Impossibilities & Other Goals

Five days after the ball drops in New York City, beginning a new year, it is safe to assume that many people made goals, and several are having trouble sticking to the promises they made for a “New Year, New Me” challenge.

Goal-setting can be difficult, but it is certainly not impossible. I have been struggling with this for the last few years myself.

We should all be proud for setting new goals and trying to achieve values that bring out the better parts of ourselves. I think that in our society, we are constantly evolving and learning, and that is a wonderful thing. We can always become better people, and I am looking forward to exploring the new and better parts of myself this year.

Much of my upcoming journey will include my writing goals, and I am so excited to start down my new writing path, more than ever before, if that is even possible.

During the last month, I created a strong plan that has been somewhat wavering, but I am determined to accomplish these goals, and I will do whatever it takes to achieve them. My writing goals are only part of my journey to define the better version of myself; I want to bring out the fighter in me to achieve my goals, and I believe it will be rewarding to direct my passion into positive, tangible ways that will motivate me to continue.

In order to manage the goals I have set, I need to keep organized, and thankfully, I have received tools that will help me keep organized and inspire me to do more than I have in the past. In my tool box, I now have a planner dedicated to writing and one dedicated to blog posts, author social media, and my website, in addition to my bullet journal. (Yes, I know; it is crazy that I love planning that much, but I’m not ashamed of my planning abilities!)

On top of organizational planners, I now have The Emotion Thesaurus: a Writer’s Guide to Character Expression and Writer’s Market 2020, two books I look forward to using regularly in 2020.

The Emotion Thesaurus is a book of which I had never been informed until a few days before Christmas, and as soon as I found it, I realized how important this book is. For those of you who may not know, The Emotion Thesaurus is a writer’s guide to expressing emotion. It lists 130 different emotions that people and characters might feel, defines the emotion, and provides examples of descriptive language to let your reader experience the emotion alongside your character. To me, this book brings about a realism in emotion, which is exactly what I have been striving for in my editing process.

Writer’s Market 2020 is the most trusted guide to getting published, and it updates every year. It lists helpful tips on how to write query letters, understanding more about blogging, upcoming contests and awards, magazines/journals looking for content, and the literary agents accepting new work this year.

Between these two books, I think I’ll really have the momentum to chase the publication of my novella that I have been working on for a little more than a year.

There have been a few hiccups in my goals for winter break, but I think I have the tools I need to remedy that and face my challenges head on.

My novella has somehow turned into a novel, thanks to my excessively-wordy writing style, but I think that it will be okay to market it as a short novel or a long novella.

Even after a month of working on titles, I still have not decided on one that fits the book perfectly, and so I will still continue to work on that, hopefully finding its title soon. (I have a back-cover summary on the “PROJECTS” tab of this website, so if you would like to help me come up with title names, I would really appreciate any help I could get.)

Moreover, I am still in the midst of editing, but I think that with The Emotion Thesaurus, my writing could drastically improve, so extending the editing process by one month will not be detrimental.

So with that being said, I have outlined my goal clearly; January is the last month before I submit to literary agents. I have only one month to edit my writing as much as I can, pick a title, define its length, and type up a query letter to send to literary agents.

I am very thankful that I have a rather large tool box for my big destination ahead.

But I am ready. I am going to make it happen, because even though it is corny to say, this is my year. It’s my job to make it successful and happy, and while I establish new aspects of my person, I want to add one more title to my list of definitions: author.

So, I am going to do it.

I know it is difficult to get published, and I know it will be a challenging road in the

Some say that my goal to spread kindness is impossible, but this book is the first step towards that.

As Audrey Hepburn said, “Nothing is impossible. The word itself says ‘I’m Possible’.” Her quote is displayed proudly above my desk, and I know that every time I feel like giving up during my writing journey this year, I will just look up, take a deep breath, and continue to pursue the impossibilities with which I am faced.