As goes the old cliche, a new year has brought forth a new beginning. In my life, that has manifested itself in several ways. Most notably, however, is the sudden resurgence in my focus on my budding writing career. Since I was a child, I’ve wanted to publish stories. About ten years ago, I started the process of researching the publication process and got all the way to the point where I felt comfortable sending out query letters and looking for an agent… But then, before I mustered up the courage to actually click send, I chickened out and went back to “just” writing.

Then The Great Writing Exodus of 2014 happened and I basically dropped off the face of the writing planet, disappeared into the abyss of full time job (and then full time career) having, and basically walked away from my unrealized goal.

It happens all the time; people move on and life happens to all of us. But there was something that always called me back to writing. As December was coming to an end, I knew that I was going to make this year my year to return to writing and decided to do so by going back to the first writing community that I ever loved: WriYe. And so… Now that we’re all up to speed, I’m here to deliver to you, the January WriYe Blog Circle post!

What’s your WriYe Word Count goal for 2019? Why did you choose it?
My WriYe Word Count goal for 2019 is 250,000 words. I broke each month up with a different goal, depending on how busy I expect my life to be at that particular time of year (since June / July is much easier to write a ton of words than October / November, for example), but overall, by the end of the year, I would like to have a total of 250,000 new words overall. I went with this goal because it was small enough to not be terrifying and overwhelming, but still large enough that I can’t slack so much that I stop halfway through the year because I’m not feeling challenged. It seemed like the perfect amount to keep me productive and ease myself back into the writing world.

What are your plans for the year? What do you want to accomplish with your writing?
The biggest plan I have for the year is part of the reason why this blog even exists — I’m on the road towards publication. I want to pinpoint which of the two completed novels would make a best first / breakout novel (currently leaning towards Sunshowers in Bluebell Fields), editing it to perfection, and then hopefully finding someone to represent it and love it in the same way I do.

Part of that relates to my other plans for the year, which is creating this blog / website, my official author Twitter and Facebook profiles, and just basically maintaining my professional writing life throughout the entire year and really honing in on my skills.

As for what I’d like to accomplish, it’s probably pretty easy to guess that traditional publishing is the route I’m pursuing and I’d like to continue to grow towards that goal all year long.