I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what goals I should set for myself in 2014. Some of them are pretty easy to settle on. I want to finish up Shattered and publish it. I want to finish and publish the second book in the Mirynthir Chronicles series, The Emerald Veil. I think that I should be able to meet both of these objectives during the coming year. What I’m not exactly sure about is how many words I’ll be able to squeeze into the next twelve months. Some authors like to set production goals for themselves and others like to set word goals. Being a numbers-oriented person, I’ve always had a certain fascination with word-count goals. And besides, it sounds more impressive to say that you’ve written 200,000 words than to say that you’ve published two novels, right?
The only thing that’s making me a little hesitant to call out a word-count goal is that I know for a fact that 2014 is going to be a super crazy year. My wife and I are expecting twins in a couple of months (surprise! We just found out the exciting news a few days ago, and I’m still not sure if it’s quite fully sunk in yet!). I am anticipating several months with very little sleep and very little time to do much of anything except chase our older daughter around the house and take care of the new little ones. But then I think back to 2013 and realize that I had quite a few low-productivity months last year as well.
So I think that I’m going to go ahead and shoot for a repeat of last year’s goal:
The goal: 200,000 words
We’ll just take it one month at a time and see how things go. And hopefully at the end of the year I’ll be able to put up another blog post celebrating a successfully met goal! I hope that everyone has a great start to the new year, and for those who are setting goals and making resolutions for themselves, I wish you all the best in keeping them!