I used to make goals. Every New Year's Eve I would cheers to get a book published (or at least contracted because I wasn't naive enough to think it could all go down in a year--until it did). Each year, it would not happen, most years for lack of trying because life is super busy and sometimes damn hard. Time went by. It became a joke, and then I decided to stop saying it in 2017. I entered 2018, with no goals in mind. I decided to let impulse lead me, which my brain loved. I entered a submission contest for a novelette that had to follow a prompt. I was one of eight authors chosen. This led to getting a novel published by the same publisher, which led to more publications through a second publisher. The point is, the minute I dropped the pressure of attaining an actual goal and ran with my impulsive nature to write 16k just for a contest, it changed everything. An impulse submission was the water that broke the dam holding me back.
So I'm anti-goal, and it worked in 2018 and 2019, but not so much during the pandemic. With ADHD and no goal, mega stress, and very little time, I started too many things and only finished a few. So for 2022, do I make goals or let my ADHD take me places?
My plan is a bit of both. In 2022, I'll have book edits with my publisher, just 1 book. After that, I'm pretty free. My husband and I plan on dabbling with our children's book projects, but it relies on him to illustrate and he has little time. I'm not putting pressure on that goal. I have a series to finish, another with spinoffs, and a third I don't want to submit until most of it is done for a rapid release. The problem with that is when I try to focus on one series as a goal, the others pushed themselves to the forefront of my mind. Without any looming deadlines, I don't think 2022 has goals. Except for loose ones (not in any particular order because... well, I'm me.
1. Do an event to sell books a month (just put this there because I'm in a group that set the first 4 events for me--they are AMAZING)
2. Work on all these series, maybe submit 1 or 2? Who knows?
3. READ. I went from being a 25-books/year reader (because work, writing, and motherhood limit time) to less than 10/year during the pandemic. I'm going to aim for a minimum of 12 because still in the pandemic so...
Overall, I feel like I thrive on taking chances and not setting stringent goals, but loose aims. This way, I never get upset when something doesn't happen by a certain time.
Let's see what happens in 2022!