Looking ahead in 2018

Yesterday I posted my 2018 writing goals, as well as a progress report of sorts and shared how I have pretty much missed the benchmark on all of them. I wasn’t posting that to wine, or complain, or make excuses or anything like that.

My motive for that type of post is to show that even when we fail to reach the goals we set, or achieve the measure of success we want, that we have to keep going. And, like most writers, I fail more often than I succeed. The thing to remember is that the writers who eventually make it are the ones who never quit.

So never quit.

And with that said, here are my achievements for 2018 so far…

1. Write Good Books.

The blog has been doing pretty well. The traffic from 2015 to 2016 increased by 37%. From 2016 to 2017 traffic was up by 185%. From the Jan-April period in 2017 to 2018, traffic increased by 73%. This is so awesome and I want to thank all of you for subscribing, sharing, and continuing to follow my little site here.

I had 51 new posts for this year so far, and while it’s a little short of my 4-5 post per week schedule, it’s still 51 new posts. So I am writing.

2. The Write Good Books Podcast

It’s a slow, but steady increase when it comes to Podcast listeners. We’re not where I hoped to be by this point, but we are still sticking with our bi-weekly schedule, and we are getting some listener feedback. So as long as Scott and I have something to say, and as long as there are people who want to hear it, we’ll keep going.

I love doing it, and I certainly consider the podcast a success story.

3. Events

I haven’t done as many events as last year, but last year was an exceptional year. I did a panel at the NLA All Round Table Spring Meeting on Podcasting with Scott, and also attended the Nebraska Writers Guild Spring Conference.

And, gosh, I think that’s it so far.

I’ve been asked to do a presentation on nonacademic (fiction) writing at an academic writing conference later this year, and plan to put something together for that, but otherwise I don’t have a lot scheduled for the year yet. I’ve kind of stepped back from book signings now that my book is three years old and don’t plan to do any more of those until my next book is released.

4. Social Media stuff

I’m still active on a few social media platforms, especially Twitter and Pinterest, but you can also find me on Facebook, Instagram, and Google Plus. Swing by and say hi sometime 🙂

5. Short Stories

Like I said yesterday, I’m taking a break from short stories for the moment to focus on other things. I’ve only had on short story published this year (my first attempt at crime fiction, Sirens, published in the February 2018 issues of Yellow Mama Magazine. But that’s it when it comes to short stories.

Goals for the remainder of the year

Now comes the real fun.

I have so many big ideas, but let’s face it, with four young kids, an hour long commute to the day job, and two houses (we own a duplex for those of you keeping track at home), life is a little…let’s just say busy. I’m finally having to admit to myself that I can’t do it all.

So as for at the writing dreams go, I’m going to look at things a little bit differently. I’m asking myself, what are the most important things? If I close my eyes and dream, where do I want to be? I want to be a full time writer. So that’s going to be the focus: What can I do to reach that goal quicker?

It boils down to two things:

1) This blog

and

2) My next novel.

Obviously Theme of Absence takes a priority since it involves other writers, but everything else is second to those two goals. So my new routine is to do something I’ve been against in the past, and that is to set a daily word count goal. Before anything else, I work on the novel. I have a daily word count minimum starting May 1 (yes, I reached it tonight before writing this post) and after the kids go to bed, I work on that before anything else.

And just for the record, I’m not sharing that number because half of you will laugh and call me a lightweight, while the other half will laugh and call me crazy. Nonetheless, I’ve got my novel started and feel freaking awesome about it.

So that sums up this year so far. I hope you can find these ramblings somewhat encouraging and know that we writers all share the same struggles. I wish you all the best of luck reaching your writing and publishing goals, so have a great rest of the year, and if you’ve got any goals of your own to share, feel free to leave ’em in the comments section!