One-third of the year is down and it’s time to check in on my writerly goals!
If you haven’t seen one of my goal setting and reviewing posts before, here’s the plan. I go through the goals I set at the beginning of the year and see how many I’ve accomplished and if I’m on target to complete them or if I need to step up to do so. As both a short story write and novelist, I break my goals up by length.
Short Stories
Submission Goals
By today, my goal was to have 50 of my 150 submissions, ie 1/3 or 33%. And I’m there! ▶️
Okay, to be completely honest, I made sure I had at least 50 for the image when writing this post so when this goes up on Friday, April 25, it was true. This also led me to something that I don’t normally do – find an open market to submit to. My normal tactic is to look at my available pieces, especially after rejection, and find a place for them. In fact, it allowed me to submit a couple more stories and I ended up at 51!
Now that my novelette is published, I don’t quite have a piece that allows the massive submissions to bolster my numbers. It’s been a lot harder to stay on top of this goal this year.
Rejections and Acceptances
My goal is always a 100% rejections so that it’s a win no matter what. This is sort of always on-going. I never hear back from all stories submitted within the year. ▶️
Drafting and Revising
My goal was to write six (6) new stories this year and I have done that! Mostly thanks to the annual Codex Weekend Warrior contest wherein the goal is to write a piece of flash to prompts within a weekend. I wrote all six (6) weekends, to varying degrees of success as flash. ✅
My goal was to delve (not AI writing) into my pile of revision queue and get about one story revised per month. I am not on target. I revised one story that went out in my March Newsletter – a ghost story about a puppy. I revised two more stories that I received additional feedback on and are still in my revision queue because life has gotten in the way. ⚠️
Novels
I failed to give my update on novels as promised. So, here’s my 2025 goal setting on the fly and giving an update.
Querying and Direct Submissions to Publishers
This is on pause for likely the entirety of 2025.
New Novel Drafting and Revising
So far, I have no plans to draft a novel in 2025. My goal for 2025 was to focus on short fiction. Often novels sort of burst in on me, so we’ll see if that happens. But not writing another novel until next year is my current plan.
However, I have two novels on the revision schedule. I’m just diving into revisions of what I fondly called Dino Stoy. I submitted it to RevPit on a whim with the title, Finding Home in the Newsaur Apocalypse. I did not get into RevPit, though I did make an editor longlist with it. I have feedback from several readers on the beginning pages and synopsis and from a couple readers on the full manuscript. I began my developmental self-edit last week.
The second novel I have in the revision queue is the novel that will be published next year by Balance of Seven! My editing schedule has been sent to me. I may not be completely finished by the end of the year, but sticking to my publisher’s schedule is my primary goal.
Bonus Goals
Bonus Goal: Publications in 2025
I have a goal for five (5) publications this year. So far, I have one (1). I self-published the audiobook for my novelette.
It would be nice to have something already scheduled, especially as I probably should have at least two stories published by now to be “on track.” But this goal isn’t one I have control over (and while my Newsletters are technically published stories, I don’t count them for this goal.)
Bonus Goal: Earnings in 2025
Another thing not totally in my control, I want to earn more this year than last year. I am not particularly on track, though I have royalties from my audiobook, so I’m not at $0.
Bonus Goal: Earn enough by end-of-year 2026 to become a Full Member of SFWA.
Based upon my novel being published in early 2026, I think I’m on target for this goal.