“The worst year ever.” “The worst year in history.”
Many writers and social media-ists have bid goodbye and good riddance to 2016, eager to turn the page on a year that brought much consternation and ready for a new beginning come 2017. And while I found much to distress me these past twelve months, it’s rare that things are as bad in retrospect as they seem in the moment or that the turn of a calendar page changes the landscape of history.
Ten years from now, will we really remember 2016 as the year Muhammad Ali and Prince passed away? Will we remember 2016 as the year of Orlando, Aleppo and Istanbul? Will I remember it as the year I separated my shoulder? I will remember that these events were tragic, unfortunate, or in my case, inconvenient. Yet I doubt I will associate most of these events with a specific year.
Neither will we, or I, forget that these occurrences happened. But there is no special black magic that surrounds the year 2016. And it will do us no good to pretend otherwise, nor to expect the wheel of fortune will turn upwards in 2017. Time, tragedy and triumph do not confine themselves to human calendars.
As with every year I can recall, there were good moments and bad in 2016. There are things I will remember for the rest of my life (although I will forget their exact dates) and things upon which I would like to improve.
That being said, here are my two main writing resolutions for 2017.
Resolution #1: Publish The Friar’s Lantern.
I’ll share more details on this plan in the coming months, but suffice it to say that you can expect to see a complete published version of The Friar’s Lantern in 2017.
Speaking of The Friar’s Lantern, we recently blew past two landmarks for the serialized version of this novel. We hit the 200 reader mark for the release of Part Three. We then continued right on past 500 readers, which was my anticipated target for the release of Part Four. So head over to The Friar’s Lantern page to download the first four parts of this novel.
And stay tuned for two great giveaways to celebrate the releases of Parts Three and Four of The Friar’s Lantern.
Resolution #2: Complete a first draft of Parabellum.
So far, I’ve written about 17,000 of an expected 100,000 words for this novel. My goal for the beginning of 2017 is to write 2,000 words per week. I imagine that pace will slow down in the latter third of the year as I approach the end of the story and need to fill in some holes and organize the parts of the story. I hope to write 60,000 words in the first thirty weeks of 2017. If I do that, I should be able to manage another 20,000 to 25,000 words by year’s end.
In the meantime, check out the first scene of the novel and help keep me on pace for my goal on the Parabellum home page.
So that’s my plan for 2017. I’m counting on you to hold me to it.