Know Where You're Going

"The indispensable first step to getting 

the things you want out of life is this:

decide what you want.

          --Ben Stein                                  

Today's writer's devotional had to do with setting goals, so I took the time to write mine out. 

My overall writing goal is to have a successful career as a novelist.  I don't want to write in my spare time around some other job.  I want writing books to be my job.  I'm assuming every writer wants to see their work on the best seller lists, and of course I do, too.  But I don't need any fancy awards or movie deals to feel accomplished.  (Although I wouldn't turn any of that down!)  What I want is for my stories to be heard, to be shared.  To have the characters that mean so much to me mean something to someone else.  I want to walk by a group of people, or even just a couple friends, and overhear them talking about my books the way I talk about other people's stories to my best friend. 

And, all of that is well and good, but what about right now?  I need to have short term goals that don't seem so overwhelming in order to get things done.  So here are my writing goals for 2014:

*Revise Spark In The Ashes.

*Have Spark In The Ashes professionally edited.  

*Find a literary agent.

*Get a publishing deal.

*Finish draft one of Flickering Flame (Book Two in the Shadows trilogy).
*Finish draft one of Wild Rose.
*Finish draft one of Jaxon's story (and give it a title!). 
*Reach 500 followers on my Facebook writing page. 
*Get established on Linked In, Twitter and Google People.
*Review every book I read.

As goals go, it's a fairly long list and a lot of work.  Realistically, I will probably have to push some of these into 2015, but I'm not going to think of that as an option until I have to. 

"If you don't know where you're going,

you might wind up someplace else."

--Yogi Berra