Anne of Green Gables once said: “Tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it…yet.” Or at least, L.M. Montgomery put the words in Anne’s mouth.

I like to think about this quote in terms of the new year. Isn’t it a wonderful thought that this is a whole new year with hundreds of days yet to live, with no mistakes or catastrophes in it yet?

I don’t know about you, but the end of last year was rough. Bad thing after bad thing happened, to the point where sometimes I just looked up and asked, “Really?” A lot of times I thought it was more than I could bear.

But here I am, and I’m so relieved that it’s a new year. I learned a lot about being a writer last year, and I was so excited to create a series of goals for 2022 so that I could put all of that knowledge into practice.

As I’m still a rather new freelancer and indie author, a lot of what I do is trial and error. I’m still growing my business and my audience, and I learn from every new venture I delve into. So, when creating goals for this year, I took into consideration everything I learned from last year from how you all responded, what I enjoyed, and what I want to do more of.

Why share my goals with you? Because this blog is all about growing as writers together! I hope that by sharing my goals for this year, you’ll get excited for what’s coming up and be inspired to create your own writing goals.

So without further ado, here are the general ideas I’m sticking to when it comes to my writing goals next year:

1. Writing More

Towards the end of last year, I didn’t write too much of my own stuff. I spent a lot of time trying to advertise and grow my audience, and while a lot of that time was well invested, this year, I’m prioritising actual writing.

Practically, this means that I’ve planned out all of the stories I want to write and publish this year. In order to have time to do that, I’ve decided to cut down on some of the other things that take up more time.

The first thing is the blog, which I will certainly continue posting on regularly! However, as of right now, I’ll be sticking to two original posts a week, as well as sharing helpful and relevant posts from other bloggers! These posts will be centred around how to grow as a writer and a freelancer. Most likely, there will be less of my fiction writing posted on the blog – and while that seems counterproductive to this goal, hang in there! I’ll explain in a bit.

Last year, I also spent a lot of effort trying to grow an audience on Twitter. Many people say nowadays that you need to have a big Twitter presence in order to be a successful indie author and/or land an agent/publisher, but I’ve decided that right now, Twitter is frankly a waste of my time. I’d rather be spending the time expanding my portfolio than agonising for 20 minutes over a tweet no one will even read. The problem is that I simply don’t like traditional social media, and I never have (apart from the first few years of Facebook, because who didn’t love Flair boards?) My thoughts don’t seem to fit within Twitter, or any other social media for that matter, and in the end, I felt like all I was doing was advertising, which didn’t get me anywhere.

Which brings me to…

2. Growing on Other Platforms

Ko-fi is one of my favourite platforms! It’s an easy and wonderful way for audiences to interact with and show love for creators. I created a Ko-fi last year, and while I tried posting regularly on there, I barely got any traffic. However, I’ve determined that Ko-fi, as opposed to Twitter, is something worth investing in, as it specifically aligns with my writing goals and directly allows me to support myself with my writing!

That’s why this year, you’ll see a lot more from me on Ko-fi. I’ll be overhauling my page to make it even better, and you’ll be seeing more of my original writings on there.

Next up is LinkedIn. I have a pretty basic account set up with a few connections, but once again, I just haven’t been able to keep up with posting because it’s not something I enjoy or excel at. But LinkedIn also aligns with my goals as a writer, and it also has the potential to connect me with others who can help me along in my journey and/or are going on this writing journey with me. Already, with the little I’ve done on LinkedIn, I’ve been able to work with some awesome people who have discovered my profile. I want to find a good balance between keeping up with my LinkedIn and not spending too much time posting on it.

Finally, I’m looking into other newer platforms such as Simily where I can easily and directly make a living by simply posting the writing I put so much time, love, and effort into.

By growing on other platforms, I hope to move my stories into a space where I can directly earn from them. While I love sharing my stories for free (and still plan on doing so for now – some of these platforms even allow me to earn money while my audience pays nothing!), as an indie writer, I’m trying to discover more ways I can earn from doing what I love, so that I can do more of what I love!

3. Learning

While I consider myself to be pretty proficient as a writer, I know that I always have more to learn! In addition to doing lots of writing, I also want to do a lot of learning this year. I hope to take classes, attend conferences, and read more from great writers in order to hone my craft.

And this doesn’t just have to do with strictly writing, either – I know that I still have quite a bit of work to do when it comes to growing my “brand” (whatever that means) to the point where I can be a successful indie author. I have no idea what I’m doing when it comes to business, and while it’s not my favourite thing to learn about, I know that I need to begin closing that gap in my knowledge.

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And there you have it! Those are my main goals for this year. I have them all broken down specifically so I can refer back to them, but I won’t bore you with that. This post gives you an idea of my priorities and how I’m learning from my successes and failures last year. It also gives you an idea of what to look forward to: mainly, more stories!

And if you really want to get more stories, writing tips, exercises, resources, and more, subscribe to my monthly newsletter! Later this evening, I’ll be sending out an exclusive excerpt of a brand new multi-chapter story only to subscribers.

I encourage you to think about your goals for the year ahead, whether it has to do with writing or something else. Writing out specific and measurable goals is really helpful. You’ll feel so accomplished and encouraged when you can check something off that list!

Happy New Year!

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