This year, in the United States, it feels like New Year’s Day ought to fall on January 20th, when our newly elected president takes office. We have twenty fraught days to endure until then, but I hope in years to come our descendants will be able to look back on January 20, 2021, as the beginning of a new era in which the people of this country and of the world rejected autocrats and learned to work together for the good of one another, and of the planet and its irreplaceable ecosystems. Happy New Year everyone! We can do this.

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And now on to my annual New Year’s Day post in which I list my writing goals for the coming year. When I first started doing this, I was far more ambitious. But I’ve learned to keep the list short, and do-able. So here goes…

1. WRITE AND FINISH A NEW NOVEL
This one is started, though just barely. It’s the third in the Inverted Frontier series, and I’m going to try to come up with a finished draft by year’s end (hopefully sooner!).

2. PUBLISH THE WILD TRILOGY
I’ve talked about this one in an earlier post. This is an older epic-fantasy novel that I revised extensively in 2020, and then divided into three short novels. I’m awaiting cover art, and plan to publish in the spring.

3. WRITE ONE SHORT STORY (OR NOVELLA)
A couple of years ago I resolved to take a long break from writing short fiction. No regrets. I’m a slow writer, so this decision allowed me to focus on novel writing. Pacific Storm would not have been finished in 2020 if I’d spent time writing short fiction. The downside of that resolution is that I still don’t have quite enough stories to publish a third short-fiction collection.

4. PUBLISH A THIRD SHORT-FICTION COLLECTION
I’ve got eight stories and the cover art ready to go. But I need another story to round off the collection. Now you see the importance of my third writing goal? 😉

So that’s my plan. What do you hope to achieve?

Posted on: Friday, January 1st, 2021 at 5:15 am
Categories: Annual Writing Goals.