Thursday 1 January 2015

Happy New Year! May 2015 Be Amazing for us All!


There is an increasing trend for people to denigrate the idea of making New Year's resolutions. This makes no sense to me as I don't see anything wrong with taking stock in the new year and looking at what we have achieved and what we still want to achieve. "Resolutions" is just another word for "goals." What is wrong with making goals? 

Some of the nay-sayers point out that many people make these resolutions and then forget about them. While it's sad that they forget their resolutions and don't make any strides towards achieving them, that doesn't make resolution-making (or goal-setting) as a whole a bad thing. Some people are better at sticking to their goals and working towards their goals than others - It doesn't matter what time of the year you set your goals; this fact will still be true.

So if you are making new year's resolutions (and it doesn't matter if you call them resolutions, goals or a to-do list), just keep one thing in mind while you do; these goals you are making are meant to be worked towards throughout the year, not just set and then forgotten.

My main goals for ChaBooCha this year is to help it grow even more - with more official members, more spectacular guest posts by authors, publishers, agents and editors and more amazing prizes. There will be a new badge for this year as well, and I will have the winner' badge (something I didn't get around to last year) ready in advance. We will even have some press releases sent out about the challenge this year. I'm also hoping we will find more people who live local to each other in the challenge so that we can arrange more regional ambassadors.

With some luck, I will be able to afford to get us a proper web site this year too.

This year's Teapot Tales anthology will be calling for mixed-up, fractured and brand new fairy tales again - just like the first one called for. (I've learned that the less I limit you all on topic, the more prolific in your writing you all become.) 

So, now I have to ask: What are your goals for 2015? What do you hope to achieve and how do you plan to make those achievements happen? Are you planning ahead for this March's chapter Book Challenge?

4 comments:

  1. To submit at least once a month, and have a book contract and an agent by the end of the year. And also to hone my skills as a historic PB writer, which is ongoing! BTW, can we work on one that we have begun (only a few pages), or does it need to be from scratch?

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    1. Jarm - Officially, we are supposed to write it from start to finish during the month, but we're pretty flexible about it in this challenge. :)

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  2. Hi Becky...I apologize for not visiting for so long - 2014 was filled with classes on writing picture books - I took a total of 5 major classes and participated in so many writing challenges, it got hard to keep track of them. :)
    I very much want to write chapter books...Last year I did write 2 MG stories for 2 different anthologies...and I loved it!
    My goals for this year are to continuing writing and revising - but submit lots more, both through 12x12 and on my own. I'd love to have an agent to represent me. I'm also participating in the Word by Word Book Club Facebook group and the book we are going to start studying is...Nancy Sander's 'Yes You Can Write Easy Readers and Chapter Books! So i think that signing up for ChaBooCha is a natural progression for me. :)`I just need to check out the guidelines and see what will be expected of me. :)

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    1. Vivian - It will be great to have you join us! The challenge is pretty easy to follow. Sign up using the link to the sign-up above (not the one for ChaBooCha Lite as that happens later in the year). Come up with your next story idea. Plot it out if you want. And then, on March 1st, you start writing, finishing your story on March 31st. In order to be eligible for the prizes, you just need to be signed up and then make sure to comment on the posts. To get more out of the challenge - We all help each other out in the Facebook group, and other updates are shared on the Facebook page. Welcome to the Chapter Book Challenge! :)

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