Goals

I am so grateful for the community of romance writers at Marketing for Romance Writers, [email protected] | Home.

On New Year’s Day, I blogged about an August if-not-now-when meeting with my husband and our goals for the new year [https://wp.me/p9O7pv-344]. My most important guideline? Here’s what I said:

Focus on what I love more than on going through the motions of publicity and marketing.

So this morning I was stressing about what seemed like a million items on my “must do NOW” platter. That’s exactly where I don’t want to be.

What did I do? I decided to write this blog about how this group of authors has inspired me to do exactly what I’m doing now – do what I love.

On New Year’s Day, group founder and marketing guru Kayelle Allen shared her one-word theme for the year and invited members to do the same. Her word is ALIGN.

When I saw that, late New Year’s Day, I breathed a sigh of relief and said YES. Out loud, actually. Then I kept reading as nearly forty member authors shared their themes. These words are my inspiration today. I can take any one of them and run with it, as I had to this morning during my stress-reducing aerobic rapid walk a few minutes ago.

I’ve assembled all the words (some had more than a single mention) and made a meme I’ll print and keep in my workspace where I can see it and grab the word I need at any given moment.

Enjoy, and feel free to share. It’s MFRW group wisdom.

Both halves of Adriana Kraft wish all of you a joyous celebration and a productive and fruitful New Year!

If you make New Year’s Resolutions, we hope you select actions that move you toward things you care about, accomplishments that will bring you joy.

Here are some thoughts about ours:

If you follow us, you know that we’ve taken breaks off and on from writing and promoting.

Late last summer my husband and I sat down together and took a serious look at what mattered to us and how we wanted to spend our time.

What did we learn?

We learned that – no surprise – we love to write. And that we’d let the burden of all those necessary marketing activities get in the way of doing what we love.

We made some decisions that mid-August afternoon:

Pursue contracts for previously published works that have come back to us
Polish our existing completed manuscripts and start getting them out there
Write some new books.
Focus on what we love more than on going through the motions of publicity and marketing.

How did we do? Score a huge YES on all four.

We now have two previously published books under contract
We’ve polished two already completed manuscripts and are poised to publish them
We’ve written two entirely new books:
- A Reluctant Santa was published 12/2 and is doing well, averaging 4.5 stars at Amazon and GoodReads
- Swingers Light Up Vegas will open for pre-orders tomorrow, January 2
We’re approaching marketing differently. There are things that have to be done, but we’ve prioritized doing things that are meaningful and inherently rewarding rather than sticking to rote repetition.

Sometimes a New Year’s Resolution is an about face, a wake-up call, a plan to make a radical change. We probably got that accomplished in August.

Today, my resolution is to keep moving forward on this new path.