Cheri Lasota, Founder and Principal Editor
Oh yes, it’s that time of year again. You know. When a new year creeps up on you in the night, and the horror that was the previous year gets stabbed in the back. Okay, 2009 wasn’t that bad, but it could have been better, huh?
Publishers were more tight-fisted than usual, agents were dismissive to all but the most lucrative of celebrity bios (or so it seemed to the vast majority of unpubbed writers anyhow), and there was a great deal of fuss over the e-book revolution and the copyright issues regarding electronic rights on backlists. In other e-book news, e-piracy became a bigger issue, and will likely continue along that track.
But many of my colleagues and writer friends had a banner year, some finishing their novels, and four of them (M.M. Bennetts, Paul House, Matthew Dick, and Jason Horger) even publishing their debut novels this past November. I ended up finishing some final revisions on my own novel Artemis Rising, filming a book trailer for said novel, and even composing music for said book trailer. Whew! Now I’m deep into a full-on agent search. Strangely, it was one of my best years ever, in regard to my writing and editing. I very much expect 2010 to be even better.
And that’s what I’m slowly getting to with this post. This is a good time to take stock of what you accomplished in 2009 and decide what you plan to do in 2010. It’s good to look back at what you’ve already done, because you need to:
- See if you accomplished all the goals you set for the year.
- Decide whether those goals were worth your time, effort, and money.
- Congratulate yourself on a job well done (and perhaps treat yourself to a little–or big!–reward).
That last one is very important. If you can’t take joy in what you’ve achieved, then what’s the point?
As for 2010, write your goals down and stick them up on the bathroom mirror or in your calendar. Make some short- and long-term goals. The long-term goals can be a little more…fanciful, shall we say. But the short-term goals you create to get to that long-term one had better be practical, doable, and financially applicable. Every desire accomplished starts with a single step toward an achievable goal.
So what are you going to do for your writing career in 2010? Get on it!