A look ahead to 2015

Just as it's important to review the year just finished, it's important to lay out your goals for the coming year. On the first of January, the new year spreads out before you like an untrampeled blanket of snow, and setting guidelines helps point your feet in the right direction before you get distracted by other paths.

Last year, I made two resolutions. Or should I say one real resolution and one default resolution (carried over from the previous year).

The real resolution was to get to bed by midnight every night so that I my brain will still be alert in those evening hours when I do bulk of my writing. How did I do? Well, my "early" bedtime lasted for a couple weeks and then I fell back into my old pattern of collapsing into bed around 12:30am or 1am, after I got done watching a movie or surfing the web or just putting off bedtime as long as I could. Still, it didn't seem to affect my productivity. During 2014, I completed two full-length plays and came close to completing a third. So out it goes.

My default resolution, which I originally made in 2013, was to make one submission every day of the year. I didn't intend to carry it over into 2014, as I thought I'd entered every contest I could in 2013. But I had a new play to submit--You're Driving Me Crazy--and by that time, the habit was so strong that I just kept going, ending up with a total of 230 submissions for the year.

Yes, that's still short of the 365 I aimed for, but it's more than I've ever done and it got me a respectable 17 productions. Most of them, of course, were for You're Driving Me Crazy, proving not only that this teen-centered collection of plays appealed to adults, but that it has global appeal as well, with productions in Australia and the UK. This should help when I submit the play to my publisher later this year.

At this point, I don't need any more productions of short plays, especially if I'm not making any money out of the deal. What I need is more time to write. My brain is bursting with ideas and I need to get them down on paper before they evaporate into the ether.

So here, in no particular order, are my goals (not resolutions!) for 2015:

1) Increase writing time during the week from 1 hour to 1 1/2 hour per day.

2) Increase writing time on the weekend from 1 hour to 3 hours per day.

3) Cut way back on Facebook. Ten minutes a day should do it.

4) Only submit to markets that pay.

5) Get Million Dollar Meatballs published.

6) Get You're Driving Me Crazy published

7) Get my first professional production for Kill the Critic!

8) Finish the school play I'm currently working on.

9) Finish the adult play I've struggled with off and on for the last two years.

10) Lose 10 pounds (my wife made me add this one).

Come back next New Year's Eve to find out how I did.