The honest truth . . .

. . . is that I hate, loathe, despise, New Year's Eve. I may dislike it even more than I do Valentine's Day, which is saying something. I am a complete and utter sap for Christmas; I love the music, I love the lights, the trees, the food and the gifts and most of all the people. When it comes to December 31st I am a complete and utter Scrooge.

It is, however, the end of the year and a good time to assess my goals. I used to do this around the time of World Fantasy, but this seems like a more logical time to do it and distract you all from my grumpy hats-n-champagne-hatin' ways.

My writing goals for last year (+2 months) were:

1. Do the revisions my agent asked for on the latest manuscript, finish the children's novel I've begun, and get at least halfway through another novel by next WFC.

That's really three things. I did the first--in fact I did it three times. If I hadn't sold that sucker I might be grumpy about that, but since I done sold that baby, I'm not in the least. (Woo!) As for the second, well, I haven't touched that manuscript. I did start another novel, but I'm not nearly halfway through it. Maybe a quarter of the way. Ah well.

2. Write at least seven short stories and keep submitting.

I'm not keeping records as well as I used to, so I'm not 100% of the number of new stories I wrote, but it looks like about 4. I blame the time I spent on novel work. Well, that and the whole finishing-my-Master's thing.

3. Stay with the writing group and attend meetings regularly.

Except for a period where I was having car and health problems (the former were serious, the latter were not), yup.

4. Put out two issues of The Dogtown Review.

Uh, yeah. Didn't happen, largely due to a serious lack of finances.

5. Do readings at WisCon and WFC and any other opportunities that arise.

Didn't get a reading at WFC, on account of me being pretty small potatoes. But the WisCon reading went extremely well.

Goals not in my control and therefore likely to be highly unrealistic:

1. Sell two novels.

Heh. See how optimistic I am? But hell, I did sell one.

2. Sell eight short stories.

I sold seven. Not bad!

Overall, though, I dropped the ball on a few things, and I want to do better than that this year.

Goals for 2007:

1. Finish a first draft of the novel-in-progress by WisCon.

2. Finish the children's book.

3. Start another novel by World Fantasy.

4. Write at least six stories and keep submitting.

5. Keep on with the writing group.

6. Put out two issues of The Dogtown Review.

7. Do readings wherever possible, including WisCon and WFC.

8. Sell two novels.

9. Sell eight stories.

10. Write at least three things that I don't think I can pull off.

In order to do all that I'm going to have to be more disciplined than I have been of late, so I just deleted all the games from my computer. Again.