At the beginning of 2017 I decided to become a professional author. Throughout the year I’ve made many mistakes and learned a lot about my profession and myself. Now that we’ve started a brand-new year, it’s a perfect time for me to turn what I’ve learned into a plan of action. I’m excited about the changes I have in store since they promise to bring you better and more reliable content in 2018 and beyond. Here are the three main goals for the coming year:

Consistency!

It’s been months since I’ve done a blog post and there’s really no excuse for it. Yeah, I’m busy, but so is everyone else. This year I plan to avoid long gaps in posting by following a firm, detailed schedule:

· Weekly blog posts each Wednesday with writing tips or lessons learned. This will help me get back to the original vision for my blog which is to help you learn from my mistakes.

· Monthly spotlight post on the last day of the month, highlighting an author, writing product, or service I’ve found helpful. This way you can also learn from my successes.

· Writer goals post every three months. Quarterly updates seem to be a thing, so I’m going to give it a try. I will update how things went over the last three months and what my new goals are for the next three. For the record, here are my first quarter goals:

· Follow my blogging schedule.

· Overhaul my website.

· Post on Facebook at least every other week.

· Send Dust on the Altar for final edit.

This schedule may change over the year as I learn what works and what doesn’t, and I reserve the right to postpone in the case of one of my infamous migraines.

Website overhaul

I’ve recently moved all my blog posts over from my paid site on Wix to this free site on WordPress. It’s not that Wix was bad really, I had just outgrown it. My plan now is to study WordPress and switch to a paid version later this year. That will allow me to not only get rid of ads, but I’ll have much more control over the content and look of my site overall. So keep an eye out for big changes and new content over the year.

Facebook Neglect

While I’ve been (almost) daily on Twitter, my poor Facebook page has been gathering cobwebs. I will be dusting it off and plan to post at least bi-weekly. Most of my content there will be links to helpful writing tools, authors and books I’m interested in, and anything else either writing or reading related. Beware, you may see the random cuteness or inspiration link as well.

There’s much more I want to do, but I know how easily I get distracted and overwhelmed. There’s always next December to add to the plan. You never know, I could blow these goals out of the water and be ready to take on more this summer. Could happen.

Let me know what you think. Do these sound like changes you’d like to see? Are there other things I should be looking at doing?

Thanks for reading