What Will You Do in the New Year?

We’ve done it again. We made it through another year. There were good parts and bad parts. There were surprises, for better or worse. And now, we have a brand-new year ahead of us, a year briming over with potential. There’s so much we could do this new year, but to ensure we actually use the year well, we might want to make a few goals.

Now, goals aren’t simply a one and done sentence like “get a picture book published.” I mean, yes, that would be lovely, but to make it a goal, we need to break it down and work out all the things that must happen to have any chance of success. A goal is actually like a subheading in an outline. It’s going to work best when you come up with a bulleted list of subgoals under it.

To keep this from becoming an overwhelming journey of scheduling every moment of 2025, let’s limit the number of big goals to four. Anyone can manage four goals, right? Certainly, you can if they’re the right kind of goals. So, for 2025, let’s look at the sort of goals we can make to charge into a fantastic new year.

A Goal for Achievable Success

Most of us like the idea of success. Now, we don’t all define “success” in the same way, but we tend to hope we’re moving toward it. Because we don’t all have the same definition of success, picking a goal for achievable success won’t mean the same thing for everyone. For some, it might mean making a shift from one type of writing to another. For another, it might mean getting a picture book published or achieving paid publication for the first time. One thing to keep in mind in choosing a goal is that if part of achieving that goal is totally out of your hands, that will throw an element of luck into the mix. A goal like “get published” falls under this heading. You can do a lot of things to thin the luck element down, but you cannot completely eliminate it, because part of the goal is completely out of your hands.

That doesn’t mean you might not want to make a goal with a luck element. Maybe you do. Maybe success really means getting a picture book published. Maybe success really means getting an agent. In that case, you’ll want to make a goal with a luck element. But then your next step is to create steps that make that goal more achievable. You may want to learn more about picture book writing. You may decide to read every picture book in your local bookstore so that you get a feel for what picture books are the most popular right now. You will begin researching picture book publishers to find ones whose books really resonate with you. All those steps make it more likely that you’ll meet your goal. Just keep in mind that they cannot guarantee success, so that you don’t feel like a failure if the luck element keeps you from meeting it at year’s end.

A Goal for Realistic Productivity

Not every well-written book or story will get published. Someone may have beaten you to the idea and the reader perception of the idea may be linked so closely to that book that there’s no room for another similar concept (at least not right now). This was certainly true after the Harry Potter books came out. But any wildly popular book can “spoil” an idea for a period of time. Or perhaps the book or story may have been targeted at the wrong markets. Or one of dozens of things can happen to keep a good book or story from being published. That’s just reality. Stinky reality, but still true for all that.

That sounds a lot worse than it is. Sure, we all hate to think we may write a book that is unpublishable for some reason. And that can throw a writer for a loop. For some, it can even make them quit writing. But it’s important to hold onto hope. There is another bit that I truly believe and that is that every good writer will be published if they keep writing, keep growing, and keep submitting. Those are tough things to do over time, but they are how you succeed. And the best way to make that happen is productivity.

If you’ve only written one picture book, you might get it published, but you easily might not. If you’ve only written one short story or one article or one novel, you might find it’s accepted and published. It happens, not often, but it happens. But the more you write, the better chance that it will happen to one of the stories or articles or books you’ve written. Thus, productivity is key to success.

I always set a goal each new year that is directly related to productivity. I often make the goals a little too optimistic, and I rarely meet them. First, I have focus issues, so that can derail me. And sometimes success in one area eats up my time and keeps me from meeting a productivity goal in another area. But having the goal keeps me writing and writing keeps me published. Companies don’t publish the ideas I had that I never wrote (or they don’t publish them for me). 

So, what productivity goal feels doable for you? Will you write an article a month? Or a picture book a month? Or maybe complete a novel this year? Whatever goal you set, break it down into steps that need to be taken and make a plan to take them.  If my goal is one submissions-ready article per month, then maybe I need to set a week aside for research at the beginning of each month. And if I do that, how many pages do I need to write during the remaining weeks to get an article done each month? Make your big productivity goals and break them into action steps, and you’ll have the best chance of meeting them in 2025.

A Goal for Skill and Knowledge Growth

Remember when I said that I believe all good writers will be published if they persevere? Well, that is dependent on being a good writer. Some of us were told we were good writers when we were young. Some of us were told we had talent. That can be almost dangerous because talent isn’t the same thing as skill. In a way, talent means ease in building skills. When I have a talent for drawing, I can learn to draw more quickly than someone who doesn’t have the talent. I’ll also probably do more of it since talent and pleasure often go hand in hand. Still, if I don’t pursue learning and skill building, talent will not carry me to success. 

No one is born with the skills they need to be a published writer. We learn them. We take classes. We read books. We do research. We practice. We get critical feedback. We learn. And every bit of learning carries us closer to being the “good” writer who achieves success. Learning and skill growth cannot be understated in the publishing process. Sure, some writers luck into doing well when they really aren’t as skilled as others. There’s an element of luck. And there’s a matter of your ideas connecting with the reading world. But skill makes the whole process easier. 

As with the other goals, a skill building goal can be simply stated: “Get better at picture book writing” or “learn to write more clearly” or “learn to write romance.” Then you begin building the support needed to reach that goal. If I’m going to learn to write romance (because it tends to be an important part of YA, for example), then how will I go about that? I can take workshops. I can read writing books about romance. I can read lots and lots of romance novels. If my goal is to learn to write more clearly, I can pick up some grammar and style guides and read them, and I can take a writing class that covers basics. I can take the steps to reach the goal, and thus get closer to the success I want to see.

A Goal for Growing your Joy

Work goals are great, and I always make some. I firmly believe that it’s not good for a writer to stagnate. It’s important to keep growing and meeting challenges. But, if that’s all you think about, you risk burnout. So many writers have become burned out. Sometimes it happens because of the difficulty of the business. Sometimes it happens because of a lack of support around us. Something it happens because we tend to put a lot of pressure on ourselves. To avoid burnout, I try to always add a goal that’s solely about growing my joy.

A joy goal isn’t about productivity or success. It’s something I do because it makes me happy. Personally, I get a lot of joy from drawing, painting, and sculpting. I also get joy from reading books that have nothing to do with building my skills. I don’t write urban fantasy, but I love to read it. So I might set a goal of discovering and reading a new urban fantasy author each month. Or maybe I’ll create a goal of making a drawing every day for a month (trying to do it every day all year triggers my workload stress and that doesn’t bring me joy. Making these goals requires you to really know yourself.)

What brings you joy? For my daughter, it’s hanging out with friends on a regular basis and watching movies and talking about movies. Her joy goals would likely involve those things. For my husband, it’s sports and gardening. So, his joy goals would involve those things. For many of us, doing things that bring us joy have to be fit into schedules that are focused on work and productivity. 

Joy is every bit as important as work. Joy gives us the energy to do the work. Rest improves our focus and attitude. Hobbies improve our creativity. We need these things, so adding joy goals helps us prioritize this aspect of our lives that make all the other aspects possible. Never overlook the joy.

Good Luck with Your Goals!

Whatever goals you set this new year, remember to be gentle with yourself. If you are feeling down about what you didn’t do last year, set more manageable goals this year so you don’t end up exhausted and dispirited trying to meet them. Remember that goals are a personal thing. You haven’t failed if you decide to abandon a goal that isn’t working for you. You aren’t a loser if you don’t meet a goal that had an element of luck and you didn’t get lucky. Make your goals achievable, not burdensome. And let’s meet this new year with optimism and plans for success. And remember we’re all in this together.

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