Is it over? It’s really almost over! A year that has been a symbol of awful for so many people. Obviously switching a number at an arbitrary time won’t end any of the terrible things so many people are going through, but it’s a useful thing to our human minds to imagine that it will spur some change for the better. So, here’s to a new number spawning new goodness in our lives!
GOALS
Though I wouldn’t be surprised if most people’s new years goals involved simply surviving and staying as happy as possible, whatever that takes, I do have some personal writing and reading goals. Here they are! To hold myself accountable, since I didn’t write any down last year so am not even sure if I succeeded…
Writing goals:
- Finish this new thing I started writing about some people lost in a forest. I expect it will be a novella.
- Finish cleaning up the thing about birds I just finished writing, and send it a few places
- Re edit The Observer, my novella from a few years ago, and send it some more places
- Write 5 short stories and actually send them places.
Okay! Doesn’t sound like much, but I think finishing the forest thing will take a lot of my time. I just spent a year and a half writing the bird thing, which was only 20k words… so, I am being a bit ambitious to complete the next project in one year… but I think I can do it!
Reading goals:
Don’t buy any books! This sounds counterintuitive, but I have SO MANY books sitting around waiting to be read. I want to force myself to actually read the books I have instead of being distracted by constant new shiny things. There are exceptions to this, which will be mentioned in my other goals.
Read 40 books! I keep not reaching the magical number of 40. (really i’d like to do 50 but, baby steps) This year is the year!
Always be reading: 1 Novel, 1 Short story collection, 1 Poetry collection, 1 book in Spanish. Since I don’t own very many short stories, poetry, or books written in Spanish, buying these if I run out will be an exception to my ‘don’t buy’ rule.
Increase my country list by 5. I have been keeping track of which country each book I read comes from, and so far I’ve read authors from 25 different countries. I want to read 5 new countries this year, which is a very low number, but I don’t want to impede my main goal of clearing off my shelves too much. I may be able to find 5 new countries in my shelves, but if not, this is another exception to the ‘don’t buy’ rule.
And there they are! Okay future self, you better have done all this!!
What are your reading and writing goals?
Jonas David 