Writing and Publishing: My Writer’s New Year’s Resolutions

I know I’m a little late writing this post, but it’s always better late than never.

I haven’t been blogging as much as I’d like, and yet I don’t think writing for this blog is a part of my New Year’s Resolutions as an author. Besides, I mostly write book reviews (which I’m behind on), and news about my writing.

My journey as a writer has been long, but as a published author it’s been short (2 years), and in that time I’ve learned a lot about writing-publishing and a lot about myself. One of the things I learned about writing is, that in the published author world, you have to do a lot of marketing, formatting, editing, etc… – which isn’t writing.

This, while necessary, is not why I became a writer.

Writers aren’t known for making a lot of money, which means I need to have a day job to pay my bills, leaving short hours to take care of my family and my books.

This isn’t counting all the other hobbies I need time to do. The use of my time made me wonder why I’d want to spend my precious hours on marketing and creating a social media presence… this isn’t why I write. This doesn’t mean I don’t like readers (I love you, guys), it just means it’ll be harder for you to find my books.

I am not going to quit my day job from all the money I’ll make with my books because I have a strong social media brand. I am not going to be a best selling author if I blog a lot. Perhaps I’ll get more people to read my books, but that’s all.

And that’s nice, of course it is. I believe I tell good stories and people could enjoy them if they read them, but… this is not why I write.

Long ago I realized I’m never going to be a successful author. I am no Stephen King and no JK Rowling. I’m just someone who loves creating stories. Publishing them gives me happiness, too. I’m not going to lie, it makes me happy when someone reads them and likes it enough to write a good review, but it’s not why I do it.

So, after all this explanation, I’m going to list my three writing goals for 2019:

1. I will finish revising and editing The Fall of Witchcraft, my third in my Vampire Agency series. My release date is set to March 31st.

2. I will polish the first short story in the Vampire Agency series to publish this summer.

3. I will plot, write, revise, edit, and publish the fourth book in the Vampire Agency series. I already have the title and cover. I just have to take the book I wrote 20 years ago and make it better.

I’m excited. This makes me happy.

I have many other plans after that, perhaps one day you’ll read about Dylan, Rebecca, Will, and Crystal. Their world of vampires, werewolves, witches and more is amazing!

Cheers!