Hi guys! It’s a whole new year, and we’re planning all sorts of good things for you, but today, I wanted to touch on goals.

Back to…

Today seems to be the day for us to all be back at ‘work/writing/life’. The holidays, however, they were, are over and I’m on the fence about whether to goal or not to goal. I do, but I know others on the team don’t, so I thought I’d talk about how I’m organising my year, and if you’d like to share yours in the comments I’d love to hear from you!

Back to life, back to reality

Well, sort of. It’s pretty much a well-known fact that I live in a world of my own.  It’s a nice world, if a touch grim sometimes (though, like many people my post-apocalyptic game is way down), but I’m hoping to find my way back to my main world. I’m sure I will, but I’m working really hard on planning books and re-releasing.  I’m in an odd place as a writer – my backlist has completely expired back to me and I can choose to reboot everything, so the options really are endless for me.  But I’m also starting a brand new pen name, so I’ll be working as a new author, and building up from my actual platform too. So, this year, I’ll be sharing a lot of everything that I’m learning.  In fact, this month, I’m starting with newsletters. I do have goals too, but I’m trying hard to actually pin them SMART format.  Tying that to an ROI to boot is really difficult, especially when it’s something that’s not measurable by numbers, but I think if you set goals for yourself, you’ve got to find a way to measure them.

Planning in my me-time

The mistake I made last year was not planning some me time – I always told myself that I’d take my time off, but one thing or another came out, and even with everything that’s gone on in the last year – in fact, possibly because of it in some ways – I didn’t really take care of myself properly.  I’ve got meditation apps, and things to help me sleep, and I’ve still completely failed on that front.  Which is the last lesson thing I wanted to touch on – I’ve been seeing people talk about goals in terms of ‘I failed so…’ YOU DID NOT FAIL! (sorry, I didn’t mean to yell, but seriously). The dichotomy in the author community is writing *is* lonely, but then again, it isn’t.  We’ve got access to so many communities, but that leaves us open to so much, from poor influences that can throw us off, to seeing people where we want to be and feeling bad, to feeling intimidated and upset when things go badly.  And the thing is, even if we’ve put out lots, won awards, had a good time with people, we always seem to focus on the negative, so if you’re not setting goals, please take one thing from this post, and just think about the good, not the bad.  It’s important to focus on the good, always. That’s how we get through. We’ll be talking about SMART later this week again, and newsletters for the next little while so if you’ve got anything you’d like to share, then hit the comments.  Questions and requests, comments! And welcome to 2021.  No resolutions from me, but I do want to rock it, in any way I can, and know that with the community that IAG is, we can do almost anything. See you Saturday!