Fourth Quarter News, Updates and Goals

And just like that, 2015 is 3/4 of the way over. It’s been a pretty cool year so far. I launched Write Good Books, became a dad for the third time, published my first novel, did my first convention (as a presenter). Pretty cool when I look at it that way.

If I have one regret so far, it’s that I haven’t cranked out enough fiction this year. I’ve been so busy with everything else that writing often took a back seat. That’s okay, as it’s part of the beast, but as I’ve said in the past, I still feel a little down about writing at times because of it.

One thing I used to do on my author site, when it served as my primary blog, was to post a few goals on the first day of each month. I’ve always been a fan of setting concrete goals (with a deadline) and writing them down. Even though I haven’t been doing that so much at Write Good Books, I still believe it is the best way to achieve maximum success.

So with that in mind, I’ll post some of the goals I have for not only October, but for the final three months of 2015 at the end of this post.

Before then, however, I’d like to talk a little about Write Good Books. The site is nine months old now. I wasn’t entirely sure what expectations I had starting the site, other than knowing that I wanted it to be a success. I had been blogging on my author site for a few years, and was getting 20-30 views per day. Nothing to brag about, obviously, but it was pretty steady. I wanted to take that blog and build it into more of a resource for new and aspiring writers, with hopes of creating a nice, friendly, and positive community. I decided to shift the blogging away from www.jasonbougger.com and create this new site because I didn’t want the blog to serve as (or appear to serve as) a self-promotional tool.

In other words, I wanted Write Good Books to stand out on its own.

Anyhow, with the backstory out of the way, I’d like to share some of the plans I have for this site going forward. You may have noticed I used the word “community” earlier in this post. So far, I haven’t done much to build that sense of community. I’ve pretty much stuck to the formula of writing about writing, throwing in some personal stuff every now and then, and hoping people will share and leave comments.

That plan is fine for what it is, but I want this site to be so much more than that. Beginning this month, I’ll be cutting back on the frequency of posts, and instead of writing three or four shorter posts each week, I’ll be posting one or two longer posts. With the extra “space” on the page, I’ve got a couple of cool ideas. I’m not going to announce anything quite yet because I’m still finishing up the final touches, but there is some fun stuff on the way. I’ll also be soliciting some other authors for guest posts, and possibly put out a call for guest post submissions somewhere down the line.

And now, allow me to share some writing goals 🙂

October is my favorite month. I love Halloween and so does my four-year-old. To celebrate the great day, I’m running the Halloween Flash Fiction contest at my ezine, Theme of Absence. We’ll announce the winner there around October 20. I’ve got a couple handfuls of submissions and won’t start reading them until the contest closes October 10, so that will eat up a chunk of writing time, but I’m keeping that in mind as I set these goals.

Goal # 1 (October) – Take the secret new project live before the end of the month.

Goal # 2 (End of the year) – Finish a new short story each month.

Goal # 3 (End of the year) – Grow a larger “community” at Write Good Books, including contributors, author spotlights, and more activity in the comments.

Goal # 4 (End of the year) – Turn a profit of $1.00 on Theme of Absence.

Goal # 5 (End of the year) – Double traffic to Write Good Books. I actually DO have a plan to do this…

I know there’s still not a lot of fiction writing on this list. I’m okay with that for now. I want the focus to remain on the blog for the rest of the year, and then after that I’ll really hit the fiction hard in 2016. And I’m talking like novel hard.

In the meantime, stick around. Write Good Books is still fairly new and it’s still a lot of fun to work on. And, hey, if you’re a writer from Nebraska, you should check out the Nebraska Writers Guild Fall Conference this weekend. I’ll be there and I’ll even have a table up. Stop by and say hi.

Thanks for reading and thanks for supporting this blog. Hope the rest of the year treats you well and that you reach all of your writing goals 🙂