2024 goals

Happy New Year!

I normally spend the first of January waking up around nine, having leftovers for breakfast and then putting the Christmas decorations away. This normally takes about half a day, I spend the rest of the afternoon/evening watching a film of some kind. It’s probably around that time when this post is uploaded.

Last year was very productive and I want to carry that momentum across into this year. Here are my goals for 2024.

1 – Finish The White Wasteland

Last year I spent a majority of my time working on short stories and flash fiction. I achieved a great deal but around August I had a longing to return to my novel. I was aware that it was just sitting on my laptop, begging to be finished. Now that moment is arrived. When I left The White Wasteland in December 2022 I was just shy of two hundred pages and my word count was slightly over forty thousand. I had just reached the half way point of the novel so by this logic I think the finished manuscript should be near four hundred pages and around eighty thousand words long. I plan to reach this stage around October time. Then, after NaNoWriMo and Christmas, I can start redrafting the novel as a whole in 2025. I don’t know if I’ll get the novel published that year but let’s focus on having a finished product first.

2 – Submit short stories and flash fiction to writing competitions

As I’m working on White Wasteland I also plan to submit my various other works, mostly short stories and flash fiction pieces, to competitions with an emphasise on paying markets. Similar to last year, if I win or if my story is long/short listed you’ll read about it here. I have short story that due’s out next week and another due to be published in early February. Fingers crossed for some more wins later in the year.

3 – Update website continuously

This was something I fell short on last year. While I’ll won’t be updating as regularly as I did pre-2022 I plan to upload new content every three months or so. This is as good as time as any to mention my other social media platforms. Please see the list below:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/stforce1

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/jackdowdswritingblog

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-dowd-149b47b5/

4 – Personal goals

I’ve set myself several personal goals this year. Now that I’ve passed thirty there are some things I would like to improve on. As these goals are personal I won’t talk about them on here but if I achieve these you will read about them next December.

Aside from the above I want to try and get back into podcasts this year. I’ve always dabbled with them in the past but I want to explore this medium in more detail. This isn’t a strict goal but something I’m going to address during my commutes into and out of London. I also want to watch all available Doctor Who episodes dating back to William Hartnell (including spin offs like Torchwood and Class) and I want to listen to all of the Lord of the Rings book on Audible. Both of these tasks will, no doubt, take me a couple of months but they’ve been on my to-do list for ages.

That’s it from me. I hope you’re kind to yourself and I’ll see you all in a couple of days.