If you want to skip the backstory, scroll down to the “GOALS” picture.
The last few years have been a little rough on the author side of my life. At the start of 2020, things were going great. I had my yearly goals lined up and ready to go. I had big plans for both the writing and promotion side of being an author. The first few months went really well. I was on my way to meeting my goals. Perhaps even ahead of schedule for a few of them. By spring, I was in the final stages of prepping my manuscript for my fourth novel. There were only a few loose ends to tie up, and then all I had to do was wait for the planned fall release date. I was feeling pretty good about it all.
Then, in March, a thing happened. You might remember it. I’m not commenting on the thing. I don’t want you to comment on the thing. I’m just saying there was a thing, and it happened.
That thing indirectly changed everything in my writing world. Virtually overnight,1 my non-writer life got insanely busy. I would dare say the busiest and most stressful season I have ever experienced. And things stayed like that for over a year before there was any sense of life starting to slow down, slowly. It wasn’t until this past summer that I started to feel like, yeah, this is a normalish pace of life. No need to break out the violins. I’m not fishing for sympathy. We all have our stuff to deal with and plenty of people have to cope with things far worse than I ever had. That’s just the way things were for a few years.
As a result, the book that was all but done in the spring of 2020, finally came out in the fall of 2022, and even then it didn’t get the promotion and fanfare it deserved because I just didn’t have the time for it. I did almost no new writing during that time, save for one week in June of ’22. 2023 was a little better.
Before you read this next paragraph, please knock on wood, throw salt over your shoulder, or break a mirror. No, wait. That’s not one of them. The fall of 2023 was really busy once again, but, fingers crossed, 2024 looks like it’s going to come at me with a much more manageable pace which I am hopeful will create a little breathing room and writing room. So, for the first time in a long time, I have once again set out my annual writing goals. As soon as I did, my wife said, “Are you sure you want to do that? You know what happened last time.”
DISCLAIMER: If the world is a post-apocalyptic wasteland by this time next year, it wasn’t my fault!
So, for those of you who have read this far and are still interested, here are my author goals for 2024:
Goal #1 – Writing Goal
This goal is first in the list because it is the most important to me. Goals 2 & 3 are what I have to do so I can keep writing. Goal #1 is what I love doing. Alternatively, if I don’t do well with this goal, I can’t have success on the other two.
Complete, edit, and publish my fifth novel. This will conclude the series of the previous four novels which are loosely tied together and it will specifically tie up any loose ends from Don’t Drift Off and Transparent. This manuscript currently has 84k words, but I always overwrite and then pare down in revisions, so there’s a ways to go.
Write monthly short stories based on fan suggestions.
Start a new manuscript. I have no idea about what.
Possibly attempt NaNoWriMo again.2
Goal #2 – Promotion Goal
If there’s one thing I loathe about writing, it’s promotion. I’m a blend into the background kind of guy. Not a put yourself in the spotlight guy. But, books don’t sell themselves. And, since one of the most rewarding parts of writing is knowing that others have read and enjoyed your work, selling books is kind of important.
Build the followers on my Facebook page to over 500.
Start a monthly newsletter (aka join Substack) and build the subscriber list.
Advertise more effectively online.
Take part in multiple live book promo events.
Goal #3 – Sales Goal
Sales are not the be all and end all. I’m not in it for the money. But as inferred above, there’s not much point publishing books if no one is going to read them. And they can’t read them if they don’t buy them. The success of this one is largely out of my control aside from how well I do at Goal #2, but I wanted to set a target nonetheless.
In 2024, my target is to sell more copies (all novels combined) than any previous year.
My pie in the sky goal is to sell more copies (all novels combined) than the previous 5 years combined.
There you go. Those are my 2024 author goals. If life cooperates, I think the first two are doable with some hard work. Number three is a total crap shoot to me, but here’s to hopin’! For those who are curious how things are going, I’ll include goal updates in my monthly newsletter. But for now, I have to go sweep up the shards of a broken mirror.
Technically, it wasn’t literally overnight. It was more like two days.
NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. It is a challenge to write 50,000 words of a brand new novel during the month of November. That’s 1,667 words per day on average.