I’m not going to look back at my resolutions for last year – I know that most of them never got done, which is why I normally don’t bother.
It is a good time, however, to look back over 2010 and to look forward to 2011.
2010 was a year of missed opportunities, both writing and otherwise. While I did actually complete my first proper, full length novel, my writing output was way down on what it should have been and that single novel should have been more. Moreover, it is still sitting there gathering dust and hasn’t been used yet, something that needs to be rectified.
2011 needs to see an improvement. I’m not going to make any resolutions – because they will just be broken – but I want to see a lot more writing done, both novels and short stories. I’ve got all these ideas floating around not being used.
I’m going to go over the Pure Escapism page and stories and clean it up, make it look more professional. That includes new and improved covers. I have a few that I’ve worked on and that I need to upgrade the rest to that level.
I’d like to try and add at least one new short story to the collection a month – more of the time permits – and of course to try and exchange the reader base. Cleaning up and polishing the pages here and at Smashwords, plus starting to join up on various forums should help with that a bit.
The big one is of course the novels. I’ve got one complete and two half complete. They need to get completed, polished and made ready as soon as I can. And then I have to make a big decision.
Do I try for an agent and publisher, a long and laborious process that has no guarantees of any success?
Or do I try and go independent? There is no success guaranteed there either but there will at least be something to show for it, which is more than would happen if I ended up with no agent. It would require a whole new skillset – that of self marketting – but there have been a number of successes to show it is not impossible.
Mist and Shadows 