Tuesday 11 November 2014

My Writing Failures of 2014 and Writing Plans for 2015

image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos Stuart Miles
Because the New Year is fast approaching (Holy crap! November already?), I've been doing a lot of thinking about what I've achieved and what I've failed to implement this year with my writing, and what I plan to do next year.

And what I also thought was that I don't need to wait till next year to implement my plans/goals for 2015, I can start them straight away.

Why not?

I know of one blogger who begins his New Year resolutions on his birthday every year because he considers this to be the start of a new year in his life instead of January 1st, which makes perfect sense.

But we really don't need to wait for any particular date to start making better changes and implementing our goals for the next 12 months.

And here is what I was thinking.

First of all I was thinking about my goals for 2015.

What I want to do next year is write a minimum of 12 e-books and an equal number of free e-books. And by minimum I mean extremely minimum, as in, worst-case scenario, because I'm hoping to write many more than that.

I also want to create a new niche website. I have some really exciting plans for it already.

I want to set up many more auto responder emails so that I have thousands of emails being sent to thousands of subscribers all over the world every day.

I want to redesign all my websites, but instead of adding more to them I want to make them more minimal, easier to read, and easier on the eye. I also want a flexible design so that they resize to fit the window of any device someone might be using from smart phone to desktop computer.

I want to do much more marketing, especially on social media, writing emails, blog posts and much more article marketing.

And I know that to do all this I'll need to double the amount of work I do every week, without increasing the time it takes me to do it.

But I have a plan for that as well.

What I'm going to do is work 2 full days a week instead of working 3 to 4 hours every day.

I've always fit my writing into my days but I recently realised that I find it distracting to split my days up into so many different activities.

So I'll spend two full days writing (or more if I have deadlines looming or heaps of work to do) and the other 3 days will be spent indulging in other things like vegetable gardening, dog walking, organic cooking and sewing, as well as all the usual house-hold chores.

I have a plan, on the back burner, to make money from my sewing as well.

I love to sew and I mostly make things for the house such as dog beds (our 2 dogs have 6 different beds - living room, study and out on the deck, all of which need replacing - the beds that is, not the places) roman blinds, curtains, soft furnishings, table runners, place mats, etc and I've been thinking a lot about making things to sell as well. I've already invested several hundred dollars recently in a new sewing machine and overlocker...But I digress.

The upshot of it all, is that I'm much better at working at one job for a long time rather than splitting my days between too many things. Once I get working and get focused on one thing, I like to stick to it.

This year, 2014, has felt like a year of failures. I didn't manage to complete any of my goals, although, having said that, they were ambitious.

I found that I didn't write enough ebooks, I didn't do all the marketing I needed to do, I only got a few auto-responder emails set up and my websites still haven't been updated.

But it wasn't all losses.

I did do far more reading and learning than I planned to do and I got many more insights of how to do things better/differently, all of which I've been practicing.

I also got a lot of sorting out accomplished, both physically and mentally.

I did manage to go through all my files and books and got rid of what I no longer needed and re-arranged the rest to make it easier to find things (I do get really sloppy with my filing) and I also managed to write up all my new ideas so I not only know what I'm going to do, but how I will achieve it. It's what they call breaking projects down into tasks so that it makes it easier to not only start, but to keep going.

Which means I'm ready to get started and achieve all my goals for 2015.

So how about you?

Have you reviewed your writing achievements for the past year?

Did you reach your goals?

Do you know where you went wrong?

Do you know what you want to do next year?

This is a good time to start reviewing your past year's accomplishments and start making plans for the New Year.

Schedule in some thinking time if you need to. Take a whole day off to do it if necessary.

If you have no idea what you're going to do to reach your writing goals or you can't think of what you want to do, I have a suggestion that might help.

It's what I used to do when I was first starting out and has led me to where I am now.

I searched the internet for writing courses.

And not just ANY courses.

I was looking for the ones that would get me writing and earning money. I wanted courses that I could download and get to work on straight away and would have something to show for it by the time I'd finished (writing income, a published ebook, a new website, etc).

And it worked.

I found one writing course (Quick Cash Writing), completed it (and earned so much money from my writing that I couldn't believe it), downloaded another called How to Write Any Book in Just 28 Days or Less, completed it and was so proud that I had written and published my first book AND I was making sales, and then I went on to create my first website for writers (it wasn't great but I was new to the business, but I still made money).

And the rest, as they say, is history.

So if you're stuck and you don't know what to do or where to start, begin with a writing course that not only gets you writing, but making money too.

That way, you don't even have to think about it. Just work your way through the course and the rest will come.

The important thing is to get started.

If it helps, here is a list of other writing courses you can try:

The 12 Month Writing Challenge

The Wealthy Writer

Kindle Kash

Write Your Movie Script - In Just 1 MONTH!

Write a Children's Book - in 14 Days, OR LESS!

Have a look at all my ebooks for writers at http://cheritonhousepublishing.com