At the beginning of the last couple of years I’ve done a sort of “creative goals” post, and the one thing I’ve learned from the exercise is that, for the self-propelled creative type at least, planning is largely futile. Too often opportunities come your way that you couldn’t have foreseen and, if you have neither contract or deadline that demands you stick to your original plan, why not take them?
All of which is basically an excuse for failing miserably on last year’s goals. Neither of the ongoing novels are where I want them to be, but I did spend a fair bit of time getting The Moon King into a publishable state. I didn’t get anywhere near my target of ten published stories, though I did spend several months reading for the BFS awards and I did write four stories, all of which I’m pleased with, two of which (Deep Draw and Sweeter Than) have appeared, with one more to be available soon either to purchasers of the special edition of the novel or as a standalone ebook.
And of course that rate of production didn’t exactly set me up for success in my fiction-writing challenges. I was royally beaten in one, though I may have just squeaked the other, so I may come out equal on the dinner stakes after all.
This year, well, the goals will remain unstated, publicly at least. Although, with two novels that need shifted and a whole bunch of short story ideas clogging up the works, you can imagine they will probably be much the same as last time round.
But who knows what will come along in the interim?
Despite what the score card says, I’m reasonably pleased about last year’s efforts. If I can work as hard on this year’s writing I’ll be happy enough.
Resolution’s for mugs. Resolve is a different matter altogether.
ayeahmur 
this is fear is the best way to be Neil ..simply go where the creative ebb and flow takes you.