Update | Hopes and Dreams

A new year! I usually have all my goals set for the coming year long before the first of January rolls in – that’s not the case this year. There is so much I don’t know about this coming year that I don’t know what my playfield looks like. I have no idea how much I will work, and therefore I don’t know how much time I’ll have to write.

I’m a goal-oriented person, not competitive, but goal-oriented. So not having a game plan drives me mad.

2020’s Goals

But let’s start by having a peek at what I said I’d do in 2020. I said it would be my clean-up year. All those stories I’ve started and then abandoned when something new and shiny popped up on the horizon… I was supposed to dust them off and finish them. 

I didn’t.

I set out to do it, and I fixed Black Bird, which was published in May, but that’s it. I didn’t so much as glance at all the others.

I also said I’d start an M/F name. 

I didn’t.

I won’t. I’m not saying I never will. I have periods when I think switching ‘genre’ would be fun. I talked to my publisher about it, and they were on board, but I put it off, and then I had other ideas LOL

Then I said I was gonna publish 6 stories. I published 8 – 9 if we’re counting the 2020 Top Ten Gay Romance anthology. Yay!

I also said I’d write 182.500 words. That’s an average of 500 words a day. Now, I made these plans before we knew anything about COVID-19, before we knew there would be a pandemic. 

But COVID hit, and between April and mid-August, I didn’t work. Even after mid-August, I’ve worked a lot less than I normally do, which has given me more writing time.

Aside from the economic consequences, it has shown me what I want to do with my life. I’d love to be a full-time author. 

So yeah, 182.500 words, I hit that in July. I wrote 377.038 words during 2020.

2021 Goals

Okay, so what are my plans? I’ve written that I’ll write 250.000 words this year. It’s less than I wrote 2020 but I don’t know what my life will look like. 250.000 words in a year are about 685 words a day – I should be able to do that even if I’m working. I hope.

The stories… I don’t know. I already have three scheduled. See how vague everything is?! I’m gonna write the third story in the Rockshade’s PID series. And I really should clean up some of the old ones. There are a couple there I’m quite fond of and want to finish.

I’ll leave the yearly goal open, and say that I want to write the third Rockshade’s PID story in the first quarter of the year, and then we’ll see where we’ll go from there LOL

What are your plans and goals?