good evening and happy New Year to all goobers!!! It is officially 2024!! The age I am turning this year sounds terrifying, and I have one less year until my driver's licence expires! woohoo!
So I know everyone makes New Year's resolutions every year and then don't actually follow them, but I feel like if I write them down and put them out into the world, I'll feel more obligated to follow them? maybe?? Who knows, but without further ado, let's list my New Year's resolutions, shall we?
Regular resolutions (non-writing related):
1. get my G2 driver's licence --yeah, I don't technically have my full licence yet because it works kind of differently in Canada but I only have 2 years left to get it, so this year IM GETTING IT!
2. Less procrastination-- my biggest enemy in life and getting stuff done. This applies to school work, writing, sleep, and just EVERYTHING!!
3. Reading my textbooks-- I'm not failing any of my classes or anything but I genuinely feel like if I start reading the textbooks each week then I could actually understand the material a lot more which would mean less studying for tests, so it sounds like a pretty good deal to me!!
4. More reading (in general)--I got a bunch of books for my birthday and I haven't read a single one yet!! Mostly because of my procrastination LOL but hopefully if I work on that I'll have more time.
Writing related resolutions:
1. Finish the first draft of my book!!! (AE)-- In case you're wondering where I'm at word-wise, chapters-wise and percentage-wise, I'm about 125,000 words in, on chapter 22 and I'm maybe about 75% done with the plot??? I'm honestly not sure because there's this whole epilogue thing and idk how long that's gonna take ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ so we'll see. But I actually have a lot of faith in this one considering how much I wrote last year (100,000+ words).
2. Start promoting my works on Instagram and other social media platforms-- I'm kinda nervous about this one, but I know it's a very essential aspect of the game if I want to amass an audience for my book, especially if I'm self-publishing. I just don't know how to sell my premise, and I'm afraid of others reacting to it! But I'm probably gonna focus more on this one once I've finished my first draft!
3. Write more short stories-- short stories are fun and great writing practice! I used to do them a lot more a few years ago and I definitely miss it a lot so hopefully I can come back to it this year.
4. Find beta readers to read my first draft!!-- Now I'm honestly not sure how I'm going to do this one lmao considering writing is not my job so I don't know how much money I'm willing to spend, and I don't really know where to look but it's something I'm also going to work on with the completion of my first draft.
5. EDIT-- I'm actually kind of excited to edit because there are a lot of things I want to change but figured that it was best to get a draft done first and go back later. But it's also kind of daunting because I'm also not sure if the things I want to change would be beneficial or not, or how exactly I want to incorporate these major changes in the story to make it more harmonious.
I've also made a writing plan for 2024! If I can follow this it should be easy peasy to finish all my goals on time :D
January-April 2024- finish first draft
April- July- begin the promotion process and gather beta readers to help decide what I should change
July-November- Editing!!
December- Have the polished copy of my book and begin the publishing process (either self-publishing or querying)
If I am self-publishing (which I think I will do) I should (hopefully???) have it published by early 2025, which seems like a LONGGGG TIME FROM NOW, but 2024 also seemed like it was ages away and here we are!!!
I still have a lot to do, and I've set a couple hefty goals I just hope I can finish, but I'm also just hoping that 2024 is an overall good year and wishing all of you the same:)
The song I'm listening to is a bit different lol, but it's the Barbie Swan Lake soundtrack LOL, super ethereal
Your favourite goober
-GV
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