For the past several years I’ve put up a blog post in January listing my writing goals for the coming year. At the end of the year, I check back to see how I did — and that’s the subject of this post.

So how did I do in 2018? TERRIBLE! I didn’t complete any of my goals. Here’s what I didn’t do, with the goals I set for myself in January in boldface. 😉

1. Finish the NOVEL IN PROGRESS and get it published…

I DID finally finish this novel. I finished it yesterday. Actually, I revised it a bit more this morning. I’ll have a lot more to say about why this one was so long in coming, but that can wait until after New Year’s.

2. WRITE THE SEQUEL to the novel in #1. Bonus: Publish it by the end of the year.

Hey, at least I was ambitious. I did make a good start at writing the sequel. I’ve got about 70,000 words on the first draft, which is a very nice chunk. So while I didn’t finish the sequel, the situation is not hopeless.

3. RETURN TO MILITARY FICTION by getting started on a novella or novel. I don’t expect to have this one finished at year’s end, just well started.

I did not even make a start on this. It’s not going to happen until novels 1 & 2 above are done.

4. Finish a NOVELETTE I’ve already started. I’m 9,000 words into this one, so I ought to be able to finish it. If it wants to grow into a novella, that’s fine.

I have not even looked at that novelette since I put it aside. You may be getting the impression that I am a slow and inefficient writer. I would not argue with such a conclusion.

5. Write a hard SF short story, 7,000 words or less.

I spent two or three weeks trying to write this story, and finally gave up on it in early December. Maybe the magical writing fairy will come sprinkle pixie dust over my head this weekend and I’ll suddenly be able to finish it in great style. Or not.

6. Write another short story, science fiction or fantasy, in an existing story world or not.

Ha ha. Nope. I’m done with short stories.

******

Okay, so what happened? Well, it wasn’t a lack of time, or of time spent in front of the computer. In large part I think it was a lack of belief.

I’ve written a lot of novels, many of which have garnered praise, but none that have done well in the market. I’ve never gotten a royalty check on the Red trilogy. The Last Good Man did pretty well by my standards, but not by the standards of actually successful writers. I was proud of these novels, and felt they had all the elements to be commercially successful, and yet they weren’t, and I don’t why.

So, not for the first time, I found myself at a point of reflection, wondering: Why am I knocking myself out to create the best novels I can, when the market clearly isn’t interested? My answer to that, which I only came up with late in the year, was “screw the market.” From now on, I’m writing for myself.

Honestly, that’s what I’ve always done, but simply changing my outlook, accepting the fact that I will never be a popular writer, has made a real difference for me. As an analogous situation, I can work very hard in my gardens, enjoy the work, and create something beautiful that means a lot to me, and do it all just for the pleasure of creating something. When I started thinking about writing in those terms, and stopped worrying about the marketplace, I became far more productive.

I think this is why I had such a hard time with that short story that I never quite wrote. I didn’t want to write it, and I knew that writing it would earn me only a few hundred dollars and wouldn’t help my career at all. So on a subconscious level, I began to think, “Why bother?” I just don’t have the necessary enthusiasm for that sort of challenge anymore.

I don’t mean to imply by all this that money doesn’t matter. I’ll be heavily marketing the new novel. Like anyone else, I do need an income. I just need to learn to separate the “Why bother?” bit from the creative process.

Anyway, I’m pleased to have finally finished book 1, above, and am looking forward to completing an initial draft of book 2.

Onward.

Posted on: Saturday, December 29th, 2018 at 5:19 pm
Categories: Annual Writing Goals.