I had intended on sharing my New Year’s resolutions with you sooner, but my wife’s birthday falls on New Year’s Eve and thus I just now awoke from a sugar- and vodka-induced coma. (My wife is still resting comfortably on our kitchen floor, and she doesn’t even drink vodka. Such a lightweight.)
Now don’t worry—I’m not going to waste your time listing off a bunch of nearly impossible-to-achieve goals for my life. I’m merely going to waste your time listing off a bunch of nearly impossible-to-achieve goals for my writing career. So at least you’ll be bored specifically, not just in general.
Ready? Let’s do this! Following are the key writing-related objectives and milestones I will bust my hump to make happen this year, until I decide they’re too hard.
I will get my next novel out no later than the end of June. This may not seem like an ambitious goal to you, especially considering the end of June’s nearly six months away, but I’m telling you, it’s going to really take something for me to make good on this resolution. For one, I’m getting older and thus don’t spring out of bed or off the kitchen floor in the morning to write like I used to. Secondly, this book is my first with a female protagonist, which means I have to stop to ask Google or my wife questions before writing pretty much every sentence to help conceal my utter lack of understanding of women.
I will get thesequel to my next novel out before the end of the year. Maybe I’m being a tad overzealous here, or it could just be I’m still drunk from my wife’s birthday, but if I really put my writing nose to the grindstone and continue to ride the wave of creativity I’ve been surfing of late, there’s a good chance book two of my upcoming series (which may turn out to be a trilogy) will be available next Christmas. Just don’t expect the story to make total sense or all the words to be spelled correctly. I can’t allow a little thing like editing to stand in the way of such a bold resolution.
I will see to it my novel The Exit Man finally gets the green light for a TV series. I realize if I don’t make good on this resolution, I’ll likely become known as the boy who cried Exit Man. In my defense, I really did think the book would make it to the small screen when I announced that HBO optioned it in 2015, and I really thought so again when I announced that Showtime optioned it in 2017. But, alas, it didn’t quite work out either time. That said, there is renewed Hollywood interest in The Exit Man. This time a couple of women (an accomplished TV writer and my new agent) are leading the charge, and considering how women have been kicking ass and taking names in Tinseltown of late, I’m feeling more hopeful and invested than ever. I might even consider gender reassignment surgery if that’ll help tip the scales in my book’s favor.
I will be able to live off my earnings as a novelist before year’s end. Don’t let the fact that I have a roof over my head and a car and all my teeth fool you; I’m just a divorce away from being homeless. My wife has been the main breadwinner in our household since 2014, when the business she started in 2013 took off—and when she convinced me to quit my real job to write fiction full-time (she really had to twist my arm). While I do work hard as a writer and have managed to gain some nice accolades and build a decent-sized readership, my teenage daughter working at a local Italian restaurant earns triple what I do as an author. But 2019 is going to be my year. The year when all the books I’ve poured my heart and soul into for nearly a decade will earn me almost as much money as my daughter makes from “Do you prefer meat or cheese tortellini?”
I will get my writing workshop for incarcerated individuals off the ground. Back in late May, I announced my plans to lead a creative writing workshop—“The ‘Write to Be Free’ Project”—inside some correctional facility near my home in Austin. And while I’ve since passed the background check (apparently the Texas Department of Criminal Justice hasn’t read my novels), completed the orientation training that all approved volunteers must undergo, and created a detailed outline of my proposed curriculum, I’m still waiting for final approval of the workshop. The TDCJ is not fully to blame for the delay—I haven’t been following up as often as I had been this past summer and fall, so it could be the prison powers that be have decided I lack the passion and commitment required to risk my life to help inmates find their writing voice. It’s up to me to prove them wrong, which I am going to do as soon as I become an expert in the deadly art of Krav Maga.
I will not allow my total obsession with writing to keep me from being the best damn father, husband, son, brother and friend a totally obsessed writer can be. Does this mean I’ll stop screaming at my wife or daughter for breathing too loudly anywhere near the door to my writing office? Of course not. Nor does it mean I’ll be lifting the ban against daytime phone calls, text messages or visits from my parents, brother and friends. However, this year I do vow to be more caring, present and accessible to all the important people in my life—between the hours of 8 p.m. and 8:15 p.m., weekends only.
If you’re a writer, feel free to share one or two of your writing-related resolutions for 2019. If you’re a reader, feel free to share one or two of your reading-related resolutions. I you neither read nor write, feel free to share why the hell you bothered popping by my blog.
Regardless of whether you leave a comment, HAPPY (belated) NEW YEAR!
ON HIS BEST DAYS, ZERO SLADE IS THE WORST MAN YOU CAN IMAGINE. HE HAS TO BE. IT'S THE ONLY WAY TO SAVE THE LOST GIRLS.
