It’s 2021! Happy New Year, everyone!

It’s time to look ahead to the year that will be and what I would like to achieve in it. Now 2020 taught us that the best laid plans of mice and men can really go awry. But I think that as we sadly approach the one year anniversary of this pandemic and our new way of life we’ve finally got the hang of it. We’ve created new routines and adjusted our lives to find a new normal.
We ended 2020 with a glimmer of hope. Two different vaccines received emergency use approval and people have started to receive them While it will still be several more months before a good amount of us have gotten it, it’s a start. We could start to gather again, go out without masks and hug each other before 2022.
So I feel a bit more confident in making…well, maybe not goals, but anticipations for 2020.
I anticipate completing Unexpected Adventures in 2021.
So I did not hit 50,000 words by Christmas Eve as the NaNoWriMo website had predicted. In fact, I saw a drastic decline in my writing totals for it – according to Excel, my average for the month was 560 words a day while my average for November was 950 words a day. But I guess working toward a deadline helped in November. And the holiday season was a busy one even given social distancing.
And I’m still only really about halfway in, if that. So I’m looking at probably another 50,000 words until I’m done. Which if I keep up the 560 words a day average, it will take me 90 days to complete. That’s about three months. So I could be done with the first draft by my birthday.
I anticipate jumpstarting my second Wattpad account.
Yes, I have two Wattpad accounts. One is just for fanfic and I created a second one for my original work. But I haven’t really posted on that one. So I want to change that.
I want to post Unexpected Adventures there and get some feedback from the readers there, maybe cultivate a new audience as my fanfiction audience (however loyal they are) dwindles. And publishing professionals do look to the site to find new work – maybe I’ll luck out.
Publish The Christmas Wish.
I know, I know. I say this every year. But I think this is the year I can finally make it happen.
Update more.
For the longest time, I thought this was going to be “write more.” And I do need to make more time for writing (or rather, have a more defined work day and to hold to that). But I looked back on 2020 and was like “I didn’t have a lot of updates for my fics so I need to pick up my writing pace.”
But then I realized something. I did do a lot of writing in 2020. I didn’t track all of it in my bullet journal but I did it. What I then sucked at was actually editing and updating stories! I probably have a lot of updates that are ready to go up. And so I’m going to spend January figuring that out and setting up a posting schedule to get those down.
Which leads me to…
Whittling down my fanfiction projects.
So, the theme weeks I participated in in 2020 were good to me. I wrote many good stories.
But I didn’t finish most of them, leaving me with even more works in progress.
Which lead me to another realization – I wasn’t updating stories because I was focusing on the ones I wanted to update. But I’m working on so many, none of them are really getting the attention they deserve.
So I need to whittle down all the stories I’m working on. Which is hard because I love working on all of them. But it’s time to end the ones I started during theme weeks so I can focus on the big ones. But I especially plan to finish Second Chance, Best Chance this year. As I continue with the year, I’ll probably make decisions to bring a couple others to completion. I’m stretched too thin right now and I need to roll back for my own sake.
Read one book a month.
Good news – I managed to make my goal last year and read 10 books! So this year, I want to read one book per month for a total of 12.
Those are my anticipations for 2021. I think they’re attainable for the most part and I am eager to see what the next 12 months bring.
I also posted some goals for myself on Patreon. You can check it out here.
How about you? What are you hoping to achieve this year? Let me know in the comments below!