Karen Collum">Australian Children's Author

Happy New Year! It is with great excitement I sit down and blog for the first time in 2012. Like the first page of a brand new notebook, I love the first day of a new year. The year ahead seems filled with untold possibilities and surprises (hopefully most of them good) and I indulge in a moment or two of imagining what delights might be in store for me in the coming year. The past few years have been rough for me on a personal level with so many changes and much upheaval and great sadness as well as great happiness, so I’m hoping that 2012 will be a year of peace and rest for my soul. Sitting alongside that peace is going to be a year of busyness on the writing front. When it comes to goal setting, I like to set smart goals.

As a writer it’s really tempting to set a goal like, ‘Get a publishing contract.’ In fact, that was on my list of goals when I first started seriously writing a little over four years ago. I’ve since learned, however, that there are a whole lot of factors that come into play when publishers decide whether to take on a manuscript and in reality, very little of them are in my control. I have no control over the current economic climate, the other similar project they may have just accepted or whether the reader was in the mood for an upbeat, lively story while reading my melancholy manuscript. The only elements I have any control over in this situation are the quality of the manuscript I submit and the choice of publisher to sub to. I now try to set goals that are totally within my control (such as ’submit my manuscript to three publishers’) and follow the S.M.A.R.T. goal-setting technique to help me on my way.

S.M.A.R.T. goals are:

Specific

Measurable

Attainable

Realistic

Timely

Here’s a list of my goals for 2012:

- continue the family challenge we’re undertaking over at The Fruity Tales and blog at least five times a week about our experience

- finish the Year of the Novel course and the first draft of my YA novel

- finish a complete edit of my MG NaNo novel

- write at least one new picture book

Then there are a couple of non-writing-related goals that are going to big ones this year and will eat into my time significantly, especially in the first half of the year.

My husband and I have volunteered to run a program across the Easter four-day weekend during our church’s statewide annual camp. This means we’ll be running a morning and afternoon program for between 60-120 six to eight year olds…and that obviously requires a lot of work. Our planning is well underway but my goal is to run an engaging, meaningful program for the kids that leaves them knowing just how much God loves them.

The other project I’ve got on the go is one involving the gorgeous Kym Piez from A Day in the Life of Us. Kym and I are writing, producing and presenting a new children’s show on the Christian television network, HOPE Channel. It’s will be a similar style to Play School with limited props, lots of singing and stories and opportunities to play and learn. Kym and I have been planning this for a couple of years now so it will be exciting (and scary!) to start filming the thirteen episodes sometime around the middle of the year. My goal is to have the episodes completely planned and structured well before we get to filming.

So there you have it, my list of goals for 2012. They are all specific, measurable, attainable (I hope!), realistic and timely. Now I need to go and create a schedule for myself so I can make my goals a reality.

Wishing you all a wonderful 2012 filled with blessings.