Dear Me,

I think it's safe to say that 2016 didn't turn out quite like we expected. It started out promising and ended up being rewarding in a lot of ways, just not the ways that we were anticipating. The new job, my dream job as it happens, started in January has been really great, but took long hours from the get-go through most of November for me to get up to speed since I took over a position that had been vacant had gotten backlogged for months prior to my starting. That gave me precious little time or energy to work on my writing, and as a result, I have basically nothing to show for the entire calendar year of 2016.

Therefore, my plan is to basically import last year's writing goals into 2017. They are:

1. Get my screenwriting business advice website off the ground. I got the site up and running in the last few weeks of 2016, so my goal is to continue writing blogs and building the platform. My goal is to eventually self-publish writing business books, but success with those will require an audience, and an audience requires time to develop properly. I've already built a modest Twitter following with tweet series on the topic, so this year is about expanding that awareness and building trust so that when I do eventually publish the business books, I've got a built-in audience ready to purchase.

2. Write one pilot and one feature screenplay. Even though I'm starting to focus more on self-publishing, my first love is still screenwriting, and it's where I have most of my connections and have had previous success. I haven't written anything since the rewrites my partner and I did in 2014 for the movie we sold, so it's high time I get back on the horse. I started a pilot in December of last year, so my plan is to finish that pilot in the first couple months of 2017, then write one more feature screenplay at some point before the end of the year.

3. Outline and start working on my novel series. My big plan is to make a push into self-publishing... on the one hand with writing business books... but on the other hand with fiction. Like #1 above, though, I've given a lot of thought to a plan of attack; if there's one thing I've learned from listening to so many self-publishing podcasts, it's that you have to have a plan. Mine is to get a lot of product under my belt before I publish anything, so that I can release a steady, initial stream of releases without stressing about finding the time to keep up a prolific output. I'm still trying to figure out what the end of 2017 will look like and whether I'll have actual book(s) completed or just a lot of detailed prep work, but hey, gotta start somewhere, right?

4. Blog regularly. All of my writing goals are going to require extremely disciplined schedules and output... and if there's one thing I've learned from this year of not writing hardly anything, it's that it takes me a long time to get back into a flow state when I take extended breaks from writing. I have a whole bunch of writing inspiration-type things that I can use for prompts; I'm going to use "Blog Harbor from The Talent Pond"  to post daily prompts (or at least as often as I can), so that I and others can have some motivation to write.

5. Be more active on Writing.Com. I only did 20 reviews last year, and only created one work of fiction. In order to change that, my goal is to average one review per day and enter at least one writing contest per month. One short story per month should be easy enough, and I'm going to try to do much more than that; I miss writing short stories. And I fully acknowledge that the reviewing will be sporadic; there will be days where I review nothing and other days where I review a bunch, but I think 365 reviews for the year is a reasonable goal.

Taken together, this is a pretty ambitious set of goals for 2017, but I like setting ambitious goals. I like setting my sights high... not unrealistically high, but high enough to require A LOT of work to achieve... because even if I fall short, I'll have still accomplished a lot, and if I don't fall short, it'll be one hell of a productive year.

It's now January 2nd, Me, so you better get to work! You've got a lot to accomplish this year.

Sincerely,

Me