I surpassed my reading and writing goals for last year by a lot so I’m going to go ahead and start on my 2019 goals for motivational purposes and just try to get them done by December 1 of next year. So based on last year’s goals and what I want to accomplish this next year, this is what I’m going to try to achieve:
1. Write 52 stories. I write mostly flash (around 80% of my fiction) and wrote 59 stories from January 1 to now, but I want to have that level of productivity next year and hopefully blow right past this number.
2. Read 1,000 short stories. Now, in years past I’ve set a book goal and I typically read 50-75 books a year. However, with the focus I want to put on short fiction, I want to read 1k stories. I think it will be beneficial to my writing too. I’m a first reader at two pro venues so I will not count these, just regular published stories. I’m already preparing my Barnes & Noble anthology buying spree. 😛
3. Pro publish 5 stories. This one will be a hard one. I set a goal of 1 this year and ended up with 3, but they are so hard to get. I didn’t really start subbing to pro venues until mid-year this year and as long as I keep up with my short fiction goal, I hope to be churning out enough stories that this number isn’t quite so unrealistic.
So these are my goals. Additionally, I want to post monthly updates here to keep track of stories read, written, and also for the first time I’d like to keep track of word count—it might be useful in future goals! Every year for the last four years I’ve set some type of goals and have always reached them. This year will be the biggest stretch yet and I really hope to keep up with it. Feel free to follow along to cheer or jeer at your leisure.
