by Debbie Burke
Happy New Year, TKZ friends!
Tonight, all over the world, millions of people will sing “Auld Lang Syne.”
So what the heck does “Auld Lang Syne” mean?
The literal translation from Scottish is “old long since.” In 1788, Robert Burns wrote down a Scottish folk poem that he claimed came “from an old man’s singing.” The poem wasn’t published until after Bobby’s death in 1796.
The melody was from a 1782 opera but had different lyrics.
In 1799, the tune was combined with the Burns poem to celebrate Scottish Hogmanay (New Year’s celebration):
“Hogmanay celebrants traditionally sing the song while they stand in a circle holding hands.” (source: Britannica.com)
The last verses from Bobby’s original poem read as if a cat scampered across a keyboard:
“We twa hae paidl’d i’ the burn,
Frae mornin’ sun till dine;”“we’ll tak a right guid willy waught,
For auld lang syne.”
Here’s the English version of the later verses:
We two have run about the slopes,
And picked the daisies fine;
But we’ve wandered many a weary foot,
Since auld lang syne.We two have paddled in the stream,
From morning sun till dine;
But seas between us broad have roared
Since auld lang syne.And there’s a hand my trusty friend!
And give me a hand o’ thine!
And we’ll take a right good-will draught,
For auld lang syne.
The last day of 2024 seems like a good time to take stock of writing progress during the past year.
My 2024 goal list was seven items. I can check off four as completed or making substantial progress. Those are:
- Publish the ninth novel in the Tawny Lindholm Thriller series. Fruit of the Poisonous Tree launched October 1, 2024. Checked off.
- Start an editing business. For years, writer friends urged me to go pro with editing services. Last January, I hung out a shingle. Through word-of-mouth recommendations, I earned more in the first two weeks of editing than I did the entire previous year in book sales. Check that off as a big success.
- Do more teaching and personal appearances. I talked with book clubs, taught workshops, participated on panels, and sold books at festivals. These are fun activities because I love to meet readers and writers. Check this off as a success with plans to continue in 2025.
- Work on my nonfiction craft book The Villain’s Journey. This is a long-term project. In 2024, I made substantial progress with research, writing, obtaining permission to quote sources, and refining the structure. This project rolls over into 2025 with a goal to finish and publish The Villain’s Journey by summer 2025.
What items on my list were fails?
- Do more marketing, advertising, and promotion. For years, this goal remains my perennial failure. Will I do better next year? We’ll see.
- Create box sets of my Tawny Lindholm Thriller series. I didn’t get around to this project and will roll it over into 2025.
- Start a Substack. Another project I didn’t get around to. Rolled over into 2025.
Goals are important for writers because we’re often working toward a nebulous, uncertain future where progress is hard to quantify.
Unless you have a set deadline, it’s easy to fall back on Someday. Someday I’ll finish my novel, or learn Scrivener, or run Amazon/Facebook ads, or [fill in the blank].
At the start of each year, members of my critique group submit a list of goals we want to accomplish. At the end of the year, we review the lists to see how we did. We’re usually pleasantly surprised by how many items we checked off.
When you write down specific goals AND show them to others, that’s a small but effective step to make you more accountable for your progress.
TKZers, want to try an experiment? Write down your 2025 goals and share them in the comment section. Next year at this time, we’ll review the comments and see how we did.
While Rod Stewart sings “Auld Lang Syne,” I’m raising a toast to The Kill Zone community.
Wishing you a happy and creative 2025!
~~~
Start the New Year with new reading at a bargain price.
Tawny Lindholm Thrillers – select titles are 50% off !!! Today is the last day of the sale.
Happy New Year to you, Debbie, and everyone else at TKZ. I don’t have time to read posts every day—alas my bank expects their checks on a regular basis—but when I do I find the posts inspirational and informative. For this I thank you all.
As for goals—I fulfilled one of my 2024 goals last night by finishing the final draft of my first novel. It goes to my publisher today and is tentatively scheduled for release in the spring of 2026.
For 2025 I plan to complete the final draft of my second novel and the first draft of the third. There are other goals, but these are the two most important to me.
Here’s to a happier, healthier New Year filled with peace, joy, and love.
Congratulations, Doug, on finishing your novel.
Happy New Year, Doug, and big congratulations on completing your first novel!!! Keep us posted on the publishing date.
Once you know you can finish a book, that increases confidence and builds momentum. Sounds as if you already have a solid start on 2025’s goals.
See you next December and I’m betting you’ll have accomplished those goals and be on to #3, #4, and more.
I need to improve my marketing, something I’ve always been bad at because I don’t like doing it. But that’s too vague. For a goal to have a chance of being reached, you have to break it down into manageable and measurable steps. The SMART goal system is worth following.
Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
So, for marketing, I could try “do one promotion a month”
Will I? That remains to be seen.
Excellent point, Terry! SMART is a great technique.
My heart is never in marketing either, making that goal esp. tough. No wonder it keeps getting pushed into next year.
Have a healthy, happy, and creative new year!
Happy New Year, Debbie! Indeed, Auld Lang Syne.
Meeting 4 out of 7 goals is still a fair amount in my book. FWIW creating a box set is good, actionable goal and can pay some great marketing dividends.
Going into 2025 my goals are:
1. Finish Fine Me Deadly and publish it by mid-year.
2. Produce another novel this year.
3. Begin biweekly blogging on my own website, alternating weeks with my TKZ posts.
4. Undertake an overdue study and practice of sentence-level writing craft, to help improve and make my description and narrative more engaging. I have this goal every year, and every year I end up focusing on a different aspect of fiction craft.
5. Level up my mailing list—grow it, engage it more.
Happy New Year, Dale!
Thanks for the encouragement about box sets.
Two novels in one year is ambitious but you’ll do it. Your other goals are SMART, as Terry mentioned above.
The education never ends, does it? That’s why writing is always interesting and challenging.
Happy New Year, Debbie, and thanks for sharing the info about Auld Lang Syne.
I had 25 writing goals for 2024. (My first goal for 2025 is to cut down on the number of goals! ) I met some of them, some if missed, other things happened that weren’t even on the list.
In 2025, I’ll be concentrating on the second book in the Lady Pilot-in-Command series, continuing to do monthly interviews on my blog, go to at least one writing conference, and become a part of at least one middle grade author group. Oh yeah, and do a better job of marketing. Whew.
HNY, Kay! Wow, 25 goals??? I’m in awe.
As you say, goals can change. Unexpected opportunities come up that are worth pursuing more than your original list.
Knowing you, my friend, next December you’ll report back with every item checked off…except maybe marketing! 😉
I am not generally a new year’s resolution person. I am a check list person though.
In November, my goals were radically changed when my wife of 35 years died of a heart attack. Now my goals are to take care of my children and set up keeping a roof over their heads. It has been an adventure. Nothing like a cold jolt of reality to focus your life.
I have told a few stories from my pizza delivering. It has been adventure and half of my life. Along the way various people have said I should write them down. I started about a decade ago. I had 20,000 words down when the site I was using for editing up and died and took my work with it. My backup wasn’t as good as I thought. Embarrassing for an IT guy. GOAL 2025: Finish that book. GOAL 2025: Retire from the pizza biz. My knees say it is time to stop.
See you all here in 365.
To show my age. Same bat time, same bat chanel.
Oh, Alan, I’m so sorry about your wife. What a blow. Hugs to you and your family.
Hope you find comfort in finishing your pizza diaries. You’ve shared a few stories here at TKZ and they’re terrific. By the time your wife’s Yahrzeit occurs next November, may your book be complete and serve to honor her memory.
So sorry to hear about your wife, Alan. Best wishes for finishing that book in 2025. I’m looking forward to reading it.
Very sorry to hear about your wife’s death, Alan.
Here’s hoping you finish that book next year—I’d love to read it.
Sorry, Alan. May the new year bring peace and consolation and many pleasant memories. May your writing shine a light for all of us.
So sorry, Alan!
Best wishes to you & your family as you draw together & navigate 2025.
💕
Alan, my sincerest condolences in your loss.
I made some of my goals — published my 8th Angela Richman mystery, A SCARLET DEATH, and finished the first book in a new series, SEX AND DEATH ON THE BEACH. That mystery is set in Florida. I wanted to write again about my adopted state. Both books are with my London publisher, Severn House. I also wrote a short story for a Crippen & Landrue anthology.
Two major failures: more promotion on Facebook, more use of Bluesky. I hope to do better next year.
Loved the history of Auld Lang Syne and Rod Stewart singing it.
Thanks to the TKZ readers and bloggers. I learn so much from you.
Way to go, Elaine! Year in, year out, you’ve steadily turned out great books in several series. Exciting to hear you have a new one coming out. Florida is fertile ground for crime novels.
HNY!
Hey, Debbie! Thanks for this. I am also making myself do more promo stuff in the new year. You’ve been great this year and I hope to make you proud in 2025…
Tracey, great to hear you! It’s a joy to keep in touch with a First Page Critique veteran who perseveres as you’ve done.
Happy New Year and best wishes for successful promotion in 2025 of your acting, music, and writing!
I rarely set goals, being content in retirement to stumble from day to day, getting a few things done. Despite my lacking a goal and a co-author, the colonnades of 2024 saw the publication of my treatise on “The Guardienne,” that problematic genius at the heart of our Unconscious, which, it turns out, “has consciousness of its own,” as C G Jung put it. It’s early days, still, for the book, which Self-Publishing Review referred to as: “Compassionate… innovative… eye-opening… bold… wide-ranging. ★★★★”
Goals for 2025:
1) Finish my Mystery/Romance/Western novel.
2) Study the next logical question, “How the hell can an alcoholic stop drinking?”
3) Write another monograph for ResearchGate, “Schizophrenia and the Guardienne.”
4) A monograph on “Catcher in the Rye” and its obvious theme.
5) A thriller based on a 1924 case of possession.
6) Back-adapt my WWII thriller to film.
7) Finish 2 or 3 of “House of a Thousand Spiders,” “Going to Ground,” “The Carpenter’s Cup,” “Dirk’s Dark Circus,” “E_sex Chapel,” “Obliterator .850,” or “Temple of the Permutants.”
8) Perform my latest play, “Shake, Willy,” as a reading.
9) I’ve just discovered a trove of rather dark stories on my hard drive. I plan to publish them in 2025.
10) Start my last novel, “Mine is the Morning.”
J, congratulations on publication of The Guadienne! I bet you’ll “stumble” through your ambitious list of projects very successfully.
Happy New Year!
2024 has been so crazy, here I sit–less than 1.5 hours before it becomes 2025 (and being annoyed by all the people popping off fireworks all around the complex), and I haven’t even had time to sit down and think out my goals for 2025. But I can say generally that one goal is to write & publish the second historical mystery in my co-written series, and I have a LOT to learn about the business side of writing–all aspects–marketing, promo, keeping records, etc etc etc. And somehow, I don’t know how, find time to work on a solo writing project as well. And find more time for research.
Also generically, I will say I want to be better organized in 2025 because that will aid me in all areas of my life, including writing.
Happy New Year to the TKZ community and may your 2025 be awesome and filled with goals achievement!
Happy New Year, Brenda!
Being overwhelmed with too much to do and too little time to do it is a familiar feeling. That can also lead to discouragement and burnout.
Try breaking down large tasks into small, bite-size jobs. Organize ONE drawer, not the entire office. Read ONE article about your gigantic research topic. Write ONE page or even ONE paragraph.
Tomorrow, do the same, and the next day, and the next.
Once a week, take stock of what you’ve done. Some weeks will be lousy, some will be pretty darn good. Over the next 365 days, you’ll find you accomplished more than you realized. As long as you keep putting one foot in front of the other, you make progress.
See ya back here next December with your list of checked-off items.