Thursday, January 1, 2015

2015 - A New Year


There is an increasing trend for people to denigrate the idea of making New Year's resolutions. This makes no sense to me as I don't see anything wrong with taking stock in the new year and looking at what we have achieved and what we still want to achieve. "Resolutions" is just another word for "goals." What is wrong with making goals? 

Some of the nay-sayers point out that many people make these resolutions and then forget about them. While it's sad that they forget their resolutions and don't make any strides towards achieving them, that doesn't make resolution-making (or goal-setting) as a whole a bad thing. Some people are better at sticking to their goals and working towards their goals than others - It doesn't matter what time of the year you set your goals; this fact will still be true.

So if you are making new year's resolutions (and it doesn't matter if you call them resolutions, goals or a to-do list), just keep one thing in mind while you do; these goals you are making are meant to be worked towards throughout the year, not just set and then forgotten.

Here are my writing-and-publishing-related goals for 2015:

1. Edit, revise, re-write and otherwise make my novel "Ink" ready for publication and publish it.

2. Edit, revise, re-write, add pictures and otherwise make my non-fiction book "The 28 Day Fitness Challenge" and its accompanying food journal ready for publication and publish it.

3. Edit, revise, re-write, illustrate and otherwise make my collection of mermaid-themed stories "Mermaid's Muse" ready for publication and publish it.

4. Grow Melusine Muse Press. (Below are possible ways to do so, in no particular order.)
   4a. Buy a large amount of ISBNs.
   4b. Get the website created.
   4c. Publish novels by others, not just in anthologies.
   4d. Publish at least two picture books.
   4e. Find out what things would work more efficiently when crowd-sourced.
   4f. Work on press releases.
   4g. Publish through venues other than just Amazon/CreateSpace/Kindle.
   4h. Hire others to work for Melusine Muse Press.
   4i.  Check out small indie company grants.
   4j.  Crowdsourcing?
   4k. Registering the company.

5. Work on my Daughters of Poseidon series. Get the first draft of book one in the series written.

6. Edit, revise and rewrite middle-grade book "The Day My Shadow Tried to Kill Me."

7. Find and convince some amazing published authors, agents and editors to guest post for this year's Chapter Book Challenge.

8. Get all of the 2015 anthologies published no later than November 1st. (Finish publication of the two remaining 2014 anthologies - "SuperHERo Tales: Volume Two" (Melusine Muse Press) and "The Superhero Chronicles" (Your Kids' Creations) within January.)

9. Help more kids with their writing and publication goals through Your Kids' Creations. Maybe coordinate something with local schools. (Also get a new logo created for the site.)

10. Schedule my writing time into set periods of time throughout the day and do not deviate.