New Year’s Demands 2022

The holidays have come and gone. I spent the majority of December 2021 playing Endwalker. Not something I particularly regret, as long as I don’t look at my sales. Bearing that tragedy in mind, I decided to write up a list of New Year’s demands. Sure, this will read as New Year’s resolutions, but for me it will be a “Get your ass in gear already!” list of requirements for myself in the coming year.

First: The Witch’s Cradle will be finished and sent to my publisher before the end of January. There is little left to do. However, after reading it for the first time in a few months, I found some sections that grated me in odd ways. A fight sequence early on feels loose. A scene wrap-up mid-book is clunky and creates an issue I rather avoid.  Once these hiccups are corrected or at least made to seem better to me, there will be no more delays on my end.

Second: Book 3 will have a workable draft by Spring 2022. I’ve started it. Several chapters and a general narrative vomited themselves to Word documents, but overall, I am not happy with my progress. Self-editing as I plot out details halts the overall effort. I need to stop it and just work.

Third: Next on my list of personal grievances and aspirations is I will establish a better web presence in 2022. I don’t know if it’s simply sloth or what, but I seem to find excuses not to push onto TikTok and other platforms. This has to stop. The same goes for blogging, which is why I am making this list of personal demands into a post.

My lackadaisical and capricious work ethic needs a lot of adjustment. The business is 99.9999999% DYI and I must treat it as such. Popularity, sales, and the like don’t manifest themselves from nothing but a single book. It takes effort and dedication. More so, I must make the time to understand what I am doing. To that end, I will learn about all aspects the job, and not just how to write better. I want to learn how to market and all the other parts of the career because clearly my approach of “I did nothing and it didn’t work” isn’t a good strategy. This leads into my next bullet point.

Fourth: I need to start reading again. Ironically or paradoxically, not sure which, reading and I have a tumultuous relationship. It was something that was expected of me as a child. I rebelled against it when I could and even now, I still unconsciously view it as pseudo requirement/punishment instead of something fun. This demand doesn’t just apply to books, but blogs. Reading how others express themselves will greatly help me do the same.

Fifth: I want to expand or rather resurrect my other artistic talents, namely drawing. When I was a kid, I loved to sketch. I was half way decent by amateur kid standards. I need to move past my usual imperfectionist ego and learn. No matter what I do, I forget to take in account I have to build up experience. It’ll take time and patience to relearn this, but I want to do it.

So here are my New Year’s demands. All of them are achievable and I have no excuses not to complete them.

Happy New Year’s everyone!