Did I Achieve my 2019 Writing Goals?

It will soon be time to say goodbye to the old writing year and hello to the new.

Every year in the first week of January, best buddy Tracy Fells and I get together to set our yearly writing goals. At the end of the year, I look back and see if I've achieved any or all of them.

The one thing I've learned over the years is it's important to have goals that will stretch and encourage but which are manageable too (rather than stressful). The other thing it's important to remember is that luck and life circumstances play a big part in what happens as well and that I should not to be too hard on myself if I don't achieve all my targets. The important thing is that I try.

These are the goals I set for myself:

Goal: To enjoy every minute of being a published author.

Achieved? Mostly! As most of you will know, my debut psychological thriller, What She Saw, was published by Bookouture in May this year (you can read my blog post about it here). It was fabulous... exciting... amazing. The same can be said when my second thriller, We Were Sisters, came out in August. But did I enjoy every minute? Not when I was struggling with structural edits or when I was stressing about whether or not my novels were good enough for people to buy or when I received my first bad review. But all these things come with the territory. It's what happens when you're published. In fact it's proof that you've been published! 

The biggest test is whether I would do it all again... and the resounding answer is YES!

Goal: To secure another publishing deal.

Achieved? Yes! I was delighted when in May my wonderful publisher, Bookouture, offered me another two-book contract. Yay!

Goal: To think about and start novel three.

Achieved? Yes! Not only have I thought about and started novel three, I've finished it and it's with my editor (though the hard part will soon start when I get the first lot of edits back in a few days). I have also started novel four.

... and that's it for another year. Next week, Tracy and I will be meeting to set out 2020 goals and I'll be posting you very soon. In the meantime, I wish you all a very Happy New Year.

2019 Bring it On!

Happy New Year to you all, and I wish every one of you good health and happiness for 2019.

Last week, best writing buddy Tracy Fells and I met up in our favourite cafe, armed with our target notebooks, for teacakes and a spot of yearly goal setting. We've been doing this for six years now - six years! I can hardly believe it. 

In my last post, I looked at whether I had achieved my 2018 goals. You can read it here.

But this post isn't about looking back, it's about looking forward and, if I'm honest, the 2019 goals have been harder to set than previous years. Why? Because where my writing goes this year will depend on how well the two books that will be published in May and August do. If I'm lucky, I might be offered another contract with my lovely publisher, Bookouture. If not... well, I'll just have to cross that bridge if and when I come to it.

There are a lot of things that I will be doing this year now I'm under contract: completing the publication process for book one then starting and completing the editing and publication process for book two. After that, there will be the publicity and the marketing to think about... not to mention the celebrating! But, these are not exactly goals. They're things that have to be done as the wheels of the publishing machine turn. 

It would be cheating to put 'to have two books published' as my goal for 2019!

Instead, I need to think about where I want to go after that and what new things I'd like to have achieved by the end of the year.

So here they are. My goals for 2019:

• To enjoy every minute of being a published novelist .

• To secure another publishing deal (this one is out of my hands).

• To think about and start novel 3 (which is actually novel 4 as my first novel is still awaiting a publisher).

If I can achieve all these things in 2019, I shall be a very happy writer indeed.

What about you? Do you have yearly writing goals? If so, do feel free to share yours in the comments and I wish you the very best of luck with them.

Did I Achieve my 2018 Writing Goals?

It's time to say goodbye to the old writing year and welcome in the new.

Last week, I took a detailed look at my writing year which you can read here, but today I'm looking at the specific goals which I set with writing chum, Tracy Fells, in the first week of January 2018. As always, we wanted to make the goals achieveable (although we knew that luck would play its part along with hard work).

When writing this post, I looked back at my 2016 and 2017 roundups and saw that, in both years, I hoped it would be 'The Year of the Novel'. It wasn't to be and neither was it this year. BUT big things (novel related) did happen. I got a publishing contract with Bookouture and next year WILL be the year of the novel (or novels - as my second will be published in 2019 too).

So, going back to my specific targets, how did I do?

Goal: Submit something to my RNA New Writing Scheme reader. 

Achieved? Yes. I submitted my first novel for a second opinion. This novel went on to make the top five in the Simon and Shuster/ Darley Anderson Literary Agency 'Write Here Right Now' competition. 

I am delighted (based on goal number two) to have now graduated from the New Writing Scheme.

Goal: Continue submitting to agents/publishers with a view to having my first two novels published.

Achieved? A big fat YES (and also no). I made the decision, earlier in the year, to stop submitting to agents and submit directly to publishers. Within days, I had an offer of a two-book deal with publisher Bookouture but this would be for my second novel and a new one.

Goal: Continue to write two stories a month for the magazines.

Achieved? No. Because of my commitment to the novels (writing novel two while embarking on the editing process for book one), I realised that it was impossible to focus properly on both the novels and the short stories. Sadly, it was the stories that had to take a back seat.

Goal (Non-writing related): To play carols on my new violin by this Christmas.

Achieved? Yes! I bought a book of carols and (what joy!) found I could play nearly all of them. Sadly, I lacked the confidence to play them in front of anyone other than my husband and daughter though.

... and that's it for another year. Next week Tracy and I are meeting to set our 2019 goals and you'll be the first to see them when I post them here later in the week.

All that's left, is to wish you all a very Happy New Year!

Writing Targets for 2018

It's that time of year again when teacakes are eaten and writing goals are set.

On Monday, writing chum, Tracy Fells, and I met up in our favourite cafe. We ordered teacakes and coffee and went back over 2017 to see whether or not we'd achieved last year's goals (you can read them here). We also set new targets for the coming year. It's the fifth year we've done this as we've found it's a great way to keep us focused in the months ahead. 

Without further ado.... here are my 2018 writing goals. Hopefully I shall:

• Continue to submit two stories a month to magazines.

• Submit something new to the RNA New Writers' Scheme reader for a critique in August.

• Continue to submit to agents/publishers with a view to having my first two novels published.

As with last years goals, I've tried to make them manageable ones. Also, you never know when life's going to throw you a curve ball and you have to change your plans (I certainly wasn't expecting to lose my agent last year and have to start again along that route). 

My other (non-writing related) news is that I'm taking up a new challenge... I'm learning the violin. Yes, you heard me correctly. The violin. A while ago, I got it into my head that I'd love to learn to play this instrument. I have no idea why and neither did anyone else! 

Imagine my surprise when I opened my Christmas present from my husband and found this...

His present to himself was earplugs and now that I've tried it out I can see why! I'm determined to learn though and my final goal is to be able to play some carols on it by next Christmas. Think I will succeed?

And that's the end of my goals for this year. Do you set yearly writing targets?

Let's Celebrate a New Writing Year!

Hap... Hap... Happy New Year! 

I hope 2017 brings you everything you hope for.

On Wednesday, in time-honoured tradition, writing chum, Tracy Fells, and I got together to set out our writing goals for 2017. As we sat in our favourite cafe with our coffee and teacakes, we found ourselves looking back to the same day one year ago. We remembered how excited we were at having finished our novels and how the talk was all about where we would be in a year's time.  

2016 was to be 'The Year of the Novel' for us both but, as everyone knows, things don't always go to plan. I was incredibly lucky to find an agent fairly quickly but getting a novel ready for publication, in a format that everyone is happy with, hasn't been a simple process. I haven't talked a lot about it recently as things have been a bit up in the air.

Anyway, this leads me on to my targets for 2017 (or rather lack of them).

I will be putting my yearly targets on my blog but not until I've met with my agent in a couple of week's time. They have a new project they want to discuss with me and until that has happened, I can't really plan anything. You'll have to watch this space.

In the meantime, 2017 has started with a bang! I've already had two story sales and, at the time of writing, have five stories on sale in the shops - one in The People's Friend Special, two in Woman's Weekly Fiction Special, and two in Take a Break Fiction Feast (I can't imagine that happening again!). One of the stories was a ghost story but two were a new genre for me - crime mystery.

I was also excited to discover that the People's Friend have made a new audio of one of my stories, Out of the Dark. I loved this one and found it very moving as there is a lot of me in it (I had to hold my husband's hand when the reader got to the tube station scene as it brought back unsettling memories).

You can listen to my story here. 

Why Everyone Needs a Writing Buddy

You know how it is when someone asks what you do and, when you tell them, you get a variation on these answers:

"Have you written a novel yet?"
"How much money do you make?"
"I suppose you'll be writing your own Fifty Shades then."

That's people you don't know.

Your friends might ask a few polite questions such as, "So how's the writing going?" but if you answer more than, "Fine," you can see their eyes start to glaze over.

Of course I can't blame them. If I ask my husband how his day has been, I'm more interested in whether Nigel has seen the badger in his garden again or whether Tom has managed to sell his house yet than whether the new flow meter is working properly. I have to remember that not everyone is interested in writing in the same way that not everyone is interested in engineering.

This is why we all need a writing buddy. I'm not talking about someone who will share and critique your work (although many writing buddies like to do this) but someone who knows where you're coming from; who understands the joys of a sale or competition win along with the frustration of the rejection; who you can share writing news and information with you and talk about all those things that would bore other people silly.

I'm lucky in that I've got Tracy. We met first through our blogs and then in 'real life' a year ago for teacakes in our local café. We've met up every month since for writerly chat.

This morning we talked about our last month's writing goals and whether we've achieved them, the merits (or not) of writing holidays, writers on Facebook, competitions, loss of writing confidence, experiences of womags, merits (or not) of Scrivener, whether it's possible to write a novel without a plan......
 
We also set new targets for this month.

The two hours we spend in the café are invaluable... and the teacakes delicious!

I urge everyone to get themselves a writing buddy if they haven't already got one.

Teacakes and Goal Setting

 

 

The teacakes have been eaten and the goals have been set.

 

Last year, I didn't state any formal writing goals on my blog but this year, in order to make the coming year as productive as possible, I have decided to do so.

I wanted my goals to be challenging yet hopefully achievable and with this in mind, I met up with writing and blogging friend Tracy Fells earlier this week for some serious goal planning (and teacake eating).

Brimming with enthusiasm, I wrote this blog post but didn't publish it. Then I started to get a niggle of self-doubt and as the day went on, it grew and grew so that by the time I got to the West Sussex Writers' Group the following evening, there was little left of my writerly aspiration. Luckily Tracy came to my rescue again and told me that what I had was just one of Helen Yendall's writing Gremlins and that it was was perfectly natural when planning a big project.

 

So (deep breath) here is what I would like to achieve by the end of 2014:

 

1) Increase my story output to three stories every two weeks, (this may not be possible due to goal 2!) in the hope that I can achieve my hundredth sale by the end of the year.

2) Write another serial.

3) Now for the biggie. I have challenged myself to write a novel this year. There have been many reasons why I have not done this before: wanting to establish my magazine writing, wondering about the sense in spending a year writing something that may never be published, not having a good enough idea for it and wondering if I have enough drive to see the project through.

So what has changed my mind? Well, out of the blue I received an email from my mum. She had read one of my magazine stories and these were her words: I thought it would expand into a very good novel which I would certainly be happy to read. Now my mum is an avid reader - we share books and literary taste and if she doesn't like a novel, I can guarantee I probably won't either. This is the first of my stories she has said this about and the idea that she might think me capable of writing something longer - that she would want to read - is very flattering (although it wouldn't have been her intention to flatter).

I presented this idea to Tracy (who is also writing a novel) to see what she thought of it. After giving her the skeleton of the story, she declared it a worthy plot and we talked over how it might be developed, which was very exciting.

When I start to self doubt and dwell on the fact that the chances of publication are very slim, I shall give myself a talking to and remember that if I had thought this way about magazine writing I wouldn't be where I am now. Once I've set my sights on something I will go for it!

My next goal was going to be setting a time limit on this (ideally have a first draft finished by the end of the year) but I think that I probably need to be flexible due wanting to continue with my magazine writing.

4) Finally, I would like to publish a collection of my short stories in time for next Christmas.(This is the goal most likely to fall by the wayside as it sounds pretty time consuming.)


I am not setting any goals for writing more articles (last year's goal) - if I do write more, they will be a bonus.

 

In order to keep our goals on track, Tracy and I shall be meeting (and eating teacakes) monthly but now that I've written this all down, it looks kind of scary!

Am I being too ambitious I wonder?