My writing goals for 2020

About two and a half years ago, I posted a blog about my writing goals for the following year.  A little over a year later, I looked back at what I had done, and what I hoped to do in the following year.  They were great ideas, but since I did them in the middle of the year, I kind of forgot about them.  The second one I posted in July of 2018, and it was about the end of July 2019 that I remembered it.  At first I thought about scrambling to get out an updated post, but then I realized I should just wait until the beginning of the New Year when these things are usually done.  That decided, I again kind of forgot about the whole thing until late December.  But here are my goals for this year.

My 2020 Revisions

I published my collection of political stories, Political Pies, just before the 2012 Election.  In mid-2016, I realized that with all the political news, some people might find it, so I decided I should go through and fix a few typos and other such problems.  But once I figured I should do it for that book, I realized I should do it for all of my books.  I also figured I should set a schedule since – even though you can read a story a thousand times – there always seem to be typos.  So I figured I should revise my books every four years.  Now, in 2016 I realized this about the middle of the year and it was a struggle to get everything done before the end of the year.  But this time I’ve already started.  Also, in 2016 I read through everything twice, but this year I’m only going through once.  So I’m hoping I can get everything polished up by the summer.

Publishing Useless Cogs

For the last few years, I’ve been “working” on several Untitled Scifi Collections.  I’ve now put them all together into one collection, which I’m calling “Useless Cogs.” The current plan is to have forty-five stories.  Thirty of them will have been previously published – but have long since vanished in the internet sea – and fifteen will be new.  Of the fifteen, roughly a third are done, a third are half-done, and the rest I need to write.  I’m hoping to work on it between my revisions and have it out in late summer or early fall.

Rough Draft of The Pathfinder Saga, Volume I

A couple of years ago, I started what was to be a standalone fantasy novella I eventually titled “Scars of the Blood Fire Valley.” I was just about done with the first draft when I realized that – if I added something in at the end – I could turn it into a series.  So Scars became Book I of The Pathfinder Saga.  I started writing Book II “What is Found in the Wilderness” and I’m two-thirds done with it.  At first I was thinking of publishing them separately, but for reasons it would take too long to explain, I’ve decided that it would be better to put Scars, Wilderness and a short story “The Longest Night” (which I’ve just made some notes for) together as Volume I.  So my hope for 2020 is to finish Wilderness and maybe Night so I can spend 2021 polishing everything up.  (I also need to do a lot of reediting in Scars because I didn’t write it expecting it to be part of a series.) Maybe my goal for 2022 will be to finally publish the damn thing.

Work on Other Collections

There are several other story collections I’ve started and shelved over the years.  There’s Amongst Us, which has stories of aliens here on Earth, The Uncapped Pen, which are stories about writers, and Travels Beyond Imagination, which are stories set on the moon.  I also have ideas for a collection of haiku and extremely short stories.  I’m not planning on publishing any of them this year, but maybe I can start working on them so I can get them out in 2021.

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So, that’s my plan.  Come back next year to see how I do.