Looking Ahead: 3 Goals for 2023

I’ve seen a bunch of my author friends posting links to their 2022 roundups/2023 prospectuses. If you’ve been following my blog for any length of time, you know I’m extremely sporadic about posting anything other than book tours or ARC reviews, and that’s one of the things I hope to rectify in 2023. I’ve found the best way for me to commit to something it to post it somewhere where someone could (theoretically) remind me I said I was going to do the things, and that is what this post is all about.

I recently took a webinar about using Goodreads effectively as an author. This led to me subscribing to the webinar host’s newsletter, and she (Alessandra Torre) recently sent out an email about setting goals for 2023. I don’t do resolutions, necessarily, but I thought that writing out three things I hope to accomplish this year might be helpful for me. It would also be a general update about what I’m up to and some exciting things I have in the works. And so without further babbling about what I’m going to write about, I give you … what I’m writing about: three goals for 2023.

Goal 1: Publish Grimmfay

I’ve posted a bit about this, but if you haven’t seen it, Grimmfay is the fairy-tale fantasy circus novel I’ve been sitting on for a few years. Turns out that helping other authors make their publishing dreams real has gotten me motivated to create again. I’m not going anywhere as an editor. I’m just adding writing to my days.

I started doing research and getting things together in order to relaunch my author career (I first dabbled in romance back in 2015), and let me tell you, there are lots of moving parts to this whole self-publishing thing. I still have a lot to do before Grimmfay hits shelves in the fall, and here are some steps I’ve taken, plus ones still to go.

Create author newsletter (signup page coming soon!)
finish Twining (freebie story for newsletter subscribers)
join BookFunnel—complete! (this is a service for distributing said newsletter freebie)
publish Grimmfay side novella (title Once Upon a Broken Sky) in the spring
promote, promote, promote

There are lots of little things involved in lots of these (like finalizing the cover for Broken Sky and integrating BookFunnel to my newsletter successfully). If I look at it all at once, it’s a bit overwhelming, but breaking it down helps a lot.

So, that’s writing—very exciting, and lots more to come about that.

Goal 2: Expand Editing/Writing Services

I’ve been offering fiction editing services for the last three years, and I’ve worked with some truly wonderful books/authors in that time. A lesser-known fact about me is that I’ve been writing study guides and other educational materials for fiction titles through a company called Super Summary. Initially, the study guides were just a job I took while I established myself as an editor, but in the ladder half of 2022, Super Summary wound up becoming a much bigger part of my workload than I expected. I can’t imagine leaving the company now (not that I could before), and I’ve realized that I’ve got a bigger knack for literary analysis than I thought. All this means that, starting in 2023, I’ll be adding services geared toward helping authors develop educational materials to supplement their books. The to-do list to get this off the ground is much less involved than the Grimmfay one:

Revamp services page to reflect new services (and changes to existing services)
Tell people about the changes

That looks so easy by comparison. Granted, revamping my services page always ends up being more involved than I think it’s going to be. Still, it’s a much shorter list.

Goal 3: Blog More

I said I was going to rectify my lack of blogging this year. I have said this before (a lot), but this time, I mean it. I’ll be writing again, so I’ll have interesting Grimmfay things to write about. But I also don’t want to burn out on blogging like I often do, so this to-do list is still in the works. But here’s what I’ve got so far.

Build a blogging plan (ideally, at least 1 post per month of original stuff)
Figure out how to reuse newsletter content in blog posts (while still offering more to the newsletter)
Write as many posts/newsletters ahead of time as possible
Don’t forget to share blogs on social media (I’m terrible about this)

As you can see, this list is a lot of “figure this out,” but that’s okay. Figuring is like the first step of doing. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself.

And, ta-da, three goals for this year. I’m also aiming to post updates as I accomplish some of these things, so keep an eye out for that.

Got your own goals or accomplishments—or a blog post about these things? Drop me a comment. I’d love to see what you’re up to (and if you have a post, to see how other people format these things).