Yes, Happy New Year, as this is the first, if belated, post of 2020.
For anyone wondering, I have four resolutions for the year, which seems a reasonable amount. In no particular order:
Shop Around At Least One Book For Publishing
This one is a biggie for me, what with never having done anything like it before. It’s a collection of stories rather than one book-length one (as that seems to keep eluding me), and it’s stuff I’ve been sitting on for a while, but it’s evergreen material and I think I’ve at least found a place to approach about it. How to do that is a whole other matter. Writing effective material is one thing. Effectively pitching it to a publisher is a whole other thing, so I’ve got to get up to speed on that.
Shop Around At Least One Tabletop Game For Publishing
This is another big one. Briefly, I’ve loved tabletop games for a couple of decades or so, and when a friend brought over a game to play that a friend of his had made and had published, it finally struck me that hey, tabletop games are things that everyday people can just… like… make and get produced. Who knew? Since then, I’ve dabbled in various tabletop game ideas–board- and card games–and I’ve got one now that not only seemed like an interesting idea, but worked in theory, I saw through to making some beta testing samples of, I’ve been doing some playtesting with among friends, and still seems to be holding up. Some final tweaks are doubtless en route, but it’s got a lot of promise. So as above, once I figure out how to pitch games to game producers, that one will be shopped around, as well.
Read More Than I Did This Year
I’m well aware that I’m pushing my luck with this one, because my 2019 total of 40 books was helped in no small part by our summer road trip, when my wife or I would be reading aloud for hours at a time. That’s reading time I don’t normally get, and almost certainly won’t get this year, so I’ll have to step up my personal reading game to keep up.
Write More Than I Did Last Year
This one should perhaps have been more specifically writing story/script content that I actually finish, as I’ve been writing longhand in my notebook like a beast recently. But as handy (nay, necessary) as writing notes on, and development for, ideas is very important, it’s not writing material, per se. That’s the goal for this one.
I also did have the usual Need To Eat Better, and Need To Get More Exercise, and Need To Lose Weight/Get More Fit, but while those are of course genuinely important and will be worked on, I wanted to highlight the main goals of the year.
More details on all of the above, for better or worse, as the year progresses.