Light at the end of the tunnel- 2011

I hate resolutions. They always feel like a, “Here’s how I will fail in the new year” list.

New Year’s resolution time, kiss another year good-bye!
These New Year’s resolutions are just another pack of lies.
-”New Year’s Resolutions” by Scary Gary Allen

Then again I have read that writing down your goals increases your chances of succeeding by many hundreds percent…. then again, someone on TED talks says you should keep your goals to yourself. I suppose I could lock this blog post so no one can read it but what’s the point of that? I have paper journals here, and they’re much less hackable.

Anyway, professionally speaking, 2010 sucked. Her Side failed to sell. I officially trunked Heaven since no publisher wants it. My agent rejected a novel I believed in strongly. The number of people who donated to my free novella, Marco and the Red Granny, is still fewer than 10. (And that’s Hub PLUS my own site, which had incentives for donations.)

And the thing is, I don’t think I am writing bad stuff. I have confidence that I’ve improved greatly in my writing. It could be the economy or my promotion efforts (or lack thereof) or … something else. But I know I’m writing good stuff. A well-respected colleague frankly told me that the only thing wrong with Her Side was it read like a prologue or origin story. He felt it was just the beginning of something else and he really wanted to know what that story was.

I’ve made peace with it. I’m going to put the failures associated with those projects behind me. I may podcast my novel in 2011. I will be putting the podcast of Marco and the Red Granny on podiobooks and my own site. I have plans for new projects that I’m really excited about.

So what are the writing goals in 2011? The thing about goals is they have to be concrete. No “I’m going to write more” and “I want to lose weight” and “play with my kids more.” What is “more?” Too vague. So let’s figure it out.

• First draft of Playing For Keeps 2 done by March. While I’m writing that, I’m reading some research materials for my next book, a follow-up to my short story, “Mother Sponge.”
• Once PFK2 is done, take a week or so off, then in mid-March start writing the Mother Sponge book, tentatively titled Professor Limerent’s Keepsake.
• Increase online presence. Blog twice a week here, once a week at Murverse.com, and make a plan on how to better use Goodreads and Facebook.
• By June, implement said social networking plan.
• During my time off in March, write the Christmas short story that I have been thinking about since December 22.
• Read. Chip away at the To Be Read Pile. Today I’m going to catalog my books, which ones I want to use as give-aways on ISBW, and the  order at which I’m going to read them. That way there will be no question when I finish one, what I should read next. Can’t forget my Kindle books either. That’s another blog post, but my problem with ebooks is I forget about them. I need to boot up the Kindle more often. Shoot for one book a week.
• For the podcast, I need to increase listenership. I’ve plateaued at a respectable 4K or so listeners, but I’ve been there for a year. Was hoping increasing number of shows would do it, but that doesn’t seem like it’s doing the job. So I need to work on that. (Already working on it with an ad in an upcoming magazine.) I’d like to double it in 2011, shooting for 8,000 listeners.
• Speaking of the ARCs that are piling up here, I need to set up a giveaway plan for ISBW that doesn’t bankrupt me in postage but still gets listeners excited about these authors. Should figure out a plan by the end of January.

That’s what I come up with now. I’m sure there are other goals, but I do spin a lot of plates, and not all of them (health/fitness, my other podcasts, etc) apply here. I’d love to say “publish” or “sell” something, but that’s out of my hands. What I do have power over is sending books to my agent for her to sell.

2010, I’m not entirely enamored of you, and would like you to go away. You can stick around for two more days, but after that pack up your stuff and go. I’ll wash the sheets and wait for 2011 to come visit for some time. I know it could have been worse (I know people who died, marriages that ended, etc in 2010) but as Opus says, “maybe it wasn’t that bad, but Lord, it wasn’t good.”