Setting goals for 2025
It's that time of year! We review and set our goals for the year.
It’s time for goals! Every year, Christine and I set writing goals for ourselves. What about this year? How are we thinking about 2025?
For reference, here is what we wrote last year, which includes an overview of how we choose goals to set. (TLDR: Make sure your goals are in your control!)
What were your 2024 goals? Did you hit them?
Christine: My main 2024 goal was to finish my middle grade draft and I did!!
Last year, I also wrote a list of things I wanted to do more and less of.
On the more side: reading, movement, outdoor time, art, writing, and colorful meals. I can say yes to reading, movement, writing, and colorful meals. I hardly made any art and I wouldn’t say I was outdoors quite as much as I would like.
On the less side: stuff, scrolling, and fear and doubt. Ha! Well I did delete social media last month so I have definitely reduced my scrolling.
Vicky: My goals for 2024 were:
Write a novelty book? ← Okay, this was a rollover from 2023 and I failed to complete this… again. Oh, well. I don’t think I’ll roll this over again to 2025.
Write a draft of a new book (PB, MG, or GN) ← I did this! My upcoming picture book, LOTS AND LOTS OF OCELOTS, sold to Workman Kids and will be releasing in 2026, hooray!
Grow and learn as a TV creator, continue pitching ← Oh, boy, did I do this. I completed one mentorship through WIA and one fellowship with Fred Rogers Productions and am deep in the learning curve at the moment. I will share more on this in a future post.
How did the year feel for you?
Christine: It felt good in general. I’ve been exploring new categories and that feels really good. I’d like to do more of that and stretch myself in 2025. Obviously I also had some lows this year - see the post below for more on that!
Publishing Lows
I usually try to be pretty upbeat about publishing. So many good things happen like book deals, and launches, and awards! And I get to do what I love, I make worlds, conjure characters, and tell stories. Every time someone tells me their kid loved one of my books or I get sent a bundle of thank you cards from a school it makes me remember what it’s all …
Vicky: I definitely overdid it this year. With the launch of Ava Lin (hooray!), I spent a LOT of time traveling and promoting the series. I’ve been trying to only do things that I want to do, which was working great… but now I find myself in a wonderful but stressful position of having TOO MANY things I want to do. I think I need to think about my goals differently this year, because now I need to prioritize. I can set goals until I turn blue, but which ones am I willing to sacrifice? Ugh, that’s a tough one for me.
What are your goals for 2025?
Christine: This is the first time I’m really thinking about 2025 goals so here goes with the caveat that they might change and develop!
Revise my middle grade novel and get it to the point it’s ready for my agent to see!
Complete a to-be-announced project which is in a new category. I’m really excited about this one.
Keep up with my new approach to my phone - I want to keep the apps off my phone and further reduce the time I spend on it. The result is hopefully even more writing and reading in 2025.
Vicky: Ooh, yes, I’m excited about your to-be-announced project, too! In the spirit of my last comment, here are my goals for 2025, PRIORITIZED.
Write another book. Because I stretched myself so thin this past year, I didn’t get as much time to write as I wanted to. And that’s the whole point, isn’t it? So, this is my priority for next year. Write another book. I’m leaning early reader or middle grade because I have some ideas brewing, but I’m going to let my inspiration take me where it takes me.
Ease up on marketing/publicity efforts. This is more of a byproduct of Goal #1, but I need to start saying no to some marketing and publicity efforts. This is hard for me, as I love meeting readers and fellow book people and I suffer from FOMO all the time and I do want to get the word out about my books! So I’m trying to plan out my year and limit my trips and events with some sort of cap on how many I will do. I should probably be more specific with myself than “some sort of cap,” but I did already turn down one event, so that’s a start! I guess I’m also officially acknowledging that book promotion takes TIME. Until now, it had just been extra work snuck into corners of time that I wasn’t counting. I have to concede that I need to plan and budget this time into my schedule.
Write/pitch some TV shows, as time allows. I am so happy for the progress that I’ve made on the TV side, but it’s also part of the reason I’m feeling stretched so thin. So I’m making a conscious effort to prioritize my books and do some limited TV stuff as time allows. More on this in a future post!
(Editing this after the fact to make it more specific as I feel it creeping in scope and anxiety! Holding myself to things I can control, my goals are to freelance write one TV episode and do one pitch.)
I think that’s it for my goals next year. It’s a less ambitious list than I usually have, because I know I will be working on my next series, ONE MAD CAT, plus doing promotion for AVA LIN Books 2 & 3, as well as the next book in the Boo Crew series, THE BOO CREW AND THE PUMPKIN PATCH RESCUE! (That’s a couple of early cover reveals for those of you paying attention. 😉) I’m feeling good about my list. Really, because my only goal is to write another book and forget about the rest of it, which sounds like a great plan to me!
Any tips for setting goals?
Vicky: I’m all about prioritizing this year. Somebody said to me recently “Saying yes to one thing means saying no to something else.” That really hit home with me, because I have so many things I want to do—but am I willing to sacrifice time from my family? I need to make sure that my writing goals are set in the context of the bigger picture of my life and what is most important to me.
“Saying yes to one thing means saying no to something else.”
Over to you, what are your goals for this year?
How are you thinking about things for the upcoming year? We’d love to hear!
Catching up posts today. This is a really good one. Goals for the year and how to keep the phone from being a constant distraction from the goals! As I was reading this (on my laptop) my phone was buzzing away with text messages, but the other notifications are mostly gone so that's helpful. I really need to write lists so I stick to what I prioritize instead of what someone puts in front of me as *their* priority. I think that's going to be my 2025 goal.
My debut PB comes out in March 😱 So I think 2025 will be a busy one for me, but a goal I have is to complete a chapter book manuscript to send to my agent by the end of the year. On top of lots of editing work and needing to complete illustrations for my second book, I think that's a big enough goal 😅