2018 Writing Goals & 2017 Review

It's scary to think 2018 is almost here. Do you have any specific writing goals for the year?

Mine are:

• Finish 20 short stories (flash fiction included) at a standard good enough for professional submission
• Make my first professional sale
• Make my second professional sale
• Get a Writers of the Future Honourable Mention
• Try the 75-word and anonymous writing challenges

My biggest challenge is making my stories tightly-focused I think, so everything in the story needs to be there, and there isn't anything that doesn't. As I don't tend to plot, I need to be better at identifying themes.

How did 2017 go?

Writing-wise, 2017 has been my most difficult year by far. Which also means it's been my best, and most productive.

I've finished two stories I'm confident will sell - one has been at Tin House for most of the year, and I'm yet to submit the other. I'm still waiting for the probable Tin House rejection so I can move on to the next place.

I started writing over 10 years ago, with lyrics, then poetry. It took a few years before I could write a story. This year I started to use some of that lyric and poetry background in my prose, and think my writing has improved as a result. I never thought I'd write literary fiction, so that happened by accident. I've never been into horror, and didn't realise I'd written a lot of that until it was pointed out to me. Fantasy is a lot harder to get right than I realised, so maybe accidentally writing other genres isn't a bad thing in the slightest.

The 300-word challenges here, and a couple of flash fiction challenges I did elsewhere, have been enjoyable and helpful.

Based on 2017, I hope I find my 2018 writing year even more difficult! Yikes, what am I saying.

I'm an SFF Chron's 2017 newbie, but if anyone else would like to check back to this time last year I found this: Your 2017 Writing Objectives?

I'm posting here when I should be editing, so I better get back to it...

Merry 2018 everyone.

Good luck @AlexH, I hope you hit them all!

2018 Goals:
Write the final draft of my novel and submit to someone, somewhere.
Write one short story each quarter for WoTF.

That's all I need to drive my new year along. Wish everyone else the best in their new year as well.

2017 Review:

night_wrtr said:

I've got two goals for the rest of the way:

• Write the first draft of my novel (starting this week, so its crunch time!)
• Edit and submit my short story to Writers of the Future.

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Ha! I finished the first draft and I have 4 days left to submit my WoTF story, which is nearly 100% finished. I might hit both!

My Goals for 2018 are simple:

1) Finish my novel, Heart of the Kingdom (40+% done now)
2) Finish my novel, Untitled (15+/-% done now)
3) Continue my Dominance novelette series (monthly) throughout the year
4) Participate in every 75, 100 and 300 challenge here.

For 2017, I failed to get my one novel done (lost/trapped on a hard drive I can't access, 90% done), but I'll get back to that one (when I can afford to take the laptop in and get an expert to get the data for me).

Finish Inish Carraig's sequel
Find a home for The Wildest Hunt

2017 went good but I do feel a little rudderless at the moment

2018 goal: write book 3 of my Fire Stealers series. YES, ALL OF IT! HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAA HAA HA Hn ohjeezitaintgonnahappen.

2017 review: book 1 got published, book 2 finished. Feedback on both has been very happiness-inducing, in the main. (Thankyou to readers and betas.)

My plans for 2017 involved finishing and SP'ing one story, finishing and submitting another, writing a first draft of something new, writing a short story and submitting it; and writing/editing every day, asking more questions, and improving my knowledge of story structure, because I believe concentrating on process makes far more sense than results.

I completely junked the first story.
The second story is in editing hell and probably needs a total rewrite to get that final touch of professional finish
I did write a first draft's worth, just split over about 5 or so different stories...
... none of which was a short story

In short, I couldn't have blown my goals more conclusively if I'd bet them all on a hand with 2 5s against a man named Dr. Manhattan "Fats" McGee.

I didn't write every day either - or ask enough questions. I do have a far better idea of story structure now, which is to say I know even more definitely just how little I know.

Anyway. 2018.

Process Goals
Write/Edit every Day.
Finish every writing session by giving myself a written lead in to the next one, start it by reading what I'd previously done.
Edit every week. Tight professional shine editing currently eludes me.
Learn one new thing about writing every week. Mainly plot/structure related, but everything's up for grabs.

Result Goals
Submit Gumshoe Paladin
Submit at least one short story
Write a first draft of something new
Get a Blog Post with 300 hits

Jo Zebedee said:

2017 went good but I do feel a little rudderless at the moment

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Same here. I've reached a point where I'm very happy to have done what I've done but I don't know what to do next. I've got three parts of a four-part epic fantasy story pretty much done, but nobody seems interested in it. I've also got two ideas for stories, one of which I've started, and no idea if either is saleable. It's going to be weird.

Cathbad said:

For 2017, I failed to get my one novel done (lost/trapped on a hard drive I can't access, 90% done), but I'll get back to that one (when I can afford to take the laptop in and get an expert to get the data for me).

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This sounds painful. I hope you are able to get it all back.

I am waiting on copy edits on a book due out in May and have no idea when they're going to turn up, because such is publishing. Working on the third book to finish the trilogy at the moment but I don't know as yet if the publisher is going to buy it (because again, such is publishing). I could also really do with having another manuscript ready for my agent to start sending out by the end of 2018 - I have a few things in mind but haven't actually started on any of them yet. Also have a load of short stories in the works which I need to do something with. 2018 is going to be an interesting year because I was ill through 2016/17 and was in and out of hospital and that slowed progress quite a lot, but I am hopefully past all that now and should be able to work a lot more than I have been. So I would hope for 2 full length manuscripts and then 8-10 short stories.

Ahem... hm..

2017 was a weird year for me... finished drafting my C.A.T. novel - for which I got there Honourable Mentions in the Writers of the Future contest for the last chapters... (well you peoples ought to know C.A.T. never does things in the normal accepted fashion by now...) ... which has added to the previous five Honourable Mentions in previous years. Got one short story published over at Kraxon Magazine (thank you) and got another accepted for The Last City anthology due out in 2018.

Plans for 2018...

• polish said C.A.T. novel and send out to agents (no I don't mean translate it into Polish - look at what C.A.T. has me doing!)
• go back to novel number 3 and write from scratch with a different POV character (and I mean write from scratch) - aim to get a third of the way through 1st draft by year end
• finish what I call the bleach and rust novelette and send off (thanks to the chroner who put that title idea in my head!)
• produce four short stories, one every quarter and send out
• rewrite my Torvinne novelette (same universe as novel number 3) and send out
• and see the new Star Wars films...

Wishing everyone a Happy and Writerly New Year here on Chroners...

2017 was a good year (apart from the Angry Robot rejection) - I've got a couple of stories coming out in anthologies, Hell Of A Deal got re-issued with new title and cover, and I wrote the sequel over the summer. I also wrote a thing on Wattpad, just for fun, but I don't think it's quite right yet - needs another pass or two... or five.

2018 is all mapped out, after lots of head-scratching and trying to decide what to do. That sequel finishes getting edited until it surrenders (hopefully, during February for release in March), and then I write the third book. Anything on top of that is a bonus.

2017 was productive in a sense — i wrote a damned lot of words — but disastrous in another more important sense, since as of today I’ve binned all but 10k of those words (Hello, if you don’t know me well, this is the way I am...)

2018 goals — FINISH MY DAMNED NOVEL! At this stage I’m honestly at a loss to what will stop me from hitting approx 30k and then flouncing and rewriting, but hey, you never know. Maybe this really *is* my year.

(I also get the rights back to my first novel next summer as the pub is going out of business, so I need to figure out if I want to relaunch that or not. Seems like a lot of effort, but for a work I’m really proud of, I’ve always thought I missed the boat by not promoting it as much as I could have).

2017 has been difficult. I've gotten about 10,000 words in the last three weeks done for a children's book and outlined 3 potential novels.

2018 goals - Finish and submit children's book to agents. Start my second, but adult novel. Try to write some short stories for submission.

Serendipity said:

2017 was a weird year for me... finished drafting my C.A.T. novel - for which I got there Honourable Mentions in the Writers of the Future contest for the last chapters... (well you peoples ought to know C.A.T. never does things in the normal accepted fashion by now...) ... which has added to the previous five Honourable Mentions in previous years.

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It must be quite frustrating getting so many Honourable Mentions, knowing you've been so close, so many times? Have you been given any feedback on what could have made the the stories into finalists?

Jo Zebedee said:

Finish Inish Carraig's sequel
Find a home for The Wildest Hunt

2017 went good but I do feel a little rudderless at the moment

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Toby Frost said:

Same here. I've reached a point where I'm very happy to have done what I've done but I don't know what to do next. I've got three parts of a four-part epic fantasy story pretty much done, but nobody seems interested in it. I've also got two ideas for stories, one of which I've started, and no idea if either is saleable. It's going to be weird.

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Is feeling rudderless also part of what being a writer is about at times? It can be quite a lonely profession. It'd be great if everyone had someone to guide them, to help out with where to go next.

I think it's a symptom of balancing writing, a job and kids in my case. I have little time to concentrate on a project long enough to feel immersed.

2017 - bit of a disaster when it came to my writing. My life changed beyond all recognition in many ways (not all bad, not all good but all weird). The book that should have come out last year was postponed indefinitely and my brief but incredibly successful blog had to stop. I'm now training as a mechanic (the last thing I ever imagined).

2018 - I still have people who want to read my stories and I have about six novels that are more or less completed, so I want to put them up on Wattpad. That way I put up an OK cover I made myself and I don't have to edit them so they don't cost me anything. Experience has taught me that whilst I still love my previous novels by the time I will be in a place where I can publish I will have another book that is better than the one I had planned on releasing. Either that or I'll have writer's block and it won't be a good time to publish. I will however give Black's Nest a brief trawl round the agents that liked Mayhem enough to give me personalised feedback.

In 2017 I published Goblins at the Gates, which had taken me years to finish. I also published a novelette, Mad House. And I got the first draft done on A Child of Great Promise. So, productive in terms of actual writing.

In addition, I did (hired) a full makeover of my altearth.net site, learned to use MailChimp, and stumbled may way into the world of marketing, Amazon reports, and all the anxiety that goes with that. Spent more than I earned, but I expected that.

In 2018 I will publish A Child of Great Promise, will write the next novel, Into the Second World, and will begin at least the research and plotting phase of the next one, called The Falconer. I will press harder on the marketing side. I have all the moving parts; what I need are readers, reviewers, and subscribers.

Jo Zebedee said:

I think it's a symptom of balancing writing, a job and kids in my case. I have little time to concentrate on a project long enough to feel immersed.

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Over the past year, I've really started to appreciate why some of my favourite short story writers don't release many short stories, never mind novel writers and novels (and I know you do both).

sknox said:

In addition, I did (hired) a full makeover of my altearth.net site, learned to use MailChimp, and stumbled may way into the world of marketing, Amazon reports, and all the anxiety that goes with that. Spent more than I earned, but I expected that.

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That's one thing I didn't think to mention - I added a "Writer" section to my own website so I have a presence ready-made. I code everything myself, which is quite tough considering I chose PHP and didn't have any prior experience with it before this website. MailChimp should be a 2018 goal for me, though it wouldn't be strictly writing yet - I've had a mailing list (for my photography) for 3 or 4 years but my poor subscribers are yet to receive an e-mail.

Yeesh, php from scratch? That's an accomplishment in itself. But for your subscribers, send a photo! Srsly. Send them a picture raw, then how you processed it, and talk about what you did and why and how. Or send them a couple of photos of the same thing and talk about the decisions you made in composition or lighting or whatever. Photogeeks love that sort of thing, or so I hear.

AlexH said:

It must be quite frustrating getting so many Honourable Mentions, knowing you've been so close, so many times? Have you been given any feedback on what could have made the the stories into finalists?

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They do give general advice on their blog... my basic problem was that my subs were really chapters from my C.A.T. novel, which of course had lose ends until the last chapter, and that had too much background to put into the short story format. So I was handicapping myself from the get-go. But the exercise did achieve its real goal - helping me to get the first draft of my novel finished. Yay!

Happy New Year to ye all!