New Year’s Goals

I always get a charge in the fall, as if the new school year is starting. (Admission: I haven’t been back to school in a very long time.) I get another jolt of ambition at New Year’s. Of course, the things I expect to accomplish in the course of a year don’t always happen, but as long as I keep nudging all the pieces forward, I’ll finish them in the end.  Right?

This year, I aim to finish another 3 books. I’m going to state this right out in public, so I can get that accountability jolt, too. There’s no drawback if I get distracted by something shiny or lucrative, but I would like to see these projects completed. So…goals, not resolutions.

  1. A collection of personal essays tentatively called This Morbid Life. I envision this as a collection of stuff I wrote for Morbid Curiosity magazine, for the zines File 13 and Zine World and Enterrupted, for Scoutie Girl and Jane and various magazines online. I bought the cover image last year from Lynne Hansen, so now I just have to assemble a book that will do it justice.

2. The Death of Memory was my first completed novel: the origin story for Alondra DeCourval, the witch about whom I’ve written so many stories. I keep going back to the book, trying to polish it so I can unleash it on the world. This is finally the year. I really need that book done, so I can move on to tell more of Alondra’s adventures.

3. Writing in Cafes is the project that’s farthest from finished. I imagine it as a workbook for writers that will help people discover how they work best and what they need to do to support their own creative processes. I think it will be a fun project to work on, too.

In and around all that, I’d like to finish the Alondra novella set on the Farallon Islands. I’d also like to write a handful of new stories — let’s say 5, shall we?

And I want to do a better job selling the books I have stashed away in my garage.

And I want to increase the readership of my monthly newsletter.

This year especially I feel like creativity can save us. We need the inspiration and escape of writing/making/creating things. What have you envisioned for this year?

If you’d like to help support my work, please buy me a cup of tea. I would be really grateful!

Buy me a cup of tea!

About Loren Rhoads

I'm the author of 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die and Wish You Were Here: Adventures in Cemetery Travel, as well as a space opera trilogy. I'm also co-author of a series about a succubus and her angel. In addition to blogging at CemeteryTravel.com, I blog about my morbid life at lorenrhoads.com.
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4 Responses to New Year’s Goals

  1. Awesome goals. I wish you good luck on all of them. I do have specific goals, but basically I plan to write more and better than I did last year.:-)

  2. Could I really buy you a cup of tea? Is the link legitimate?

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