I set some writing goals at the beginning of the year and jotted them down in my diary on January 1st…
For those of you who can’t read my scribble (ie: everyone), they are…
- Launch The End of Magic and get it to as many readers as possible
- Relaunch and sell 10k copies of Back to Reality by Glastonbury weekend
- Self-Publish one or more of the Woodville books
- Find a publisher for Interstellar Mega Blaster
Have I reached them? Sort of… Well… no…
The End of Magic had a great start and is ticking along very nicely in the UK. A fab launch, great reviews and it topped quite a few Amazon charts. I’ve set myself a target to sell a thousand copies in the USA by the end of the year and it’s been tough so far.
Back to Reality didn’t hit 10k, but we did sell over a thousand copies and it’s given the book momentum.
I have finished the first of my Woodville novels (a series about three witches in a Kent village in the Second World War: think Bedknobs and Broomsticks meets Pratchett’s Witches), and I’ve started the second, and I was all set to self-publish, but my wonderful agent read it and it made him cry on the tube (twice… in a good way) and he wants a shot at selling it. He calls it “commercial gold dust”, which is nice.
And Interstellar Mega Blaster is my middle grade science fiction adventure, which has had a few encouraging rejections. All par for the course.
The more astute of you will note that I’ve not achieved any of these goals (so far). Does this mean I’ve failed? Heck, no.
Goals aren’t immovable objects like Stonehenge. You can shift them, squeeze them and even toss them away. And no, that’s not cheating.
Really, it isn’t. Okay, you might reasonably ask, What’s the point in setting goals if you’re just going to keep moving them? Well, if you’re like me, they’re what get you out of bed in the morning to start writing. They’re aspirations, dreams, and even if we fall short we’re still ahead of bugger-all, which is what we started with.
One of the biggest lessons we’ve learned on the Bestseller Experiment podcast is that setting a clear goal, a definite deadline, and making a public declaration are the most effective things you can do to boost your writing.
Be ready for real life to give you a swift kick in the nadgers every now and then, and be just as ready to pounce on the new opportunities that come along, too. Set a goal. Today.
I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.
Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt
Do you have a writing goal? Tell me about it and maybe I can help you make it happen.
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Mark Stay Writes 