Goals of 2019

(Which I will definitely not keep)

Well, hello, 2019. What are you doing here already? Even though 2019 took me by surprise, I'm still totally prepared for it because I have my whole truckload of resolutions/goals already prepared.  I decided that today, I would share my goals for this year. I always make a ton of goals in the beginning of the year and most of them are not realistic at all, but I guess that's the problem with being an optimist.

Life

Read my Bible more and spend more time in my personal walk with God.
Exercise more, eat healthier foods, and just as a whole be healthier (you know the drill)
Finally learn Spanish (this is basically my goal every year, one of these days it will actually come true)
Learn to drive.

Reading

Because I am such an unreliable mood reader, I don't really make that many goals as far as my reading goes. I can plan on starting a high fantasy series next and then decide that I'm actually in the mood for sci-fi. So I don't really have any goals as far as the content of the books I'm going to read this year. I can't even say that I want to read more classics than I did last year because I read a ton of classics last year, so maybe I'll just say that I want to read... I don't know... five classics? I don't really care what those five classics are, but I've been meaning to read Much Ado About Nothing.

Other than that, my only reading goal is to read 150 books. I'm not entirely sure how realistic that goal is now that I have a job, but I guess we'll see.


Writing

Yeesh, my writing goals tend to get a little out of hand, but last year I wrote 592,919 words so I'm optimistic that I'll be able to get at least that done this year.

I'll start with the easiest thing on the list which was to start a blog and/or an author site (look at me, I'm so successful, I completed one of my resolutions within the first week XD)

This year I am hoping to self-publish three books (well... two and a novella, but last year I only published one book and a novella so there is that)

The books (and novella) are:

A Winter Grim and Lonely (which I'm still writing, but I'm getting close to the end, I swear!)
A Winter Dark and Deadly (already written, but still got over half the book in intense rewrites to do)
A Season of Subterfuge, Courtiers, and War Councils (send help for this one, I set it aside in 2017 when I realized that a large portion of the 60k words I'd already written in it needed to be completely rewritten. Not to mention that it needs to be finished)

I am also hoping to republish A Time of Trepidation, Pirates, and Lost Princesses this year. I still have quite a few edits to do in this story, but I'm hoping that I'm past the more tough ones.

As you can clearly see, most of my year will be dedicated to editing and rewriting. I guess that's what I get for writing so much last year.

But my writing goals are to write another 500k (I was going to try to make it to 600k but then I saw all the editing I had to do this year and I decided heck no).

Right now, because I like to make plans which I can completely ignore later on, that 500k is divided up like so...

30,000 in A Winter Grim and Lonely
130,000 words in A Season of Subterfuge, Courtiers, and War Councils
120,000 words in A Matter of Curiosity (even if I don't plan on publishing it in 2019, I do plan on publishing it early 2020 so it's got to get written this year)

I don't actually know how long any of these books are going to be, I'm just going on how long the other books in their series are.

That leaves me 220,000 words outside of what I need to do.

At the moment these last 220k words are planned to go toward my side project Here is There and a new idea that I'll share more on later.


Of course, these are only my plans. But my plans change. A lot. Especially as far as my writing goes.

My plans in 2018 were to republish A Week of Werewolves, Faeries, and Fancy Dresses (did) Republish A Time of Trepidation, Pirates, and Lost Princesses (um... well... *sweats*), and write and publish A Season of Subterfuge, Courtiers, and War Councils... (let's just assume for the moment that I kind of strayed from my 2018 writing goals). And I basically wanted my entire My Time in Amar series finished with the fourth one to be released early 2019. Instead I wrote the companion novel A Certain Sort of Madness something that I was actually never planning on doing even though the idea had been sitting in my brain for a while. I published Winter Cursed which I had been hoping to publish in the Five Poisoned Apples collection, but like I said, my plans change, and I wrote a three other stories that have absolutely nothing to do with Amar.

Apologies to Amar. This is the year you get my attention.

Anyway you are probably thinking that I've said enough*

*And you're probably totally right

But I have ONE MORE GOAL. And this is the biggest goal I have this year. I want to finish editing and polishing up Of Gold and Iron

(Pictures via Pinterest)

And then I want to send it out to traditional publishers. By the time 2019 is over I'm hoping to in the very least have Of Gold and Iron contracted to be published. I've actually NEVER sent any of my stories to a traditional publisher (the closest I've ever come is sending short stories to contests) so I have zero idea of what to expect. I'm equally terrified and excited. But I feel like Of Gold and Iron is a strong little story and fully capable of standing on its two feet.



My one word of 2019 is LEARN, but now after seeing all that I have to do I'm considering changing it to EDIT*

*I'm totally not, but seriously, Nicki, focus on the editing!

Well, that's enough from me. What about you? What are your goals of 2019? Do you often meet your goals or are you like me and have a bad habit of straying? Comment below!