Each year during The Week Between (i.e. the week between Christmas and New Year’s) I like to think about what I’ve accomplished in my writing life during the previous year and set my sights toward goals for the new year coming up. Sometimes these goals involve manuscripts, publications, things like that, but sometimes they’re administrative. Being an author is also being a small business/owner.

As such, going over my full list of yearly goals would probably not be riveting content for most of you, but I do like to mark this practice with a little reflection. In 2021, which was honestly kind of a not-fabulous year, I managed to remember that at the very least it was better than 2020, and still, even with a pandemic, it was better than approximately 2017-2019, on balance. So we’re headed in the right direction on enough things for me not to feel utter despair all the time at the state of the world. (Yes, I am fundamentally optimistic, but also realistic enough to know this magic carpet could be yanked out from under me at any time. Welcome to anxiety in the 21st Century. Gah.)

But I digress. I was going to reflect on my writing goals in 2021.

• One of the best things I did this year for my writing was to relaunch my zine, Sonic Chihuahua, which has been quite successful and also personally fulfilling. So thank you for that!
• I also finished editing one of my novels and started querying it.
• I took a lot of writing workshops online for professional development.
• And I finished the 2020 August Poetry Postcard Fest. (Yes, I was tardy on that. It happens.)
• I also got my published books into more stores (yay!),
• increased my blog subscribership (wheee!),
• let go of some things that weren’t serving me well, like my Mailchimp newsletter (whew!),
• and made progress on two new novels that I’m still drafting.
• I also started a new collection of poetry.

Okay, when I lay it out like that, it seems like more than it felt like while I was doing it. Yeah, I’ve been keeping busy. Still, while I was going through it, I often felt like I wasn’t getting nearly enough done. On a day-to-day basis, I’m still sometimes having trouble making time for writing on school days. Last semester was a beast in terms of work load. But as it always does, the semester came to an end, and now we’re in a new term with a chance to do things over in a better way. As always. This is one reason I sometimes really appreciate the cyclical nature of teaching.

So what are my writing goals for 2022?

• I want to keep working on my fiction and poetry and maybe finish drafting one of these books this year.
• I’m going to continue producing Sonic Chihuahua, but with some improvements to my production schedule.
• I’ve made a return to in-person author appearances and plan to do a few more this semester.
• And I’d really like to get my blog readership up over 1,000 subscribers. (Feel free to share my blog posts using the buttons on this site that make it automatic when you’re inspired to do so, but as always, avoid plagiarizing my content. Thanks!)
• There are some other administrative things going on behind-the-scenes. If any of them are outwardly noteworthy, you’ll hear about them here, of course.

So that’s where things are here in Authorland at the moment. How about you? Do you make new year’s resolutions or avoid them? Do you set goals for yourself at the turn of the year? What are you hoping to accomplish in 2022?