My 4 Writing Goals for 2024

For the last few years, I have refused to set a New Year's resolution. My attitude was cynical. No one sticks to the resolutions they set, and goals for improvement should not be limited to the start of a new year. The "new year, new me" mindset was a cliche that I was happy to laugh about instead of considering my own opportunities for change.

This year, I am casting the cynicism aside. Yes, we should set goals regularly throughout the year. We should always strive to reassess and grow, but the new year has a freshness to it that encourages new beginnings.

In that spirit, I am focusing on my writing with four goals for 2024.

My 4 Writing Goals for 2024

1. Write daily. Even if it is something small, a draft I will not come back to for months, a sentence, or a revision exercise (maybe with the drafts I abandoned months ago), I am aiming to do some writing every day, all year long.

As much as I hate to admit it, I have been putting my writing on the back burner for a few years now. I want to confidently refer to myself as a writer, and I can't do that if I am not prioritizing my writing. This will be a challenge. Allowing myself to write shitty drafts and revise them later is a concept I have struggled with since my creative writing workshop days as an undergrad student. Regardless, I am committing myself to the challenge, and I am asking for help holding myself accountable this time.

2. Post on Vocal weekly (at least). This is a harder commitment, but I want to end 2024 with (at least) 52 pieces of writing that I am comfortable sharing here.

This is, ideally, my accountability piece for goal number one. If I am not writing daily, this is impossible, but if I make that commitment, I think I can achieve this goal as well. Maybe this will help me commit to revising my drafts. (Seriously, I need to start doing that.)

3. Select and revise a full collection of my poetry. I have notebooks filled with poems that I have not meaningfully revisited since I started them in 2019. Someday, I would like to publish a book of poems, and this feels like a manageable next step.

4. On a slightly different note, I want to get more involved in the Vocal community. In 2023, I joined a few different Vocal groups on Facebook and Discord. I interact with Vocal+Assist more than the rest of these Vocal sub-communities, and I am hoping to continue strengthening the sense of community I have as a writer.

Instinctually, I want to isolate when I write, but I know that I need feedback to grow. I need support, ideas, and a sounding board when writer's block hits hard.

This goal is a bit less measurable than the others, but I think I will feel whether or not I have reached it by the time 2025 rolls around.

In less specifics, I want 2024 to be the year I give myself grace, embrace being a little cheesy, try out some more informal approaches to the writing I let myself share, cast aside some of my cynicism, and focus on finding my voice again. At least I am off to a good start. Three days in, I have written every day, and this puts me at one week down with 51 left to go for goal number two.

Here's to the new year and a newly committed (but certainly not new otherwise) me.