Planning for Another Great Year

I’ve had a good year this year. In fact, I’ve had a record year in terms of the money I earned from my writing alone. I’m super happy—and I’m sure I’ll be even happier when I actually receive payment for it all! 

Now comes the hard part. How can I make next year as good? What happens if I don’t even come close? What if it was just a fluke?

These questions always seem to plague me when life’s good. The answer of course is : there’s no way of knowing. 

However, there’s a few things I can do to help put luck on my side. For instance, looking over this past year, I can see that I was more outgoing. I used every conversation as an opportunity to slip in the fact that I was a writer while mentioning the books I was working on. It helped build my credibility and spread the word. When these people speak to me now, most will start the conversation by asking me how the writing is going. 

Another thing I did was not shrink back when opportunities presented themselves—even if I was scared out of my mind! This led me to appear on a podcast about writing for magazines, submit my portfolio to a school board looking for a children’s writer (and landing a five-book contract!), writing my first newspaper profile, and proofreading the English part of seven bilingual picture books for a renowned French publisher (three of them are pictured above).

So, if I simply keep doing these two things (being more vocal about my writing and saying yes to opportunities instead of running in the other direction), there’s a good chance I’ll be having another great year. 

And if I don’t? Well, it’s not the end of the world. Truly! Whether I have a good year or not, I’ll still be here doing what I love most—writing. 

Can’t beat that!