This may seem like an odd title for a blog post about goals for the New Year, but for me it’s an apt one. Last year was about being grate­ful; this year is all about being account­able. Every year I’ve set goals for myself in the new year and some­times I make them, some­times I don’t. But this year, I’m resolv­ing to treat my writ­ing career as seri­ously as a full time job. Because it’s what I want to do with my life longterm, and if I don’t take it seri­ously, no one else will. Also, I’m kind of con­trac­tu­ally oblig­ated to get cer­tain things done this year since 2012 brought the delight­ful bless­ing of an agent and a book deal (and yes, I’m still squee­ing about both!). Need­less to say, I’d bet­ter be dang sure those things happen!

In the spirit of being account­able, I’ve divided up my goals for the year into a few cat­e­gories: Must Do, Want To Do, and Might Do.

MUST DO:

• Edit MONSTROUS (there’s no ques­tion that this is the high­est pri­or­ity this year!)
• Write sec­ond book (hope­fully a com­pan­ion novel to MONSTROUS)
• Revise sec­ond book
• Make more con­nec­tions, specif­i­cally ones that will be help­ful when my book debuts such as local libraries, schools, and book­stores. I’ve already got­ten started–my husband’s cousin is a teacher in local Boston area mid­dle school and she wants me to do a school visit when MONSTROUS comes out. Yay for head starts!

WANT TO DO:

• Fin­ish revis­ing CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE CYBORG and get it to a point where it’s sub­mis­sion ready
• Revise TWIN DAGGERS
• Write that some­what secret novella project bounc­ing around in my brain that I should prob­a­bly men­tion to my agent…
• Blog more, both on this blog, From the Write Angle, and now the One­FourKidLit blog. I had a hard time keep­ing up with blog­ging in 2012, but I enjoy it and I really do want to do bet­ter this year.

MIGHT DO:

• Fin­ish draft of DEVIL IN THE DRAWING ROOM and revise it
• Write another first draft of one of the many project ideas I’ve been hoarding

Yes, this is a wee bit ambi­tious. I know I likely won’t end up meet­ing all these goals, but I feel con­fi­dent that I can def­i­nitely com­plete the Must Dos, and hope­fully at least a cou­ple of the Want To Dos. And who knows? Maybe I’ll sur­prise myself and com­plete more of them that I expect!

So, what do you hope to accom­plish this year? Share your goals in the comments!