As I promised – a lot more for my benefit than for yours – I’m going to check in at the end of each month to see how my progress is going on my New Year’s resolutions. You know how it is, especially for me, a bit of external pressure knowing that someone out there might be wondering if I’m keeping up my promises or not really helps me to do it.

The great news is that so far, the progress I’m making on my resolutions is pretty excellent! Considering we’re only one twelfth of the way through the year, I’m pretty impressed, if I do say so myself. Naturally, being “stuck” at home by having to leave teaching early has given me a bit more time to keep up with these things (if you missed the NY post, I’m expecting a baby in April, and I wasn’t able to stand up long enough to teach any more! – and tragically my school got shut down last week anyhow, so I would’ve become unemployed if I’d stayed). Anyway, without further ado, I’ll review my goals …

1. Complete my Bratislava novel to submit to a contest. DONE! I submitted this to Amazon’s contest last week. I would still like to revise it further (I’m really beginning to understand the phrase “art is never finished, only abandoned”) and unless an Amazon miracle happens, perhaps submit it to the Vogel in May. So technically, this goal is complete, but I’d like to do more.
2. Finish revising Kanako’s Foreigner and submit to agents. Okay, I’ve done absolutely nothing on this goal yet. Although I have been reading a couple of good books about novel writing to improve my technical skills, especially when it comes to revising.
3. Increase readership of this blog. Doing well. Just looked at my monthly stats and January was actually a record month for the number of visitors to Becoming A Fiction Writer. Onwards and upwards, I say!
4. Plot and complete my third novel. Obviously, I haven’t gone and done this whole goal in a month. But I have finished the month with a great brainstorm and an already quite detailed outline of the next thing I want to write – although it’s a novella rather than a novel, but I think that still counts. Put it this way, I’m pleased with the progress. I’m going to try out doing much more detailed plotting and planning on this one and see if it is a way I like to write.

Anyway, I think I’m doing pretty well so far. We’ll see if I can keep this up or not. Wouldn’t it be great if I had to set a whole new set of goals half way through the year? Oh, but there’s that baby coming along … maybe not.

How are you doing with your writing goals (or other goals?) for the year?