I think at the turn of the year the whole Goal Thing creeps into our thinking. I, personally, don't set goals. I mean, I do, but I don't do them at the turn of the year, I do them every day. It's my To Do List. I don't have a Life Goal List, really.
This made me think, this whole Goal thing. You see, I've been feeling a bit deflated about the book publishing goal that I've met. I've sold 2 books. I've got a couple of other ones that look like they may be bought. I've met that goal ("sell book"). I think I had a Back of the Mind Goal: "Get published".
So what's next?
Oh, I know -- there's promo -- get out there and SELL that book. Make sure it gets bought. Make sure it gets noticed. Get it reviewed, get it out in print, get it shopped around. I've been reading a lot of promo info and it's, {whew} a lot of work. So that's a new challenge for me, the Promotion of the Work.
But what's my next writing goal? I've got several finished manuscripts that I want to find a home for. They aren't Pulitzer material but they're good little mysteries with some really interesting characters. They deserve to be read. And I've got my Sci Fi series, which I'd love to return to. That one has some meat on its bones and is very challenging to write.
Note that I'm not goaling (I just verbed a noun) about best seller lists, the number of copies sold, etc. That is so far out of the realm of my thinking that I'm not going there right now. Later, yeah, I might go there, but for now it's enough to say "it's bought, now I need to sell it". How well I sell it is another story.
I suspect that new goals will pop up where I least expect it as I dig more into this promo thing. But right now I have no Big Goal on the horizon ("get published"). I've hit that target. Now I'm aiming for another one ... I'm just not quite sure what it is yet.
And yes, I do sleep now and then, and I do relax.
But I've also got those little back-of-the-mind goals, chasing me around....
J
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