My Short List Of Ridiculous Goals For 2022

Happy New Year! Here are my brief but ridiculous goals for 2022:

1. Write 365,000 words. That, of course, is 1,000 words a day. Thank Christ (or, more appropriately, Pope Gregory XIII) it’s not a leap year. I’d never make that goal! So, this is over three times what I wrote in 2021, but I will have more time in 2022. I only have one class this year, as opposed to three last year, and I won’t be working a part-time job, which I did for nine months of 2021.

2. Finish Hive Five. That's my novel, by the way. It would be about damned time. If I’m writing all those words, this goal will work nicely with my first goal. However, at some point, there’s going to be more editing than writing, meaning working on the book will be in addition to the writing.

3. Read 104 books. The more I read, the better I’ll write. And since I’m focusing on novel writing, I should be reading books rather than short stories. Not that I’m forsaking shorts, but the novel is the priority. However, I’m pretty sure I’ve never read 104 books in a year in my life. If I have, it was when I was a wee lad, and the books were much thinner with many more pictures. I think I usually average between 40 and 50 books a year. Soooo... yeah. There are also some specific books I want to read, but I won’t bog you down in details here.

4. Have 50 patrons (at the same time). I have 22 as of this writing. Here’s a goal you can help me with. I absolutely suck at getting folks to join my Patreon at patreon.com/matthewsanbornsmith. Hint, hint. This year I’m going to try YouTube, doing very short videos of myself reading Mango stories, with the Patreon link for all to see, and a quick pitch at the end. I wanted to start this a month ago, but projects and people in the house tripped me up. I plan to get the first one out on Monday. The one that’s two days from now. I’ll post it for you and ask you to share.

5. Weigh 225 pounds (and don’t get heavier after I do). I’ve gained weight over the holidays and I’m currently at 237. (I’m 6' 2" if anyone cares.) Weight is harder to keep down since my full-time retail days when I was walking constantly (Once, on a double shift, I walked eleven miles in a day just inside the store. I got depressed and put aside my pedometer after that.) So, exercise a little more. Try to restrain my eating habits a little more (one of the biggest challenges of my life).

6. Write 52 blog posts on The One-Thousand. I’m already on my way with this post! I’ve severely neglected my blog, and I need to spend less time on social media, so this will be good for me, even if no one reads it. But you’ll read it, won’t you? Won’t you?!?

7. Get my A.A. in English. Of all my goals, this is the easiest. I only have one class to go and it starts in a few days (damn it!). The bad part is, until I’m done in the end of April, it’s going to take time away from my other time-needy goals. Man, I hate school! That’s why it’s taken me so long to get here.

That’s it. I have little faith in myself to accomplish even two of these goals, so that’s a great place to start. Here’s hoping I surprise the shit out of myself. As I said yesterday, you don’t win or lose in a year. You win or lose moment to moment, with each decision you make. Too often, I cave to my animal wants (eating, sleeping, legal naked stuff) instead of doing the necessary work. All I need to do to make some progress is to overcome the animal a little more of the time. So, good luck to me.

If you’re a yearly goal or resolution person, I wish you luck too. Some people don’t even bother setting themselves up like that because they know they’ll fail, but I can’t imagine not wanting to improve things. Even if I fail, my attempts at succeeding put me farther ahead than I otherwise would have been.

Let’s all have a great year!

2017/2018

Happy New Year!

2017 wasn't great, but a couple of things happened that were good enough to give me some hope for the future. One major thing was getting a part-time job at the library which pointed the way out from a death at the hands of retail.

I had a goal of writing twelve new short stories in 2017. I only completed six, but I thought five of those six were great. Two of them were the longest pieces I've written in years, technically novelettes. I'm excited about the story I'm currently working on, but that will be one for 2018.

I had only one story published this year, but some people really dug it. It's called The Wardrobe and you can read it here: http://www.metaphysicalcircus.com/the-wardrobe-fiction-by-matthew-sanborn-smith/

After peeling out of a terribly stressful job, I started a Patreon in June that helped me reconnect with some awesome fans, raise Beware the Hairy Mango from the dead, and cover some bills during a very lean summer. It also got me to blow the dust off my failed Kickstarter project, Hive Five.


2018 is the year of biting off more than I can chew. On top of my two part-time jobs, I'm going back to school to get an Associate's degree in English, and then an even better library job. But the degree and job are for late 2019. Classes, or at least eight of them, are for 2018.

On top of that, I've packed more (mundane, but important to me) goals into the year than I could possibly have time to achieve, but so what? Among those goals are another stab at twelve stories and finishing Hive Five, though that will likely be a novella, rather than a novel. There's also creating content for the Patreon, probably moving, and consuming a lot of stories, books, comics, and movies.

I'd better get moving.

163 and 164

I've been my usual lax self here. Forgot to mention I finished a flash piece in July called Outvasion (that's 163) and a 5,000 word short story in October called Stars so Sharp They Pierce the Skin (that's 164).

I've had very little time for writing the last month, between two jobs and life outside of those. I've mostly been working on Mango scripts for the Patreon and a little bit on "Hive Five."

My netbook, which has been pretty good to me for the more than seven years I've had it, is now causing me enough problems that I went and ordered a refurbished desktop, just so I can write and podcast without wanting to kill things and smash objects. I should be getting the other machine in a couple of days. I really hope it works and doesn't crap out on me.

Help Me Write A Novel!

Hey, gang! I'm stoked to have a chance at writing the type of thing I love this spring: a funny, crazy science fiction novel. It's called Hive Five and it's about a hive mind that's not very good at being a hive mind. Here's the opening:

 Everyone was covered in either blood, kisses, or barbecue sauce. 

 Sammy's Recipe for Barbecued Chaos: 

 1. Decide you want a nice little party at your house. 

 2. Forget for a moment that you're part of a hive mind with fifty-six other people. Not a very good hive mind, admittedly, but good enough that those fifty-six other people simultaneously decide they want a nice little party . . . at your house. You do have the biggest yard in the treeborhood, of course, nearly an entire limb to yourself ever since you convinced the Umumwei family there was such a thing as a cybernetic squirrelfestation thanks to the loan of your friend Barry's Travelling Squirrel Zoo, some manufactured doodads from your garage forge, and a hot glue gun. The Umumweis folded up their house and moved it two levels down that same afternoon. 

 3. Allow your now enormous party to be crashed by the rest of the treeborhood who, for some reason known only to God's Clone, have become more affectionate than spawning salmon at a grizzly bear swingers party. 

 4. Remind yourself you have to get better at creating metaphors, but in your defense there is a half-love, half-fistfight free-for-all going on in your yard at the moment.

Tell me that doesn't look like fun! Here's where you can help. I need to raise the money so I can crank this out in three months and get the finished novel into your hands this summer. Besides the book, you can also get cool rewards, like a personalized episode of Beware the Hairy Mango, a ringtone of my voice, having a character named after you, and more!

Check out my page here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/189894541/hive-five

And my video right here: