2020 Goals and Plans

Well, hello there blog. It’s that time of year again where we pick up the WriYe Blogging Circle again… Just in time to talk about our goals and plans for the upcoming year!

What’s your WriYe Word Count goal for 2020? Why did you chose it?
My word count goal for 2020 is 200,000 words. The reason I chose this goal this year is because I plan on writing two complete novels this year, both with projected word counts of 90,000 words. That along brings my total up to 180,000, but then there are things like genre stretch, a shared collaborative project that my writing group and I are working to get off the ground soon, and any other sort of random writing decides to grab my attention this year… So, I figured an extra 20k wouldn’t be terribly hard to come by.

What are your plans for the year? What do you want to accomplish with your writing?
My plans for the year are pretty intense and scary, if I’m being entirely honest. The “easiest” of my goals is writing two complete novels. In quotes because I know writing a full novel is never as easy as my brain wants me to think it is. It doesn’t matter that I’ve finished several in my life already, each book is a wildly different experience and some are much more difficult than others. The two I’m working on this year brings my most familiar / oldest character (Audrey) to the forefront and finishes up her story. I’m expecting the novel I’m starting off the year with to be the easier of the two because I know 100% what happens and where the novel needs to go. The emotions in the novel are easier to access… But the other novel? The final in her trilogy? Well, that story is much less clear-cut and there are aspects of it that are just completely foreign to me. So, we’ll see how that one comes out.

Then is the editing. I’m looking to edit at least 3 novels this year. Two are already in various stages of editing already (one is getting ready to go to betas for the FINAL edit, one is in the process of going from the first to second draft) and the third is a novel that is still being written. This is honestly probably the stage I’m looking forward to the most. I like taking things that are already written and making them into something much more interesting to read and playing with the way specific words sound.

But, the scariest part of all of my writing goals in 2020? Is finally starting the publishing process with my Lazy Tequila Afternoons series. There’s obviously a lot that goes into that whole process that I’ll be going into here throughout the year. I’m currently finishing up the last bit of the line edits I did on the novel over the summer, then by the end of the month, I’ll have it out to my lovely beta readers for them to tear apart… All the while working hard to do all of the other steps alongside the day job. I have big plans and such for this, but I’ll go through that in a dedicated post soon. Just know that there’s a lot of (positive) nervous energy around that right now.

 

Bonus:
What are you most looking forward to in 2020?
The thing that I am most looking forward to in 2020 is actualizing my dreams. I’ve wanted to publish / be published for a long, long time. I’m also really excited to get to work (hopefully) with friends in a lucrative and creative way.