If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

As promised in my last entry, here are some of my goals for 2006. I’m still working on the specific plan for achieving these, but I hope that by sharing my overall goals with you I will not only be more motivated to succeed, but that I will inspire you to take charge of your life and go after your dreams, be they personal or professional.

BIG GOALS
These are the large projects I’d like to tackle this year.

The Genre Traveler
Put out four issues (one has already gone out, three more to go!) and get content on a more manageable schedule.

DragonWyze Communications
Write a solid business and marketing plan for success. DragonWyze Communications is the umbrella company name for these four parts of my writing business: Carma’s Cookery, Non-fiction Writing, Fiction Writing and Speculative Fiction Projects.

Website Re-design
I’d like to improve the navigation of The Genre Traveler’s website, as well as make the DragonWyze website better reflective of my work.

MEDIUM GOALS
These are goals that fit within the above goals. Their success will lead to my success in the above goals.

The Genre Traveler
Produce one to two profitable tours for readers. The first one I’m working on is a trip to Toronto to see the Lord of the Rings musical* in the Spring, and the second is a Halloween party at a dude ranch in October. I’d also like to create a 2007 calendar that includes important event and convention dates, as well as representative art and photography for the genre traveler.

DragonWyze Communications
Carma’s Cookery — get the series of cookbooks back onto its original even-year schedule. For 2006, I’m working on “A Baker’s Dozen: A Memoir in 13 Cookies.” This would include 13 recipes for my favorite cookies with essays about how these cookies intersected with my life. I will also be practicing my food styling skills by taking photos for this booklet.

Also, I’d like to publish for sale, in both e-book and printed book format, all previous editions of Carma’s Cookery; and test about two pumpkin recipes a month and publish my experiences in my pumpkin blog at www.livejournal.com/users/dragonwyze.

Fiction Writing — complete “Wood for Og” and the re-write of “Hawaiian Time” so I can start submitting to magazines for publication.

I have other goals as well, but these are the biggies. So, have you written down your goals for 2006 yet? If you have, have you written out your plan for achieving them? If not, get to it! You only have a little more than two weeks of January left!

*You can read more about this musical in the October 2005 issue of The Genre Traveler at www.thegenretraveler.com.

I apologize for the lateness of this posting and for the lack of posting since Dec. 11. A stomach virus, the holidays and my crazy mad dash – still not over – to get The Genre Traveler out, has put my blogging on hold.

I believe that you can learn a lot about life from taking a look back once in a while. When it comes to goal making and keeping, it’s a good idea to look at the goals you made in the past and see how you did. This way you can learn how to make your goals for the future much more successful. For example, did you make too many goals for the year? Were you too ambitious for the amount of time you had? Did you not make enough goals? Were you too timid in your ambitions?

As an example of what I’m talking about here, I’ll go through the exercise of looking at what I posted as my goals for 2005. Due to my car accident in April, 2005 was not quite the year I’d hoped it would be. I wanted to:

• Clean out my online files. I started this project, but then got side tracked with more important and urgent projects.
• Digitize more of the paper in my office. I didn’t even start this project. Still want to, though.
• Complete my Travel Writing correspondence course. I almost made it. I read all the material and done most of the assignments. I just have one turn-in assignment to do and I’m done.
• Learn Spanish. Well, I learned enough to understand the gist of what people were saying when I went to Spain. Having dyslexia, languages are hard for me and I just didn’t have the time or motivation once I was hit by that van.
• Write and publish “Your Perfect Pie.” Done! My family members received a special edition for Christmas and I’m now working on getting it into e-book format for sale to everyone else!
• Take a couple of more writing classes. Oh, well, the thought was nice.
• Get a short story published for money. I had to put that one on hold for this year.
• Get some non-fiction articles published for money. Again, I had to put that one on hold for this year.
• Read, read and read some more. Well, made a small scratch in that one – long plane flights are a boon to your reading goals! I’ve completed all my subscriptions and have only renewed two, so I should be able to catch up this year.
• Be more regular with this blog. Well, in 2004 I had 12 postings, about once a month. In 2005, I posted 19 entries, almost twice a month. Mission accomplished!

What did I learn from this exercise? I’m way too ambitious. One of my goals in my 2006 goal planning is to be more realistic about what I can accomplish in my “spare” time. I’m a little behind on my planning for 2006, so I’ll post this year’s goals in the next entry. Then, next January, we’ll see if I have improved.

What about you? Did you write down your goals for 2005? Have you taken a moment to see how you did? No? Well, get going and write down your goals for 2006! It’s never too soon to start making progress in your life.

I’m writing this early because I’ll be on vacation the first week of the New Year — my first vacation in more than four years! — and I’ll be leaving on the 31st

Anyway, have you written down your goals for 2005 yet? No? Well get to it! How can you get anywhere if you don’t know where you are going?

As I mentioned in a previous posting, I have some rather ambitious goals for 2005. Here are the highlights:

• Clean out my online files.

  I have e-mail saved from years ago. Do I really need them all? And if there are messages that have information I want to keep, wouldn’t they be easier to find as text files in an organized folder?

• Digitize more of the paper in my office.

  Not only are all those articles easier to use when in text files, they are easier to find and take up a whole lot less space!

• Complete the Travel Writing correspondence course I enrolled in late last year.

  Not only do I want to finish that particular project, I want to get going using my newly learned skills. In fact, I’ll be doing research during my vacation.

• Learn Spanish.

  I’m going to visit my family in Spain later in the year and would really like to be able to have a conversation with them. I took Spanish in High School, but all I remember are the highly useful verbs “to be,” “to dance” and “to know.” Also, I can only conjugate them in the present tense. Not terribly useful in a conversation, eh?

• Complete researching and write “Your Perfect Pie.”

  I usually publish a cook booklet for every even-numbered Christmas. This year, I was just too busy. So, I bumped it up a year.

• Take a couple more writing-classes.

  I have my eye on Pam White’s food writing course and AWAI’s copywriting course. I’ve decided that I’m dedicating 2005 to my writing, both fiction and non-fiction.

• Get a short story published for money!

  I’ll probably enter a few competitions, continue searching for homes for the few short stories I’ve completed and finish at least one more — if not two or three! I’d also like to join the Horror Writers Association and continue working toward meeting the pre-requisites need to join the Science Fiction Writers Association.

• Get some non-fiction articles published for money!

  I currently have about six or seven ideas to query and plan to dig more up on my vacation.

• Read, Read and Read some more.

  I have several months of Writer’s Digest, Saveur, Cooking Light, National Geographic Travel and other magazines to catch up on. I also want to read six to 12 books on writing this year. The titles on my shelf waiting to be read include: Conceiving the Heavens: Creating the Science Fiction Novel by Melissa Scott; Worlds of Wonder: How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy by David Gerrold; On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King; The Travel Writer’s Guide by Gordon Burgett; Bob Bly’s Guide to Freelance Writing Success: How to Make $100,000 a Year as a Freelance Writer and Have the Time of Your Life Doing It by Bob Bly and The Writer’s Digest Handbook of Short Story Writing, Volume II edited by Jean M. Fredette.

• Be more regular with this blog.

So, do you think I’m ambitious enough? Are you being ambitious enough in your goals for 2005? As my motto goes, aim for the stars and if you only get to the planets, you’ve done pretty darn well.

Let’s face 2005 together with hope, courage and a fierce determination to succeed in every aspect of our lives!

Ah! A new, mold-free, well-lighted apartment. And better than that, an apartment my dog hasn’t “christened” — and we’ve been there for more than 24 hours, too! Such small joys make me feel hopeful for the future.

2004 is nearing its end and I look forward to the goals I can achieve in 2005. Now is the best time to start planning your New Year’s resolution. I sometimes even get a head start by moving toward those goals before the new year starts.

This year I had three goals:

• Start and stay on an anti-yeast diet for at least four months.
  Not only did I accomplish this goal — I lost 20 pounds doing it!

• Read and let go of one box worth of books before our apartment lease was up at the end of October.
  This equaled reading approximately three books a month. This I did. As far as letting them go, I only have a handful left to sell. (Just as background, I owned 15 copy-paper boxes of books.)

• Get a short story published — for money.
  Alas, since this one is somewhat beyond my control, I have not accomplished this goal. However, I did complete one story that just needed polishing and sent it to three markets. Another story is doing the rounds, as well. Maybe next year I’ll get published.

In 2004, I accomplished 1.5 of my 3 goals — that’s a 50% success rate! So, next year I’m being more ambitious. But I’ll have to save that for another Random Thought.