2023 Writing Goals and the Cursed Oak Island Novel

All right. Last year’s writing goals… didn’t pan out.

In fact, I’m not sure I accomplished a single thing that was on that list, aside from writing a new novel draft in November for NaNoWriMo.

Part of it is because of the same thing that got in the way of my writing goals the previous year: On An Island of Oaks, my Oak Island horror novel that must share the same curse as the island itself, because no matter how many times I rewrite it, it never seems to get any better.

So even though I thought I would be able to proofread the latest draft and then send it to a beta reader, I realized the current attempt was as soulless as the one before it and started over.

I can’t blame it all on that novel, though. I was also just distracted by other things and devoted less time to my fiction writing than I wanted to. My 2023 writing goals, therefore, are more focused.

By 2024, I will:

• Send out regular batches of queries for my novels in the querying stage.
• Rewrite On An Island of Oaks again.
• Revise any of my other novel drafts.
• Return to On An Island of Oaks and either revise it until it can be sent to a beta reader, or set it aside for the foreseeable future.
• Write at least 5 new short stories, any genre.
• Regularly update side websites and increase traffic to 500+ visits per month.

And as usual, I’ll write a new novel draft for NaNoWriMo in November. It’s funny that the one part that’s a specific challenge is the part I actually got done.

Let’s hope the rest of the list goes better this year. Do you have any writing goals in mind for 2023?