At the start of a new year, I like to look back and assess the goals I set for myself the previous year.
At the outset of 2024, my first goal for the year was to finish the fourth book in the Market Center Mysteries series, tentatively titled Unleashed for Murder. So… That didn’t work out. I stalled out at 50K words, stewed about it for a while and finally hung it up over the holidays. It will come up again in my goals for 2025.
I didn’t get into writing that second book, either.
Another goal from last year: “I’ve decided to give traditional publishing a try with Treadwell House – Sanctuary, since it’s in a genre (or actually a combination of genres) that is currently hot, with a number of current best-sellers. This will mean lots of queries and likely lots of rejections, but that’s par for the course. I’m giving it this year to see what happens.”
So, I did this. I sent out about 50 queries to agents and got some 30 rejections. A number of them never responded at all, but I did receive three requests for the full manuscript, which isn’t actually a bad response rate. All three agents passed on the full, but two of them gave helpful feedback. They said basically the same thing, and that echoed what another reader had said about the story, so I now know what the problem is with the book and how to fix it. Unfortunately the fix requires some extensive rewriting, but I like this story so much, I’m going to do it. I got a small start on it last year, but this, too, will come up again in my goals for 2025.
On the short story front, I wanted to write five new stories but ended up doing only three new ones. I also planned to submit at least five, which I did. In fact, I submitted six and ended up selling two of them. Three were rejected and one is still out.
Still working on the blogging regularly goal. I’ve been trying for two a week and was doing pretty well until we hit Thanksgiving. The holidays are always a hard time to keep up with anything writing-related, but this year I will try to keep up the two a week goal and have more in inventory. And the personal memoir hasn’t really moved forward much, so there’s that to work on, too.
All in all, not my best writing year, but not terrible either. Some success, some failure, more resolve to keep going.
I realize it’s been a while since my last post. The holidays aren’t conducive to keeping up with a blog, but I’m trying to get back in the rhythm!
They didn’t all stay for dinner since some of them had obligations to other sides of the family. Still, eleven were gathered around the dining room table.
It’s that time of year when we’re reminded o be grateful for all the gifts we’ve been given. It seems to me a great idea to stop and take time to bring to mind all the good things we have. But I prefer to try to practice gratitude year-round.
At the end of November, I’ll have stories published in two different anthologies and those two stories are about as different as they could possibly be.
In these days, it’s not a good career move to write whatever your muse suggests (unless it keeps suggesting the same thing over and over). Consistency is the key to building readership, experts in publishing tell us. Give readers what they expect from you, based on stories they’ve read before. Not the same exact thing, but stories in the same genre, with similar themes and characters.
All of the seasons have their good points—even winter, though admittedly it’s my least favorite. Of them all, Fall has my heart. In North Carolina, spring is great but lasts about three weeks before diving into summer. Summer heat and humidity wear out their welcome long before the season moves on.
