Goals for 2008

I spent a couple hours yesterday morning updating my goal sheets for the year. Yes, I know, not everyone has multiple pages of their goals for each year and plans sketched out for how they might want to achieve them, but I'm strange that way. (It makes me happy, what can I say.) A lot of the big goals, or even the small ones, haven't changed that much from last year.

Here's a sort of summary of what I'm thinking:

Writing-wise, here are my ultimate goals:

• To spend time writing and reading on projects that interest me.
• To share the results of those projects with as broad an audience as possible.
• To improve my skills/insight as a writer.
• To have my work fit well with my role as a Dad/Husband, and to have it generate income to help my family.

Creation/Work Goals:

• Rewrite new novel (one more time. Submit it by end of year.).
• Edit plays for Collected Obsessions collection of one-acts. Write one new play to complete it.
• Write 4 (or so) new short plays. Bring new work to my Rhombus playwrights' group.
• Do freelance work to earn money.
• Write a complete draft of the half-finished full-length play that's been hanging around for much too long.
• Consider a start on the new YA novel I want to write (and for which I already have an outline). (this is a long shot goal, but it might make for a nice break from my other novel from time-to-time.)
• Work on one or two film projects. Participate in the 48 Hour Film Project late in the spring (on a crew or as a writer). Get involved with the Roxbury Film Festival. Maybe write a short film script on my own.
  
• Keep blogging, often.
  

Marketing goals:
audience (including books and published scripts sold): goal 4,800
performances: goal 52 (this is a nice round number--averaging a performance a week feels nice.)

Plan:

• Submit 75 manuscripts.
• Submit 50 queries.
• (I need to keep in mind that I want to be a triple threat (film, theatre, fiction)—so I need to keep marketing in all three avenues.)
• Be active in the two Playwright Binges this year.

Income goals (from writing stuff and freelance work):

• Minimum: $6,000 (This keeps us out of trouble. It's a number that seems small and pathetic in the big world, but to people eking out a living in theatre or writing novels, this isn't as small as it looks. Some good freelance work will get me there)
• Medium goal: $12,000. (This allows us some travel and leeway and summer camps for the kids)
• Dreaming big goal: $20,000 (I have to work really hard or get lucky for this one, though the right freelance gigs could make it happen)

I have a whole table of project-by-project goals, plus other non-writing kind of stuff, that I won't include here. Still, that's basically what I'm after this year. I'm curious to see how it all works out.