Tag Archives: new year goals

How to plan your 2024 (or not).

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green desk and office supplies. text says planning your 2024

We’re already eight days into the New Year, and if you’re still reeling from 2023, I don’t blame you. 2022 was more of a shitshow for me than 2023 was–mostly last year consisted of mental health damage control, not that I did so great in that department. Still, I’m alive, barely, and planning ahead keeps my head above water.

I’m not going to into what I plan to do this year. You already know I’m getting my series ready to go and when that’s done, jumping into writing what I want to publish beginning in the middle part of 2025. I won’t have my series ready for a while yet, and I’ll space the launches out to buy myself some time to write. I’m not in any rush–my rockstars are doing okay and now that my Lost & Found Trilogy is how I want them, I’ll start pushing them. I have plenty of books to market while I get my series finished, and I’m not going to publish them before they’re ready. The insides need to be how I want them and I need my covers to be perfect.

But this is the time of year when people start thinking of all they want to do, and if you’re like me, the call of the PLANNER is like a siren to sailor . . . much too enticing to ignore. You know what I mean, all those cute 2024 spiral-bound, sticker-filled planners on every endcap of every store daring you to be a better person than you were last year.

green flat desk. text says, you don't need a new plan for next year. you need a commitment. Seth Godin

This is also the time of year where everyone has gone over what they did the year before. There are a lot of successful people out there, and their stories (and screenshots) of all they achieved can make you feel like crap. You don’t have to feel sorry for yourself if you run into stories like that, and you can do what those planners dare you to do–be better. Perhaps not a better person entirely (there’s probably no need for that unless you’re a despicable human being and if that’s the case a planner won’t help you anyway), but if you had plans last year that you didn’t get around to for whatever reason, maybe this year is going to be your year. Of course, if you’re like me, every year is going to be “your year” and last year was the first year publishing where I actually felt like I made a little headway in that department.

I don’t buy planners anymore, no matter how pretty they are (and there are some gorgeous ones out there). I don’t want to waste the money or the paper. The last planner I bought was a really cute one covered in cartoon cats . . . at the end of 2021. But the problem I have with planners is that I don’t need one. I know what I want to get done and then I just do it. You might be asking, “What witchcraft is this?” but the simple fact is I like writing and publishing and I don’t need the extra push to get words down or books published. I have a little trouble with posting on social media. I still haven’t found anywhere I like to hang out to talk books–you all know how I feel about Twitter and I’m not going to add any new platforms like Threads or BlueSky if I can’t make what I already have work (my experiment with TikTok was a flop, but I haven’t completely given up). But when it comes to planners, I doubt even the prettiest one would help me anyway. What am I going to write, “Post to Social Media” at the top of every day? Very easy to ignore, especially if you don’t know what to post, which is what most people face. If I want to challenge myself, I can commit to posting on Instagram and my Facebook author page every day and see how that goes. After publishing eleven books, finding content shouldn’t be a problem, it’s just taking a half an hour off the top of every day and “getting it out of the way” but that’s a terrible way to think about it and not at all conducive to enjoying reaching out to readers.

I do have to keep track of some things, though, and what I’ve started doing is buying a large grid calendar from Walmart. It has big enough spaces that allow me to write in the squares giving me a month-at-a-glance view. It’s not elegant, but it gets the job done.

https://www.amazon.com/Large-Grid-Blue-2024-Calendar/dp/B0C3WTDKYB

Sometimes the months are sparse–if I don’t have a release or a promo planned then they’re going to be. Sometimes they’re busy if I scheduled a promo and want to remind myself of when it is so I can set up ads, schedule social media, and send out a newsletter. Authors in my writing groups are putting up their calls for round robins and newsletter swaps. A calendar would be a great way to keep track of all that. I don’t have enough books to join in round robins in addition to the promos I buy through Written Word Media, so I’m not up for doing any of that right now. (Most of the round robins I see your books are supposed to be free and I don’t have enough to put up a free book every month and not enough free days to only do a select few.)

The calendar is great to keep track of launches and things like when I put my book up on Booksprout and when they’ll drop out and into KU, and when my paperbacks go live (thanks to the new KDP scheduler), that kind of thing. It can at least give me quick visual which is what I want.

Planners are good for writing down your daily activities, and if you have a lot going on, then maybe that’s what you need. But if you don’t feel like writing, putting “2,000 words on my WIP” in your daily reminder isn’t what’s going to get your ass in your chair. That is something you’re going to have to figure out on your own, pretty planner or no. I know there are some authors who can’t get anything done unless they have their books on preorder, and if that’s what you need to light a fire under you, then go for it. I think that would cause me more anxiety than anything. When my books are on preorder, I only put them up for a couple of days, long enough to get some ads going and grab the buy-link, and then they go live. I have all my files ready to go. I don’t announce launches until my books are done because you just never know what could happen and I don’t like making promises I can’t keep.

There are a few planners that authors swear by like Sarra Cannon and her HB90 system. You can get the information here on her website: https://heartbreathings.com/tag/hb90-method/, or look at the product on Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1603823270/hb90-method-planner-q1-2024-printable

I purchased this planner by Audrey Hughey a couple years ago thinking that I would dive in and change my ways. It looked great and there was no reason why it wouldn’t have worked for me. It’s spiral bound like a lot of daily planners are, and that’s really convenient. The price has gone up a bit, but anything made with paper has, so that’s not a surprise. You can get information about her system on her website here: https://www.audreyhughey.com/ and you can look at her planner on Lulu (she prints there for the spiral binding option): https://www.lulu.com/shop/audrey-hughey/the-2024-authors-planner/paperback/product-p6djwd6.html?page=1&pageSize=4

Honestly there are so many planners out there–and geared toward writers–but only you can decide what is going to best fit your needs and what those needs are going to be to get your butt moving to get your goals accomplished.

If you had a bad year in 2023, you can turn it around. In my experience, success breeds success and the more you accomplish, the more you will accomplish. I think one of the most important things you can do for yourself is to have a couple of accountability partners, but not just anyone. Someone willing to take the risk of making you mad telling you when you’re lagging behind and falling onto excuses. Everyone should have a friend who won’t lie, but sometimes you just don’t want to hear it. If that’s truly the case, maybe find a successful indie whose career you want to emulate. With social media, it’s easy to see what they do. Check Amazon and see how often they publish. Sign up for their newsletter, follow their Facebook author page. Romance authors release frequently. We have to–we have to compete with the output of other authors and we’re fighting against every algorithm known to man. I know releasing so many books last year was one of the keys to my best year. I may never be able to release that many at one time again, but hopefully the momentum never slows.

green flat desk. text says, action is the foundational key to all success--pablo picasso

Whatever you have to do, find your process and do it.

Even if that includes a pretty planner.

2022 Goals, Plans, Process, and Learning about Yourself.

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When we start a new year, we always have a ton of plans. In the past two years, a lot of those plans have been derailed by COVID, but we’ve (hopefully) made the best of it.

I’ve been struggling lately to figure out how I want my publishing schedule to go moving forward. I’ve read a lot about consistency, not only what (sub)genre you write in, or how long your books are, but also when you release them. I’ve seen firsthand with this blog how posting consistently can build a readership, and I don’t think it’s any different for books. So, I’ve been trying to figure out what will work for me and create a schedule that I can maintain going forward for years to come.

The problem is, you need to know a lot about yourself before you can plan out something like that. Here’s what I’ve learned by taking a look at how I’ve worked and how I’ve spent my time in the last two years, which, to be fair, isn’t as accurate as it could have been because of the pandemic, and I know others are in the same situation. Still, I’ve been working from home for the past year, and my health issue aside, things have calmed into a lifestyle that will be constant for the foreseeable future. This is a list of discoveries I’ve put together that will hopefully help me develop good work habits that I can keep going.

  1. I have to shower and do my hair and makeup for the day–even if I’m not going anywhere. When I started working from home, it took me a week or two to realize that I can’t get anything done in my pajamas or skip taking a shower. To feel professional, I need to look somewhat professional. My kids make fun of me and my sister teases me, but I just feel better. I don’t have a desk and do a lot of my writing on my bed (space and privacy are hard to come by in our tiny little apartment) but I’m more productive and not prone to take a nap, either, which can be a time suck because when I nap, I nap. I’ve stopped trying to figure this out and I just go with it. The first thing I do after I take my daughter to school is shower, and I always get ready for work as if I’m going into the office, even though I’m just logging into my computer in the bedroom.
  2. I don’t like writing fiction in the morning. Not because I can’t function before noon, but because I find my creative spark in the evenings. I’ve learned, over time, that if I didn’t have to get up in the mornings for anything, I’d probably write from about 8pm until 2am, and sleep in the next morning. Because I can’t do that, I have to work around it. I usually write in the afternoons from noon to 3pm, and this is when I get a lot of my writing done on my days off. I also write as soon as dinner is over (in the winter, this works especially well as it’s already dark by 5pm–I love to write in the dark!) until I have to go to bed around 10pm. Knowing this is helpful because I can use the mornings after I get my daughter to school and shower to blog, create ads, and submit my books for promos. I can do administration stuff before noon and turn on my creative brain for the rest of the day.
  3. I can write a 85k book in about six to eight weeks. That’s not bad (some authors are a lot faster), but I’ve never timed how long it takes me to do the rest. And by “the rest” I mean edit it, get the feedback from betas I need to feel good about the story, format it, create the cover, and load everything (ebook, paperback, large print) into KDP. In the years I’ve been publishing, I have come to the frustrating realization that editing will always take longer than I think it will, and creating the cover always takes a long time because I need to research what’s trending in the market, find the stock photos I would need, and experiment with fonts, placement, etc. I don’t want to hire out, and I will avoid it for as long as possible. So, I can write a book in six weeks, but the editing and the rest of the production can also take another six weeks. This is something I definitely need to know so I never miss a deadline, self-imposed or otherwise, or a preorder date.
  4. I have no problem getting things done, but giving myself daily to-do list is always going to be a waste of time. I’m good with things I need to get done on a macro-level. “Finish writing the book this month” is a good example of how I can put something huge on my to-do list and get it done, but breaking things down into micro-level daily tasks will never work. This is why I’ve never been able to work with planners. This was actually a huge revelation for me. Like today, I didn’t plan on doing a blog post. I was going to write on my book all day, but this idea popped into my head, and I decided to write the core of it down for Monday. I think I can work around this mental block, and I’m going to plan weekly and monthly goals. I’ll plan out what I want to do for the week, say write 20,000 words on my WIP, do a blog post, and search for stock photo models, and then, instead of trying to force myself into a daily schedule, write down at night before I go to bed what I’ve managed to accomplish. Hopefully, if I plan Monday to Monday, by Sunday night I’ll have everything crossed off my list and I can start a new list for the following week.
  5. I will always write before anything else. This is a such a big pro that I hate to turn it into a con. I mean, if you don’t have books, you can’t do the rest, so I’ve always given myself a pass when it comes to getting other things done. I don’t like writing blurbs. I like creating covers, but I don’t like having to put together the full wrap for a paperback, or creating a separate full wrap for IngramSpark, or loading to either KDP or IngramSpark. Vellum makes formatting easy, but it’s still not writing and passing it off to a formatter would only cause more work because I need to be able access to my files to change back matter when necessary. On the other hand, if you’re not willing to suck it up and do the parts you don’t like, no one will ever be able to read your books because they’ll be held captive on your computer. What this means going forward is I’m going to have to start rewarding myself for the non-writing tasks that get done when a book is in production and after it’s published. I don’t take time to celebrate, and because I love the writing part of it so much, I don’t take much of a break between projects, either.
  6. My tunnel vision will always make things harder. I work on one book and one book only. I know how much faster my schedule could go if I could edit one book in the early afternoon and write on a different WIP in the evening. Tunnel vision is another area where it’s too good of a pro to be considered a con. I never EVER get distracted by shiny object syndrome. Yes, I can get antsy toward the end of writing a book, look forward to new characters and a new plot, especially if I’m writing a series, but I have never abandoned a WIP to write something new. I will finish a book and edit it and only then move on to the next set of characters. Unfortunately, like I said, this can slow me down, and I’ll have to make peace with that.

It’s all fine and good to have goals, but if you don’t understand your own processes and personal limitations, it will be difficult for you to reach those goals. You might have noticed I don’t have many external obstacles. My children are older (my son is 22 and still lives with me and does the bulk of the chores around the apartment, and my daughter is 16 and self-sufficient) so they don’t take up much time. I’m divorced. I work from home now which has eliminated driving time to and from work. I don’t have much stress. I like my job, and I don’t have many commitments besides movie night with my sister on Tuesdays. If you have little kids or you have a demanding day job, you’ll have to adjust your goals accordingly. I don’t watch much TV. If you’re juggling three or four different shows, you’ll have to work around that lost writing time. Looking at your daily schedule, your weekly schedule, and your monthly schedule can give you an idea of where your time goes and how you can create attainable goals for yourself.

I did buy a planner for myself, and what prompted me to take a look at what I have going on internally that could interfere with a writing/producing/publishing schedule is Elana Johnson’s book, Writing and Marketing Systems.

I had to buy the planner, it was just too cute not to. While I’ve tried to use planners before, I’ve never succeeded, but hopefully using it in a different way will help.

It’s frustrating to work so hard and not feel like you’re going anywhere. I want to climb out of my rut and start making some things happen. What are you going to do for 2022 to dig yourself out of your own rut? Let me know!

Until next time!

Happy New Year! A quick update on my goals for 2020.

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Happy New Year!

pexels-photo-3401900.jpeg

Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

Social media has been inundated with lists, lists, and more lists. I won’t bother with the best books I’ve read of the decade, or what all I’ve accomplished or not accomplished. I’m not going to bother ruminating about how 2019 was a dumpster fire in every way (actually, it wasn’t for me) or the million ways I’m going to make 2020 “my year.”

It’s silly to use January 1st to reinvent yourself. You are who you are, and a new date on the calendar won’t help. But that’s not to say I don’t have a few goals I’d like to tackle this year.

photo of a woman thinking

Photo by bruce mars on Pexels.com

In past blog posts I’ve written about the slow sale of my books. It’s difficult to keep up your spirits when you work so hard for so little in return. But this year I’m going to take responsibility for some of that. Instead of being a trout fighting my way upstream, I need to stop resisting and go with the flow.

Part of that is realizing I’m not doing 100% of what I need to do to sell my books, and I have to admit that part of the reason is I’m scared. I don’t have faith in my Tower City trilogy. It’s the first three books I count in my contemporary backlist and somehow I’ve gotten it into my head that they are not good. Book one was chopped and diced to the point I probably should have written it over from the start. But the reviews indicate they’re pretty good, and I should get over the idea that they’re not. Sure, I may have gotten strong as a writer since I published them, but I have to stop thinking they’re bad books.

I have a few reviews of Don’t Run Away on Amazon, and I remember this is the first review from someone I didn’t know. It was a proud moment–there’s even a ToC in it now thanks to formatting with Vellum:

Screen Shot 2020-01-02 at 6.57.06 PM

I need to have faith in my ability and not be scared when people read my work.

I also need to start a newsletter. I’m not very active online. My unanswered notifications on Twitter are months old. I don’t update my Facebook author page, and all I post on Instagram are pictures of my cats. (As cute as they may be, they don’t sell my books, dammit!) I need a hub for my readers. Either a newsletter or an active reader group on Facebook where I’ll actually post something, probably both. I know I’m doing myself a disservice not having a newsletter. This means focusing my attention on readers and not spending time on Twitter or using Canva to make pretty Instagram posts the same 10 people will like over and over again.

This year I also want to do more networking in the romance/indie-publishing space. I’ve been writing and publishing for three and a half years. I’ve made a lot friends in that time, lost some too, and some of the writers I know have been in the same place they were three years ago. I’m constantly learning about the industry, always listening for the new thing, I like listening to podcasts and keeping up with industry news. I need to start chatting with like-minded people who understand the value in that. Who treat their writing like a business and put in their 20-40 hours of writing time a week. Writing is really lonely. You’re by yourself with a laptop for hours and hours at a time and I need to find peers who know what that’s like and still do it anyway.

group of people standing beside body of water

Photo by bruce mars on Pexels.com

I like the phrase, “Never be the smartest person the room.” I also feel like lately I’m the only writer in the room, and it will be nice for that to change.

These aren’t life shattering revelations, but they’re what I need to focus on moving forward if I want to start selling the books I spend so much time writing.

It’s not a secret that these next few months are a little hard on me. Winter in Minnesota is long and dreary. It’s hard to want to go anywhere because the temperatures are horrible and the roads are constantly clogged with snow. It takes a lot of energy just to get through a day with no sunshine, and I need to focus on releasing my wedding series and appreciating the little things while I wait for warmer temps and the sun to come back.

I do have a selling/marketing summit in May that I’ll be attending with David in Nashville, and I’m looking forward to that. No matter how long winter seems, spring always comes back around.

Just keep moving forward the best you can, and better times will come.

Tell me your goals for 2020. How do you plan to move forward? Let me know!

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