A Book Nerd's Inner Voices

Know Where You're Going

"The indispensable first step to getting


the things you want out of life is this:


decide what you want.


--Ben Stein





Today's writer's devotional had to do with setting goals, so I took the time to write mine out.





My overall writing goal is to have a successful career as a novelist. I don't want to write in my spare time around some other job. I want writing books to be my job. I'm assuming every writer wants to see their work on the best seller lists, and of course I do, too. But I don't need any fancy awards or movie deals to feel accomplished. (Although I wouldn't turn any of that down!) What I want is for my stories to be heard, to be shared. To have the characters that mean so much to me mean something to someone else. I want to walk by a group of people, or even just a couple friends, and overhear them talking about my books the way I talk about other people's stories to my best friend.





And, all of that is well and good, but what about right now? I need to have short term goals that don't seem so overwhelming in order to get things done. So here are my writing goals for 2014:





*Revise Spark In The Ashes.


*Have Spark In The Ashes professionally edited.


*Find a literary agent.


*Get a publishing deal.


*Finish draft one of Flickering Flame (Book Two in the Shadows trilogy).


*Finish draft one of Wild Rose.


*Finish draft one of Jaxon's story (and give it a title!).


*Reach 500 followers on my Facebook writing page.


*Get established on Linked In, Twitter and Google People.


*Review every book I read.





As goals go, it's a fairly long list and a lot of work. Realistically, I will probably have to push some of these into 2015, but I'm not going to think of that as an option until I have to.





"If you don't know where you're going,


you might wind up someplace else."


--Yogi Berra