Happy New
Year!
Welcome to
2013. How did that come up so fast?
Faced with
buying a new calendar, I have been thinking of what my writing goals should be
in 2013. Realistically. I have a list of 20+ books in mind for the
future, plus several short stories, but all that’s not going to happen in 12
months. Given the state of my real life
and day job, very little of that is likely to happen. And I still have some older material I’m
trying to dust off and polish up and get out there, but that’s getting old
too. I want to write something NEW! In fact, during the 10 days that my family
was back in Ohio
for Christmas leave, I came up with two new story ideas I’d like to get to in
the not-too-distant future. I also have
two full-length novels that need reworking and publishing, and a short
novel/long story that I’d like to revamp and put more into. But who has time for all that???
Okay, I can
make time, if I have realistic goals.
First priority is my fantasy novel that I spent three of the last five
years writing and revising (and the last ten years planning and developing). I was hoping to save that for when I “broke
into the business” and was “famous” and all that, so that I could land a great
agent and publisher for my first real novel.
But, more realistically I’m
thinking that these days it might take a semi-successful self-published novel
to get the attention of big wig agents and publishers (chicken before the egg,
so to speak). So my fantasy adventure
about a young man setting out to save his hometown and find himself is up first. I know, sounds kind of clichéd, but I think
it’s a little bit different than the rest.
The hurdle is that self-publishing takes a lot of work and a good deal
of money. The modern-day entrepreneur website
Kickstarter looks like a great source for that kind of assistance, though it’s
no hand-me-out. Putting together a
Kickstarter proposal is a big project in and of itself.
Other goals
I’m considering for 2013:
My
noir-styled crime/fantasy book (the short novel/long story)…
I’m still
trying to find a home for my SF story that made finalist in last year’s Writers
of the Future Contest…
Just
submitted a very long story to the same Contest for this year…
And would
like to start on the two story ideas I had at Christmas: a steampunk Western
and an outer space prison break…
Hmmm… I think that’s plenty for now. If I can get through those projects this year
I’ll have done quite a bit with the time I have. Of course my plans and goals change weekly,
but this sounds pretty good right now.
Here it is February and I've already altered these goals... Bound to happen (again).
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