Well. 2021 certainly was a year, wasn’t it? I have big plans for 2022, but first a look back at my December goals…
Finish the rough draft of the third Jackpot Drift book, do the first round of edits, and then send it off to my critique partners. (Overall I’m happy with how things are going, but there are some things that need to be moved around so the first act isn’t too long.)This felt like it took forever, but I finally sent it to my critique partners. I’ll hear what they think of it in a few weeks.Write the final episodes for the Vella serial Dragon Freehold. I bumped up the release frequency to three times per week, so the final episodes should be available by the end of December. That means I can bundle it together into book form 30 days later for people who would rather read everything at one time.The last five episodes went to the proofreader yesterday. The long form book should be available mid-February.Play around with some short structural and “universal fantasy” exercises which will probably end up on Vella. There are some things I want to try out and it’s easier to convince myself I’m not wasting my time if I do them as serials.
My December goals were not super ambitious, but that turned out to be a good thing as I needed a little break. I’ll give myself a solid A because I’m an easy grader and I did what I set out to do.
January Goals
New year, new series! This year I’d like to work on building my newsletter and writing a new series (science fiction? fantasy? Let’s call it science fantasy for now) with the knowledge I’ve gained over the last year. Hopefully this one resonates with people, but if not, I’m sure I’ll learn something new. (Yes, very likely the first thing I will learn is the importance of writing for an existing market instead of writing the stuff I want to write. We’ll take that as a given.)
- Write the first draft (or at least 50k) of the series reader magnet. I’m not sure how long this will turn out to be — I would be fine if it expanded into a full-length novel, but I don’t have that much plot for it yet. (I have characters, a beginning, an end, a theme, and an inciting incident. Who needs more than that? Ha ha ha…)
- I wrote episodes for two different serials last month, so if I need to take a break and work on something other than the reader magnet, I’ll add some episodes to those. No pressure on this, though.
- Get the next few chapters of Ghostwriter out to the YWC critique group.
That’s more than enough, really.
Obligatory Pet Picture
Georgie is here to remind you that spring will eventually arrive.
