Happy New Year! Literary and health goals for 2024

Happy New Year, dear readers. I hope 2024 is a good one for you – and for me. Don’t you just love a blank slate, though? A brand new year to make a fresh start? Whether you’re goal oriented, like me, or whether getting by is simply enough (and that’s okay too, I’ve had years like that and surviving is sometimes hard enough) it’s nice to take a moment to see a fresh perspective.

This year, I have a few vague plans in mind. I say vague because I don’t want to put too much pressure on myself. Making a commitment, then not achieving it, can be disheartening. I like to set a vague goal, and then aim, roughly, in that direction. Here’s what I have in mind for 2024:

Literary plans

During 2023, I divided my time between 3 projects. Novel WIP#7 is a supernatural horror set in London and I’m currently up to about 27k words on draft 1. Novel WIP#8 is the sequel to The Buddha’s Bone and is up to about 23k words. Fiction WIP#9 is a psychological literary fiction collection of 4 longer short stories, one of which was previously published in a literary journal.

I anticipate that I will have the short story collection finished in 2024, and hope to make good progress on both novels. I don’t think, realistically, that I’ll have any novels finished in 2024 – but that’s okay. My output was high in 2022 and 2023, so I’m taking the pressure off myself a bit for a while.

Low carb lifestyle plans

Last year, I managed the entirety of 2023 without any chocolate, baked goods or other sugary desserts. These are my biggest comfort food weaknesses, so to say that I’m feeling strong is an understatement. My logical next step is this: if I was able to manage a whole year of overcoming my sugar addiction, why not high GI carbs too?

Yes, you get me. My goal for 2024 is to stick to a low carb eating plan for the whole year – including low carb alcohol. By low carb, I don’t mean with sweetener substitutes either. I’m talking whole, unprocessed foods as much as possible.

In an ideal world, I would like to lose 2 stone/ 28lbs/ 12 kgs. Believe me, there is 12 kilos worth of muffin-top above the waistline of my jeans that could easily go, and I still wouldn’t look underweight. I have endured many a patronising individual over the years who has looked at me and said “but, you don’t need to lose weight, you have thin legs/don’t look fat,” etc. People who say these bland platitudes do not know how it is to struggle with insulin resistance, disordered eating and body dysmorphia. We are all different, and have different goals. I for one prefer to practice listening and acceptance when others talk of personal struggles, instead of offering unwanted comments or advice.

Reading goals

Last year, in addition to reading a huge volume of submissions for Bindweed Anthologies, I managed to read 99 books. Some of these were writing research books, others were books I had to read for my day work (GCSE English) in a grammar school and the rest were novels that had been on my tbr list for a while. This year my goal is 100 books. I also hope to rate all of them and review the majority. Ratings and reviews help books to reach readers, so as a reader myself, I intend to do my part.

Obtainable goals?

I like my start of the year blog posts as, often, they’re a way for me to look back and measure any progress I’ve made. I can guarantee I’ll be revisiting this post in December 2024 to compare how close to achieving my goals I’ve come. But, no big deal if I haven’t!