly newsletter.
This is another key focus area!
(This is something I've been working on behind the scenes and I hope to have the first newsletter out in March.)
(3) Submit to Writers of the Future contest every quarter.
Yes! I will persist with this. I've already submitted for the January–March quarter.
(I'm sure to be writing short stories, so it would be a good thing to send them as an entry to this contest and see how they fare. Submitting one story a quarter is not effort- or time-intensive, so I can do this.)
(4) Submit 1 new short story every two months to leading speculative fiction magazines.
Yes! I have made a couple of submissions already. So this too will remain a focus area.
(As speculative fiction magazines are good paying markets and having a story published by them would help more readers find my work, I'll aim to submit a new short story every two months to the top leading magazines in speculative fiction.)
(5) Explore StoryOrigin in July 2022.
Maybe. Maybe not. It really depends on how much inventory I will have managed to build this year. So let's take a rain check on this later in the year.
(StoryOrigin seems to be a good way to attract a new audience, so assuming I've built a bit of inventory in the first half of the year, I will focus on exploring StoryOrigin during the second half of the year.)
So there, these are my revised goals for 2022.
Good luck to me!
Image Attribution: Photo by Nick Morrison on Unsplash