Note: I wrote this at the end of last year and completely forgot about it! So here I am, posting it now in the spirit of ‘better late than never’.
After the year that was 2020, I’m not entirely sure that setting goals or intentions is the greatest idea. However, I’m feeling cavalier and going to go ahead anyway. I don’t think any of these are huge, ‘go big or go home’ goals, but hope they’re realistic targets.
The Hollywood Project
I’d like to hit the finish line again. I’ve been aiming for 80k but as it’s an historical novel, and they tend to be generally longer, my generous, revised goal is 100k. I’m currently sitting at the 62,000 mark, I wrote approximately 30k in 2020 so I reckon it’s a reasonable goal.
The Jazz Age Mysteries
I’d like to finish plotting and, The Hollywood Project allowing, write a few chapters of the first of my Jazz Age Mysteries. I have the victims, their families (mostly, one needs to be a little less of a floating person), the killer and their motivation. So I’ve got the bones, I just need to assemble them into a skeleton and then write the flesh. Hmm, well that was a nauseating analogy.
The Online Life Of Sasha Dane
As for my “author platform”, which frankly sound pretensious as hell when I say it, but I guess that’s technically what Twitter, IG and a website amount to (gulps loudly). I have a few things I’d like to see happen in 2021, but my main goal is around consistency.
Social Media
I want to show up on Twitter and Instagram with much more regularity to be part of the fabulous communities I had a small taste of in 2020. Yes, I would love for my ‘numbers’ to grow during the year too, does anyone not want that? However, I’d prefer a smaller ‘following’ (another term that sounds ‘off’, hello narcissism) that is engaged and where I know everyone.
Sasha-Dane.com
And I want to be consistent with blogging too. I have so many ideas for this site, that I hope I can translate into posts.
Letters from the Jazz Age
I’d like to be consistent with my newsletters. The last thing I want is to send an email and for the lovely person on the receiving end to not have the foggiest idea who it’s from. I want to provide value and for subscribers to look forward to it arriving. With that in mind, I’m probably going to drop back from my initial idea of monthly emails to every other month, hopefully that will help me level up the content quality. Oh, and it would be nice to grow that list too.
Looking at these goals, neatly laid out like this, there’s a pattern. All of my goals boil down to one: I want to be consistent.
This is the hardest part for me. My days, as well as my abilities to focus, are not consistent on a day to day basis which makes showing up regularly anywhere at a specified time and place difficult to do. Curse you chronic conditions! So while I can’t guarantee I’ll be doing these things every day, I can say I will most definitely be putting in my best effort and I hope, over the course of a year, those efforts will add up.
If you’d like to receive Letters from the Jazz Age and join me on my journey I’d love to have you with me. Just put your best email in the little form that follows and I’ll see you there.
