writing goals

Allison

2025 Writing Goals

As I mentioned in my last post, I felt disconnected from the writing community during 2024. I want to change that because I’ve made many great writer friends and love having people who understand the fickle job of writing, with its highs and lows. Community will be key for me this year, even though the former gathering ground of Twitter is now a hellscape that leads me to doomscroll and roll my eyes for hours instead of connecting with anyone.

Many of those same writers are on Instagram, though, so I’m going to aim to be more active there. To comment and DM instead of just scroll and like. To foster connections and feel a sense of community. I’m also a member of Sisters in Crime, which has community forums and online webinars and goes out of its way to foster connections between members. I’ll lean heavily on them since one of my writing-specific goals is to finish my mystery novel.

About that novel… I ghostwrote 28 books last year but didn’t finish one of my own. (That’s great, considering my novel won’t pay as much as working for others.) Still, it’s a goal to publish a novel under my name, and I want to make progress toward that this year.

  • Step one: finish a draft.
  • Step two: revise the hell out of it.
  • Step three: let others read it – yikes!
  • Step four: revise some more.
  • Step five: query an agent? I’m not sure I’ll get there, but it’s nice to have a rough plan.

I also want to finish revising my Young Adult novel from 2010. I’ve been getting feedback on chapters from a writing group and it’s pushed me to think differently about this book that was so familiar to me at one time. The distance since I first decided to revise it in 2018 or so also helps. Not to toot my own horn, but I feel like it’s close to being ready, and I think it’s something that could find an audience, so I’m hoping to polish it up and see what I can do with it.

Beyond those big projects (if I can take on any more), I want to reconnect with the flash community. I haven’t even been writing short pieces lately; I’ve been so focused on paid work that I really miss how flash made me feel like a writer. I know any type of writing takes creativity and skill, but flash made me feel so in tune with myself and the world around me, like I was seeing secrets everywhere I looked, letting my imagination unearth the story average people and items hid. I want to get back to that. I don’t like going through every day just working and keeping myself and my kid alive… though some days that’s enough and is a struggle itself. But actively writing flash felt like little escapes out my own life and my own head, and not having that for almost a year has really made me feel like a brittle, boring person.

I specifically have about four novella-in-flash/collection ideas I want to work on, so that will be my focus – not that I’ll turn away any other ideas that come to me!

Basically, I want this year to be the year I focus on my ideas, foster my own writing, and see where it takes me. Here we go!

Allison

2023 Writing in Review

This year felt like a slow one to me, but when I look at my submissions spreadsheet and publication track record, it was pretty great! I did take it a bit slower in terms of workshops. I love the prompts and feedback in workshops, but this year was a rollercoaster in terms of my paid writing work, so not having the pressure (or expense, yikes!) of many workshops was a necessary break. (That said, I took seven workshops total, though many were in the spring when my work life was still running smoothly!)

I like the goal of submitting to a certain number of places a month because I like marking accomplishments off my list. However, I don’t like the pressure of submitting just because. So for 2024, I’m going to take a small step back. I’m going to focus more on the ideas I have for collections and novellas-in-flash and strive to finish those instead of writing one-offs for submission. I think having a few bigger projects on my plate will be a nice change of pace from these past three years.

Anyway, my 2023 stats meet the goals I set for myself at the end of last year. I submitted 62 times, compared to 63 written in 2022 (I also submitted photography that year) and 44 in 2021. I had 16 acceptances, compared to 13 written acceptances in 2022 and 5 in 2021. Six stories are still out/under consideration.

I also wrote blurbs for two amazing collections: Winter Dance Party by Brett Biebel and Awakenings edited by Diane Gottlieb.

Two of my 2023 acceptances are for anthologies coming in the future from Reflex Press and Stanchion, but the rest are online and linked below:

Ladyfingers published by Visual Verse 9/2023

The Hand, The Remorse of Conscience in The Ekphrastic Review’s Lucky 8 Marathon 8/2023

Precarious Pile published by Visual Verse 8/2023

Nectar published by SoFloPoJo 8/2023

Waiting in the Rain published by Visual Verse 7/2023

Blue Monkey published by Ellipsis Zine 6/2023

Crosstown Traffic published by The Write-In 6/2023

Moving Day published by The Write-In 6/2023

Trick or Treat published by The Write-In 6/2023

She’s Where the Sky Meets the Water published by The Write-In 6/2023

Dreamless Reality published by The Write-In 6/2023

Close Your Eyes published by Visual Verse 5/2023

Midway shortlisted for the Brilliant Flash Fiction Contest 5/2023

Mother of Pearl published by Visual Verse 4/2023

501 published by Spartan 4/2023

Death of an Influencer published by Visual Verse 3/2023

Bank Balance published by Friday Flash Fiction 3/2023

“Shining Light” photograph in Rock and a Hard Place Issue 9 2/2023

Related Posts:

2022 Writing in Review

2021 Writing in Review

Allison

Bolt of Inspiration

I started 2023 with very few writing goals because too many start to feel like obligations, and that’s the last excuse I need to skip writing time. My main goals were massive projects to work on all year:

  • Complete, edit, and possibly submit a novella-in-flash
  • Revise and query a YA book that’s been tucked away for over a decade

I also knew I wanted to take more workshops, and kicked off the year with two: one focusing on micros, one for sci-fi and speculative fiction.

I didn’t realize that, during those workshops, I’d get an idea for another massive project. The prompt was to use a photograph as your inspiration. I love ekphrastic work, so this was right up my alley. I even knew what photos to sort through to find the perfect concept.

When my paternal grandfather died, I spent a lot of time in his wood-paneled study. He had a box of prints curled with age. I loved sorting through them and trying to cobble together the true story of who took them, when, and where. No one knew. But I kept them and occasionally looked through them to get more clues.

I looked through the photos last week for this prompt and showed them to my dad. We searched each image for clues and then researched possibilities before realizing the pictures were from the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. Now we’re just trying to unravel the mystery of who in the family took them, with two major contenders: my grandfather and great-grandfather. Of course, they could have gotten copies of the prints from a friend or neighbor, and we’ll never know.

But the truth behind the photos isn’t my main concern. There are several sets that tell stories when you put the images in one order, then a different story when you shuffle them. And I can’t stop shuffling them, which led to my newest massive project: a chapbook of ekphrastic stories with the photos at the top of each page. I’ve already scanned the images and started writing, so I guess my previous resolutions will take a backseat for a bit…

Allison

2022 Writing in Review

Last year, my Writing in Review covered April to December with 44 submissions and 5 acceptances. For coming off an (almost) decade-long drought, that felt pretty good.

This year, I submitted the entire year, with 74 submissions across flash fiction, essays, poetry, and photography. Eight pieces/photographs/chapbooks are still out. I published one poem, 14 photographs, one essay, and 11 flash fiction pieces.

I had a chapter published in the Thirty West #antiwriomo novel, Those Who Scream. I wrote it last November and the book came out in May.

I got my first Best of the Net nomination for my Daily Drunk essay, “Douglas Fir Give Me Heartburn: Exploring the Magic of Christmas Eve on Sesame Street,” published last December.

I got my first Best Microfiction nomination from Atlas and Alice for my flash fiction piece, “No Place Like Home.”

I submitted three different chapbooks or microchaps, and one was accepted and published! Won’t Be By Your Side came out September 23rd and I’m very proud of the stories in that book, along with the cover design, which uses my photograph.

I also designed the cover for my friend Janet Dale’s chapbook, ghosts passing through, which uses another of my photographs.

I also submitted a collaborative chapbook to three places, and it’s still out at one.

I submitted a chapbook pitch to a publisher, which felt amazing even with a rejection because I’ve had this idea bouncing around in my mind since 2011 without any clarity of what to do with it. The pitch pushed me to figure out how to share these ideas, so I hope to work on this project more in 2023.

I also submitted a flash sample to Reflex Press and was accepted to write a piece for their collaborative novella-in-flash. My time will come at the end of February 2023, but I’ve loved getting the pieces in my inbox and letting my imagination run wild with what I might add to this amazing project.

I didn’t keep strict track of the workshops taken, but I think I took 9, either one-off generative workshops or more involved week-long or three-week courses. This is up from… maybe 3 in 2021? I love workshops and feel like I create a lot of material from them, so that’s something I’m going to try and make time for in 2023. I’m already signed up for 3 in the first quarter alone.

I also have other major writing goals for 2023, but since this is a time of reflection over 2022, I’ll recap with a general overview of satisfaction. I feel like I’ve accomplished so much since 2021, and of course the years before that were a desert, so I’m proud of where I am now. I feel like there are still goals to strive for and ways to have fun with my writing instead of always pushing myself to do more.