Career Goals

I have a lot of goals as a writer.  Some of them are simple; like word count or face time with child readers. Some of them are lofty; like selling one manuscript per year or hosting SNL w/Josh Groban as the musical talent. (I had a dream once that was, frankly, awesome!)

But there is one goal that I’d love, love, love to achieve.  Writerly independence. Currently I work. Which isn’t the end of the world by any means. Many writers work outside the home and write in their spare time.  But I’d love for my writing career to advance enough that I’d be able to write full time. Mostly, so that I could travel.

I have this dream of being able to spend time in obscure locations for long enough to really get a feel for them in order to make them a setting in a novel.  I’d love to be steeped in the feel of isolation and utter creepiness of a real live ghost town.  I’d love to spend some time in a town that is truly and utterly on its last breath having been beaten and left for dead by our economy.  I’d love to soak in the splendor and other worldliness of The Seven Pools of Kipahulu where my ancestor, Charles Lindbergh, is buried.

Setting has always been a weakness in my writing and I’m not too crazy about research in general, but this kind of research I can really get behind.  However, I need the financial and time freedom you can only achieve through a steady writing success—a success that usually takes years and multiple publications to achieve.  I’ve heard that writing your goals down can be a good step toward accomplishing them. So I am officially declaring my goal in writing so that I can be one step closer to its fruition.

What are your career goals?