Sunday, January 1, 2012

Horoscope-Inspired Goals for 2012

If there was one horoscope for a wanna-be professional author to read on the First of January, this one (from Shine from Yahoo) is pretty ideal:
Year 2012 Career
You're in stellar standing in 2012, especially during the first half of the year. You'll definitely feel like the 'It' sign, with Mars and Jupiter doing your bidding. Your creativity is off the charts with the action planet, Mars, running an extended six-month stint in your sector of self-expression. Mars will be retrograde during the first quarter, which could create the illusion that not much is moving forward - and yet you've never felt more creative and inspired. Trust that all your inner preparation will meet with great rewards and forward motion.
Neptune had been causing some confusion about your professional identity over the past few years, but now that it will be leaving your career sector for good in February, clarity - if not a major epiphany - is coming. Write everything down, because breakthrough ideas will come like flashes of lightning and will be as easily forgotten as fast as they come. It's time to translate all the gifts of inspired creativity and vision that Neptune brought you over the past several years into flourishing future plans. The tragedy would be to keep all of these gifts locked up as mere potential.
When the big eclipse points hit your money and talent sector this summer, you'll see another huge wave of changes unfolding over the latter half of 2012. And since you can be the most stubborn of all signs when it comes to embracing the new, you may actually welcome this colossal cosmic push. There is no going back, Taurus - you're destined for bigger and more glamorous things (with many of them likely involving extensive travel). La Dolce Vita, baby!
Wow, huh? I wonder if I can sue Shine if I'm not on book tours by the end of the year. :D *Flips hair* *Resolves to never forget the little people* *Wishes she believed in horoscopes*

In any event, my goals from last year were very simple:
  1. Edit and query WIP #1. (Hopefully by the end of April.)
  2. Write WIP#2--the whole thing.
For #1, I actually accomplished it! I finished the book, revised, revised, revised, had oodles of so-awesome-I'm-not-worthy beta readers give me advice, revised, revised, revised again, and finally started querying this summer. A few weeks later I (rather wisely) decided that my query wasn't getting the job done and paused to rewrite it. I'm still doing that. I'm also anxiously awaiting a 30-page crit from Gabriela Lessa--after which I'll probably revise again. Then rewrite my query again. Then get going querying again. Still, I'm counting #1 as accomplished! :)

I only accomplished half of #2, and that was thanks to NaNoWriMo. WIP #1 edits took a few months longer than I planned for (always better to take more time than less time on that sort of thing, methinks). Still, I made amazing headway, all things considered, and really enjoy having TWO books to obsess over. Breaks up the monotony nicely.

So on to 2012, no?

This year, I'm going to try to get a little more specific, so you might want to skip to the end. This is mostly to hold myself accountable later:

Goal #1: Obtain Agent
Steps to Accomplish Goal #1:

  1. Finish re-revising WIP #1: DUSTED (the book formerly known as GEAS). 
  2. Rewrite query until it can fully express the awesomeness that is DUSTED without being confusing
  3. Query 10 agents 
  4. Revise query, depending on response
  5. Repeat steps 2&3 until I...
  6. Obtain agent and/or 100 rejections
Goal #2: Complete Second Full Book
Steps to Accomplish Goal #2:
  1. Write every day. I did it during November, but then slacked off. I want to write at least 20,000 words a month, so I'll need at least 5,000 words a week. I hope you'll join me on Twitter for a few hundred rounds of #1k1hr over the next year
  2. Have first draft done by April, and ready for my writer's group to critique.
  3. Revise.
  4. Get to beta readers by June
  5. Revise again. Repeat as needed.
  6. When complete, query as necessary (see goal #1)

Goal #3: More books!
Steps to Accomplish Goal #3:

  1. Learn how to outline
  2. Build outline for DUSTED 2 and SECONDBOOK 2
  3. Brainstorm more book ideas, write those during downtime on Goals #1&2
Okay, I'll stop there. I also have a goal to lose at least 20 pounds this year, but that's probably better for a different sort of blog. :)

So what goals do you have for 2012? Does YOUR horoscope say you're destined for bigger and more glamorous things? It does? Oh. Figures. 

16 comments:

  1. Love the horoscope. Love the goals. And LOVE that I'm a fellow Taurus!!! Let's go bulls! :D

    ReplyDelete
  2. Tina--happy to share the PERFECT writerly horoscope with you! :) Maybe we can tour together, huh? :D

    ReplyDelete
  3. Great horoscope and great goals!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hm, it sounds like a good week for you to wish horoscopes were real. ;) Good luck accomplishing all your goals for 2012, and happy New Year!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Oh, Robin, great list. I especially appreciate that you put the steps needed to achieve your goals. That's critical. A gal at church many years ago said in a lesson that a goal you cannot achieve isn't a goal, it's a dream. It that's the case you need to take that dream and break it down into doable steps. Otherwise our life is full of "someday".

    Happy New Year!

    ReplyDelete
  6. You have a plan indeed! Good for you. Making that list is a wise choice. I have a very good feeling about 2012...yes I do!

    ReplyDelete
  7. My goals for this year are to finish my edit of WIP #1 and begin WIP #2 and to pray that my wife has time to work on WIP #1 but that will probably not be able to happen until we are able to get her dad moved in with us because she has needed to spend a lot of time helping him.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Ha ha! Our goals are strangle similar! By the way, I'd revise that 100 rejections to somewhere closer to 200, or even more. But even after that, you shouldn't give up.

    Good luck to you, Robin! And if you ever need help fine-tuning your query, I'd be happy to oblige. After all, you helped me with mine. Better yet, send it to Matthew MacNish at the Quintessentially Questionably Query Experiment here on Blogger. He's quite amazing and so are his commenters!!

    Happy New Year!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Thanks, Alexia!

    Madeline--do you think horoscopes are like wishes? You have to believe for them to work?

    Donna--I'm no good at accomplishing goals without a plan. :)

    Jenny--thanks! I just hope the world doesn't end before all our dreams can be realized... *Is glad she has less faith in the Mayans than she does in astrology*

    Nancy--feel free to steal my game plan. :) I'd be thrilled for your help! I've been trying to fine-tune it over at agentqueryconnect.com and just when I think it's close, someone else will comment and it will be abundantly clear that they didn't get it at ALLLLLL. (My query, my fault.) I'll have to see if Matt wants to include mine. He helped Donna a lot. :)

    ReplyDelete
  10. I love that you wrote out what you need to do to accomplish the goals. Good luck!

    ReplyDelete
  11. Thanks, Tasha--I highly recommend it. :)

    ReplyDelete
  12. What a fabulous horoscope! And your 2012 sound just like mine:) Isn't it exciting?!

    Happy New Year Robin!!

    ReplyDelete
  13. GO Robin! I totally think you can do all of your goals!

    ReplyDelete
  14. Uh, I need to get on the goal-making boat. I'm horrible at making them. Like, obviously I'd like to finish editing my book and obviously I'd like to get an agent and obviously I'd like to have a perfectly organized laundry room. But seeing those goals broken down into smaller, doable parts makes the big goals seem possible. Time to get specific, eh?!

    ReplyDelete
  15. Hey Robin! Thanks for stopping by my blog and commenting on Susan's feature! If you are interested, you are more than welcome to join the challenge that Susan just won and is participating in again this year! If you are interested in learning more, check out this link...
    http://whosyoureditor.blogspot.com/p/bookmark-break-challenge-2012.html

    It's just as simple as keeping track of what you have read this year!

    ReplyDelete
  16. Deana--yes, I think 2012 will be very exciting.

    Shelly--thanks! I hope so!

    Ruth--breaking big goals down is the ONLY way to actually accomplish them. And I'm not the one who thought of that. :)

    AubrieAnn--read today's post--I don't need a challenge to help me read, fortunately/alas. I'm more likely to need a challenge to LIMIT my reading. :)

    ReplyDelete