Have I ever kept to a New Years Resolution?
Look, we’re at about a 60% rate of most things I wanted to accomplish in the last calendar year. Grad school in 2024 meant I certainly did a fair amount of reading and writing, even if most of the reading was more theory and craft and less about tackling my ever-growing TBR. And the writing was about half analytical/”academic” and half stress dream-inducing creative work that I can’t see myself doing a whole lot with.
AND! Even with 10 weeks of outpatient intensive therapy, I still was able to send out my first 3 agent queries for a project! And the one rejection I’ve gotten so far from that little group was more reassuring than awful feeling. As difficult and mildly painful the last 365ish days were, there was some good. And if DBT therapy taught me anything, it’s to take the good and the bad together. Even and especially when it’s hard to do.
Also, I became a three-time Zizi (what my family kindly uses instead of a gendered title) with the birth of my older brother’s first kid. And have gotten to see the two other niblings really come in to their tiny human personalities. It’s genuinely wild how quickly small humans become just humans.
SO WHAT ARE WE DOING IN 2025?!
We’re going to go ahead and list out these literary goals in the most generalnto the bigger/specific ones at the end.
- Read 100 pages a week this year
- Swan Song by Robert McCammon is literally the next book on my list of trying to get through that PBS list, not to mention all the other 500+ page books on my list. Page count feels so much more reasonable than book count.
- Write or edit 10k words in a month, every month
- It might seem like I’m aiming low. But that’s because I want to make this feel attainable. Because saying that every month is going to be a 50k month out the gate just sets up anxiety and potential failure.
- Send out more agent queries. No idea how many, just some more.
- And I mean, if you or someone you know is on the look out for a series that is self-described as “Anita Blake meets Dresden Files but make it Queer” vibes, drop me a line.
- Work on Self-Marketing some more.
- We got a Kofi that I hardly use. We got some fanfiction that I swear I’m working on more things for (specifically, my vampiric, blonde, murder husband who is terrible and also has never done anything wrong). And you know, I tiptoe into social media.
- Get Book One of my novella series out as a self-pub by the end of April
- That’s right, Q1 self pub baby. I’ve got meets with the cover artist after the first of the year. And you also see “series” there, right? Well, that’s because the full 3 novella arc of part one are almost FULLY drafted. Which leads us to big scary-
- Publish the full first arc of the novella series by the end of the year!
That’s right. 3 novellas by the end of the year. A lot of the work is already done, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a HUGE goal. With lots of barriers. If you want to help out an (at the time of writing this) unemployed writer with a dream you can go over to that previously mentioned Ko-fi and donate. No pressure, of course. But if you’re feeling generous, I’m feeling grateful. And just maybe there’ll be a preview of book one of the novella going up soon.
Macabress Manuscripts 