I wrote down a set of ambitious goals for the year last week. I wrote this list out in monthly bites, but here is a summarized list:

Write a romance novel. +60,000 wordsCompile and publish a drabble anthology of my previously published workRecord/publish audiobook for the drabble anthologyPublish a new anthology with previously published workRecord/publish audiobook for the new anthology of short storiesRecord/publish audiobook of my dad’s book Smoke of the Fire

That is plenty of work to keep me occupied for the year, but I want more! I have other writing projects that I want to work on as well. I have a novel I wrote a few years ago that I’d love to give one more rewrite/editing pass and publish. I’d like to write a fantasy novella. If I tried to do it all, I’d likely not finish any of it.

I’m starting to feel a shift in my goals, and I find those changes rather frightening. My goals have always been geared toward creation. I made the list below when I started writing. If I gave my novel that final pass and published it this year, I could check every box in that list. I might do it, but it made me wonder what my next goal list would look like.

I’d like to write stories where readers actually become attached to the characters. It would be nice to see people making posts online about how they were moved emotionally by the story or surprised by a plot twist.

I remember when I took a music class in college, one of our first assignments was to create a few bars of music. We all used headphones and played with the piano/keyboard until we composed a melody. I was actually surprised when I handed the instructor my score sheet, and she played what I had written! If you think about it, we had just communicated without words. I was amazed. You may consider it trivial, but we were speaking the same language.

I’m beginning to see that there is a deeper language in storytelling than just words on a page. It is the emotional connection forged by using words and shared events that I want to see. I want to know that my writing has made a difference, or that for, some brief moment, my story made someone feel something. The problem with goals like this is that you only know if you succeeded if they actually tell you. Now I have to wonder if I’ve successfully conveyed my point with this post.

Before you go, have a book link or two! The Corvid’s Key or Smoke of the Fire (This is my dad’s book, but I edited it)