It's 2020 - We're Still Here - The World hasn't Ended!!

Well, we made it! The world hasn’t come to a fiery end although it must feel like it in Australia at the moment sadly. We are able to keep smiling here, but only just!

Happy New Year to you all! 2019 was the year that I finally revealed myself as a writer and 2020 is the year in which I am determined to make my name as a professional writer!

Over on my Facebook page (yes, there is a link to it on here) a couple of weeks ago I published a piece about the vision and goals for my writing over the next few years.  I thought I might share them on here as the first post for 2020.

I subscribe to two monthly writing publications, Writers Magazine and Writers Forum. In the January edition (out in December 2019) of Writers Magazine, there were two excellent pieces about setting out a vision covering the next five years and another on setting goals for the next year or so. After reading these a couple of times, I sat down before Christmas and scribbled down a few pages of where I want my writing to take me and here is the outcome.

To write non-fiction and fiction every day, to market myself as a professional writer and to add to my income to enable my wife and me to have a better and more relaxed way of life.

That seems a fairly simple and clear vision. I think if I can achieve that then I will have generated a body of work that I will be able to pitch to Editors and Publishers on a regular basis earning an income at the same time.

From that vision, I was then able to think about my writing goals for the next year or so and here they are:

Short term - in the next 12 to 18 months for my writing to pay fully for a holiday by:

·          Enjoying writing.

·         Completing my writing course.

·         Continually examining worldwide markets for nonfiction opportunities of any kind and grow my submissions to at least one a week.

·         Write at least three letters/fillers to magazines each week.

·         Update Social Media and Blog every week.

·         Compile a collection of short story ideas for competitions.

·         To get myself recognised as a reliable writer via Social Media boosts and Blog updates and any other channels that become available.

·         To keep going with book ideas in the background.

Long Term – 5 years

·         To have my writing to fully support our income.

I think that my vision and goals are very achievable and now that 2020 is here I am excited to get stuck into them. I know it is a bit of a cliché but I want 2020 to give everybody a clear vision of where they will see me as a writer. For writing to become more and more part of my everyday life and when we get to this time next year, I want to be known as a professional writer.

No doubt over on the Social Media pages we will be seeing a lot of clichéd New Year’s resolutions over the next few days, which is why I sat down a couple of weeks ago and thought about these.  I have exciting new challenges coming up in the next few months which I will talk about in future posts. I hope that you will have thought about where you want to be in the future and that the goals that you have set yourselves are as equally achievable as mine are.

To finish this Blog post, may I wish you a very Happy New Year and I hope that 2020 will bring you all that you wish for with happiness and success. Best wishes everybody.