Sabrina's 2015 Writing Goals

I've never been much of a goal maker. And given how unorganized I am, maybe I should get in the habit, to help focus my thoughts and practice accountability. In that spirit, here are my writing goals for 2015. They are, other than #1, are rather limited. That's because I have a variety of stresses in my personal life to deal with before I can reroute all of my energy back to writing. A girl can only spend so many hours a day in front of a computer..

1. Finish and publish (?) Pyromancy 
I'm so excited to write this book, especially after reading reviews and comments and reader theories on Prophecy of the Six. This book is going to be amazing, people.

2. Finish and publish various short stories. 
The first draft of my 'Curse Story' is sooo close to being done. I've got to get that finished, polish it up, and send it to the first round of beta readers. Oh, and at some point I should give it a working title.

And then I want to get working on the other two short stories, the one with the firebirds, and the one with the house in the wastelands. Those are just little embryos of ideas right now though.

Really, I have to get back in the habit of writing. I took a break, had technology chaos (got the new laptop working now!), and took care of a wide variety of other things, but it's time to set up a schedule. It's weird for me to manage my own writing time, instead of working out a schedule with other people. I'm somehow more productive when I know others are depending on me, fancy that. :)

3. Do some research on my next solo novel. 
 As time allows, I want to do some more research for the next novel. I think I'd start with the setting - it's going to be alternate world fantasy, but set in an era equivalent to some time between 1900 and 1915. I should probably add figuring that out to my official list of goals. I'm sort of playing in the world already - both the curse story and the firebird story occur in the same world as the novel, though in slightly different time periods.

So I need to get myself back to the lovely UCSD library and look up fashion and culture, cars and farming equipment, economies and cityscapes. I can't wait. And in the meantime, I can think happy thoughts about Kate and Alex and Vivian and that guy I haven't named yet, along with Rhys and Ammalina and all the other supporting characters.

SPACESHIP LIBRARY

4. Educate myself on how to participate in the push for more diverse books. 
I've been rather passively following the campaigns for more diversity in fiction, but I want to do more. Being that I am white, I come from a place of incredible privilege, including that as a kid, I could find heroines like myself in books without any troubles. I want all kids to experience that sense of wonder, This article has a lot of wonderful and sad pictures from the We Need Diverse Books Campaign.
In any case, I want to do more. I want to learn how to write diverse characters, and I want to support the inclusion of diverse books in the publishing world.

So there we go - those are my goals as a writer for 2015. Here's to an amazing year for writing and everything else.