Make the most of it

It's just crazy to think about how fast a year can fly by.

I'm sitting here at my computer on New Year's Eve waiting for the ball to drop in New York City (they do that every year to remind me that the New Year is only an hour away) and thinking about everything that came out of this year. So many good things happened to me this year; the most important of them was becoming a dad for the second time.

There were some failures, sure, but overall 2013 was a hell of a year.

I wrote a few posts around this time last year stressing the importance of keeping written goals. It's still good advice. Pick the top 5-10 things you need to get done in the following year and write them down. Keep them specific. Don't just write "I'll lose weight." Instead, write "I'll lose 25 pounds." Then write a fairly detailed plan on what you'll do to get it done. In that plan, set smaller goals with deadlines that will build to your larger goal. ("I'll lose 2 pounds in January by walking 2 miles a day 4 days a week," or whatever.) Pick something that works for you.
 
Something else you should do tomorrow while you're waiting for the hangover to pass is pull out your goal book and write down you top ten achievements for 2013. You might have to struggle to come up with ten, but once you've done it, you'll feel pretty good about the previous year and get a quick boost of confidence to hit the New Year running.

Also look over your goals from the previous year and if there were any that you didn't achieve, write a quick note of why you didn't make it. And that doesn't mean I'm giving you permission to make excuses. Making excuses (or worse, assigning blame) won't help you or anyone else. Look at why you failed to meet a specific goal and learn from the failure.

So to close things out, I want to say that I really wish everyone reading this all the success in the world. Have a great New Year and don't waste a minute of it.

Until the End: An Anthology of Love V's the Apocalypse

My short story "Via di Porta Angelica" is available today in this anthology published by Horrified Press.

Until the End is currently available from lulu.com here: http://www.lulu.com/shop/horrified-press/until-the-end/paperback/product-21345493.html

Goals and Progress Report

Yikes, it's been almost a month since my last post. No excuses; just sometimes life gets busy, right?

So 2013 is coming to a close pretty soon and I thought I'd like to close out the year where I started it and that is by writing about goals.

I can never stress enough the importance of setting goals and writing them down. Goals aren't dreams; they're the path to the dream. When you write down a goal, whether a yearly, monthly, or even daily one, you'll be able to do a better job staying focused on it and holding yourself accountable.

That doesn't make it easier to achieve, but it does raise your chances.

I wanted to briefly touch on the goals I didn't reach for the year though. I set some pretty steep writing goals this year and didn't hit them very well.

Now, to be fair, when I came up with these goals our second child was still on the way so I hadn't yet experienced what it was like having two young kids. Free time? Yeah right.

Anyhow, here's my progress report for the year.

1. Finish and submit one new short story each month. I started out pretty well, but in the end only got five new stories polished up enough to send off to potential publishers, although I'm almost ready with number six, so we'll call this one 6/12, 50%.

2. Write 2-3 blog posts each week. Counting publication announcement and short posts, I had 79 posts for the year. Let's round that up to 80 and assume that the goal was 130 (2.5 x 52). That makes 80/130, 62%.

3. Submit an agent query for my novel every week. I stuck with this one faithfully for 30 weeks before giving in and deciding to take a break and rewrite my query and synopsis, as well as do yet another revision. 30/52, 58%.

4. "Win" NaNoWriMo again. I didn't even try. With the baby and the toddler, not to mention my wife going back to work, there was no way I could put my family through this. Maybe next year...

So there you have it. I set some goals, tried my best, and didn't hit the mark. But that's okay. This was still my most successful year yet writing with nine short stories acceptances, a ton of short list rejections, and even some feedback in a couple of agent query rejections.

I've got some big goals set for the next year and I'll get into those in some future posts. Thanks for reading and I'll be back soon (hopefully.)