2013 Writing Resolutions

I'm totally stealing this idea from Merry Farmer, who is one of the most awesome writers I know. She came up with the notion of Writing Resolutions, not only to get more books out, but to improve her writing as well. It was such a great idea, I just had to copy it. So here they are.

The first resolution Merry mentioned was a YEARLY WORD COUNT. That's a pretty genius idea. I tend to do my word counts just based on books. But if I had a yearly word goal, that would encourage me to write even more books. Merry's goal was 300,000. My first thought on that was "Whoa, that's a lot of writing." But in reality, it averages out to less than 825 words a day. I can do that. I just need to stop being lazy. So I'm going to match Merry's goal. 300,000 words written in 2013.
My next resolution for the year will be to finish The Iron Locket by the middle of February so I have time to edit it before I have to send it off to the editor. This one is kind of a cheat resolution, since I had to do it anyway, but hey, progress will make me feel good. It should also give me about 70k or so toward my 300k writing goal. Not too shabby.
In addition to The Iron Locket, I'm going to write Jane #8 and that zombie western I've been talking about. I also just came up with an idea today for a medieval-era novel about an adulterous queen and her illegitimate twins and their attempt to lay claim to the throne.
I also resolve to care less about what people think about my books and remember why I began writing in the first place. I am going to ignore any and all negative reviews that do not give constructive criticism. If someone doesn't like my writing style, that's fine. They weren't my target audience anyway. There are plenty of people out there who enjoy what I write and how I write, and those are the ones I'm interested in. I write the books I write because they haven't been written yet and I want to read them, and I'm thrilled when I find others who want to read them, too.
I am going to focus less on promotion and more on production. I killed myself in 2012 trying to promote and make my books really take off, and that really hurt my writing. I know it did. I don't really like promotion, so I'm going to take all that energy and money I wasted and sink it into my actual writing instead.
Last but definitely not least, I'm going to read more. I lose time so easily, especially when it comes to social media and television. So my goal is to read 20 books during 2013. That's less than a book every 2.5 weeks. I can accomplish that easily. I'll make a separate page to keep track of those books.