My Goal for Vocal in 2024

As 2023 drew to a close and 2024 began, I did what many others did and partook in the annual tradition of setting some resolutions for myself for the new year. (Hopefully I stick to them all!) One of these resolutions relates directly to Vocal, and I set a specific goal to help me achieve it. My goal for Vocal in 2024 is relatively straightforward, yet it is also challenging: write more. This relates to one of my resolutions for this year, which is to try and write more, including on Vocal. I want to do this because I really enjoy writing and it gives me a good creative outlet. I also might want to turn it into a second career some time in the (likely) distant future.

Sure, fulfilling my goal of being more active on Vocal will be difficult because I will need to make time to write while still managing and balancing my full time job, my marriage, homeownership, helping raise my infant son, my other hobbies, and my other obligations and commitments. But I am committed to doing it because I love writing and Vocal is a great platform for aspiring writers in part due to its many communities and challenges.

In order to help me stick to this goal, I set two specific smaller goals to go along with it, that way I have a measurable goal that I can use to hold myself accountable. The first of these two goals is to publish my fiftieth story on Vocal before the summer. This story is my thirty-third, so I only have seventeen more stories to go! The second one of my two smaller goals is to publish my seventy-fifth story by the end of the year. These will not be easy to achieve, but they are definitely obtainable goals as long as I stay on track and write regularly.

I chose these two goals over setting a bigger and more general goal like publishing a story every week (which I told myself I would do in the past but have never been able to stick to for long) because this method is more flexible, which is something I need due to all of my other obligations and hobbies. This way I won’t get discouraged if I have to go a couple weeks without writing because I can make it up without breaking my goal. (This is something that has happened to me before).

In order to meet my goals, I plan to participate in more (and possibly all) of the many wonderful challenges here on Vocal. They are great prompts that provide inspiration and help me branch into different genres of writing. I also plan to sort through the many draft stories I began on Vocal to figure out which ones are worth completing. Hopefully I can finally finish some of those stories that I started some time ago but never got around to finishing! In addition to writing more, I plan to read more of the stories written by Vocal’s many wonderful creators!!

I cannot wait to accomplish my goal for the year, and I cannot wait to see what 2024 brings for me and all of my fellow writers here on Vocal!