During 2012 I blogged a lot. I also wrote a lot. In total I came out to just around 490,000 words. Of that, only 267,000 words were of new fiction. So yes, I blogged a lot. Those blogging words really didn’t detract from my fiction writing and did help me surpass my 450,000 word goal for 2012. I don’t regret anything I did in 2012 and I’m very happy with all the words I got written.

2013 is going to be a little different. I’m not going to try and blog daily. Talking with the Millican, he was right in that I was putting a lot of stress on myself in trying to keep rambling from day to day and it usually wasn’t anything productive and I repeated myself….a lot. My more interesting posts were when I was away for a time and actually had something to say. Therefore in 2013 I’ll be blogging weekly, not daily.

This doesn’t there’ll  be lack of content. Each book I put out this year I will be blogging a chapter per day. If all goes right, this will start with V&A Shipping on 2/1/2012. by 3/1 I hope to have the print book out (the ebook being available on 2/1). If all goes well I’ll be able to provide daily content for a majority of the year. I’ve got a lot of completed works and we I said in 2012, 2013 will see a bunch of those in print while I finish up other works. I intend to be prolific in both new content as well as getting completed content out to readers.

Of course, the first step will be covers, covers, covers. Well, okay, that’s really the second step. The first step will be getting the interiors of the books completed so we know the spine size for the print versions. I’ve done a couple layouts and I’ll be re-learing layout and ebook layout so I can make sure the books look as good as possible. I already have a cover artist that I want to use, I just need to get things ready on my end so I can have everything ready to go before 2/1. It’ll be a busy time.

If you’re a writer I hope you have big plans for the new year. Not just big plans, but goals set out before you that you can track the progress of. I’ve seen some goals like “Complete my first novel”, or “Finish my 4th draft of my first book”. To me, those are quite vague. As I said, my goals have morphed over the holiday season and I’ll be posting those out in the next couple of days. My #1 goal will be to average 1000 words of new fiction per day in 2013. That’ll be 365,000 words of new fiction written. Simple enough spreadsheet. I won’t be counting blogging words into my annual goal anymore. I can ramble with the best of them and that’s not fair for me to count those anymore.

If you’re not a writer, I hope you also have some goals (you can call them resolutions if you like) laid out for 2013. It a new year. A fresh start. Time to get on track with any of your goals. Write them down. Refer to them often. Track your progress. Try to make them specific where possible. If you have a vague goal (lose weight) try to better specify that with “Lose 5% of my body mass” or “Drop down to 20% body fat” and figure out how to track that progress. Just saying I want to lose weight isn’t enough to actually realize that goal. Trust me, I tried. I tracked my writing and saw success. I didn’t track my weight and I’m still as chubby as I ever was.

I hope you had a great holiday season regardless of what and how you celebrate. I ate too much, drank too much, watched more TV than I did the entire year, and I’m all recharged and ready to go. Time was spent with family and friends and I’m looking forward to hitting the new year running at full speed (except when I’m taking a walk, that is).

Speaking of hitting the ground running!

Until Next Week!

WOO WOO!