Happy New Year, my Followers of Fear. I wasn’t going to do this sort of post, let alone on New Year’s Day. After all, I went over a lot of this stuff in my “Looking Back at 2023, Looking Forward to 2024” post. But plenty of my writer friends were posting their 2023 accomplishments and their 2024 goals on social media, so I thought, “Why shouldn’t I? And why should I limit myself to however many characters?”
Thus, I’m writing a full blog post.
So, with all that said, let’s get into my writing goals and how I plan to keep busy on the writing front.
FINISH THE SHORT WORKS I STARTED
After the Great Editing ended last year, I went through my list of ideas and chose seven story ideas I thought would be fun to work on (and hopefully had a chance of getting published). I’ve already finished two stories: a surprisingly short weird horror story called “White Leaves,” and a Jewish exorcism story called “The House on Lafayette Square.” And at the moment, I’m working on a story about owls under the temporary title “Strigiformes.”
With this particular goal, I aim to finish “Strigiformes” by Martin Luther King Day, and then get the other four stories done by around May. Don’t know if I will, but God knows I’m going to try. I’m already at the halfway point of “Strigiformes,” so assuming nothing messes with my life between now and the 15th, I should be off to a good start.
FINISH CRAWLER
My big project for 2024, assuming nothing else pops up, is to finally return to my mummy novel Crawler and finish it. Hopefully after I finish these last four and a half short works, and around May-ish. I want to go over what’s already been written, then get around to finishing the first draft.
Don’t know if it’ll get published at some point, but I definitely want it to be at least finished. I hate the feeling of it being left undone when I feel it has great potential.
GROW MY AUDIENCE
This one should be pretty self-explanatory. I love my Followers of Fear and how ardent you all can be, but I am a writer. We love having people enjoying our work. So, I’m trying to build my audience and the number of people who I can claim to be Followers of Fear.
Part of this will be done by selling books at events, which are great places to meet new readers, and another part will be some slight changes to how I do things on social media.* With a bit of luck, the right interactions, and sympathetic algorithms, maybe more people will come to love and look forward to my stories when they release.
*BTW, I’ve left Twitter due to Elon Musk going full anti-Semite and have moved to Threads and BlueSky. So, if you want to follow me there, click on the links.
GET SOME ACCEPTANCES
Again, this is also self-explanatory. While I do self-publish some of my work, I still like to get publishers to release some of my stories. There are benefits to going indie and going through a publisher. And all that being said, I hope to have some presses accept my stories and help me polish them up to their most beautiful before letting them out into the world.
And I may self-publish some stuff, as well. If the circumstances are right.
HAVE A GOOD 2024 FISCALLY
Writing is a passion and a calling, but it is also a job and a business. That’s especially true during tax time. And while this past year, I had the most income from writing ever, I also had a lot of expenses. Not enough to overtake my income, but still, a lot. For 2024, I hope to have fewer expenses. Or that my income far outpaces my expenses. It’s something I’ll be working on throughout the year, so hopefully it goes well.
MAYBE ANOTHER COLLECTION?
Yeah, putting together and editing Hannah was difficult at times, but it was gratifying, too. And I’m thinking of maybe putting together another collection. If I do, what stories will be in it, what it’ll be called, if there will be a theme, and if I self-publish it or not, we’ll see. This part of the future, at least, is still up in the air.
MAYBE AN ADAPTATION?
I know, I know. Getting any of my stories adapted into any medium is a long shot. Still, some things happened in 2023 that give me hope that it could happen. (And if you’re lucky, you’ll hear about what later this year.) So, I’m putting it on this list as a goal.
GET THAT MUCH CLOSER TO WRITING FULL-TIME
This is my overall goal for 2024. Granted, this is my overall goal every year. But I feel like I made significant progress this year towards this goal in 2023, and I feel like 2024 will take me even further. I want to get to the point where I can actually see a path to eventually being able to write full-time. Where it stops being just a dream and starts to morph into a reality.
If the majority of these go these goals go well, then maybe, just maybe, I’ll end 2024 with goals towards making dreams reality in 2025. And wouldn’t that be glorious?
That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. I hope 2024 treats us all very well (though honestly, I feel like roaring at the year to intimidate it instead of hoping it’s nice to us is a better move). Thank you for all the support you guys showed me in 2023. I hope you continue to do so in 2024. And one way to do that is to read my books and leave reviews, and/or follow my social media. I’ll leave buttons that’ll take you to where you can find both.
Until next time, my Followers of Fear, good night, pleasant nightmares, and HAPPY NEW YEAR! RAWR!!!
Rami Ungar The Writer 