Well, beginning of the year and I’m not planning on making any serious goals for 2010. I didn’t feel that I really succeeded in my goals last year, but looking at them, I might have done better than I thought.

These were the goals I planned for 2009:

1. Writing: Finish Flight of the Scions. Didn’t happen, didn’t even start.
2. Programming: Join and complete 4E7. 4E7 actually never happened, so I didn’t have anything to join, but I didn’t finish a game either.
3. Health: Lose 16 kg (35 pounds). Only lost 10 kg over the year. Still, nothing to sneeze at, but I’m going to try again this year.
4. Family: Be living with Fluffy. Success!
5. Education: Graduate with a master’s. I got a total GPA of 3.875 and finished my last class in December. I’m waiting for a shoe to drop, but otherwise, I succeeded.

Well, 2.5 out of 5 isn’t that bad. I seriously didn’t do as much writing as I planned on and not nearly enough programming. Other things got in the way, things that ended up being more important than all of that.

2009 is also the first time I ever really encountered Writer’s Block to any serious degree. Not the 1-3 week versions that I normally go through but months and months of being unable to write out words. It was… terrifying because I felt that part of my life was shriveling away.

For 2010, there isn’t much I have planned.

1. Health: Lose 16 kg.
2. Writing: Finish at least one novel.

I have a third goal, but it isn’t really refined. We have a lot of juggling to do in the next few weeks, but I should be able to figure it out by January 15th.

I have four novels I want to finish, all of them past the first draft and needing to be cleaned up.

• My Father’s Bike (MFB)
• Flight of the Scions (FOTS)
• DG
• DL

The top two are actually what I think are the important ones right now. I need to focus on them, just to finish them so I’m going to try working on one at a time. I’m also going to write a few short stories here and there, mainly to do something slightly different and also to clean out the crap in my creative pipes.

I’ve been working on MFB for years. My brother mentioned that it will never be perfect and just to finish the damn thing. I think he’s write about that, so that is going to be first. FOTS is also a multi-year project (DG is slightly longer though but it is a republish effort not a new project). I’ll figure out what I’ll do next after I finish MFB.

I’m not planning on putting up progress bars or word counts. I focus on the wrong things too many times, so I’m not going to give myself a random number to follow. It’s hard, I want to be precise, but my writing isn’t that predictable. So, get rid of it and focus on the important stuff.

You might notice no programming in there. I needed to drop something and I decided I loved writing more than programming at home. So, I’m going to be a writer this year (until something else happens, of course).