First, I’ll note that these goals are all professional, rather than personal.  As in the past, I will go forward somewhat anonymously.  I’m not completely anonymous, though – my picture is actually me, and if we interact offline, you’ll recognize me.

I resolve to put forth a serious effort into my novel, Casting Stones.  I got off to a roaring start in November, writing more than 7000 words.  December has been much different, with fewer than 500 words.  Furthermore, I have become dissatisfied with what I have so far, and will likely end up rewriting all of it.  This is not entirely a bad thing.  What I have written so far is light on descriptions and really just rushes to move the plot forward.  This has always been a problem with my longer writing.

I resolve to submit a series of short stories to the Iowa Short Fiction Award contest.  This requires a 150 page double spaced manuscript.  If I keep writing stories at my current rate, reaching this length should be no problem at all, and I should actually be able to do some editing and removed some of the inferior stories.

I resolve to someone finish the “long” story for the 4th quarter of 2009.  This has died on the vine a bit, and with a baby due in the coming weeks, it is unlikely that it will be finished soon.  Still, I’m hoping to having this finished by early February.  Alternately, I may choose to write several bonus short stories for volume 3 of The Fiction of Kosmo.

I resolve to have minimal turnover in staff in 2010.  2009 was a pretty crazy year.  I’m sure some of your heads were spinning at times, due to the rapid addition of writers.  I’m happy with the staff we have right now – in both the caliber of the writers and the breadth of the content.  I wouldn’t mind having a bit more content that appeals to women, so if anything is added in 2010, that would be the area I seek to address.  We also have a couple of writers currently on sabbatical, and I’m hoping they return in earlyb 2010.

I don’t thank my writers enough for the work they do.  Their only pay is future profit sharing – which either means they expect us to turn a profit at some point, or that they simply enjoy writing.  I suspect that they enjoy writing, and hope that maybe they earn a few dollars at some point.

I resolve to steer The Soap Boxers out of the red and into the black.  I really haven’t focused much on finances in 2009, instead choosing to focus on the content of the site.  I’ll still focus heavily on the content in 2010, but with the current staffing level, I should have more time to work on actively driving traffic to the site.

I resolve to get on Twitter more often.  Currently, most of my Tweets are just automatically generated announcements of new posts.  In 2010, I’ll try to be more active on Twitter, and allow follower to gain greater insights into my life.  This doesn’t mean I will be tweeing 24/7, because I have a pretty small tweeting windows (a couple of hours every night).

I resolve to publish at least 325 articles in 2010.  That’s 6.5 a week, allowing us to go without an article once per fortnight.  We published 370+ articles in 2009, so I think we can definitely achieve this.

thank you for reading and have a great 2010.