If you’ve been reading my last few posts, you know I’ve been hesitant to set goals for 2024. My problem is having too many projects in different stages to work on all of them. So I laid out all the projects I’d like to work on if I had infinite time. This is just projects that have taken up some of my brain power in the last two years, not things that are in my writing ideas folder, actually folders, both paper and computer folders.

I’m still not sure of this, but I need to set goals. So here they are. I’m dividing them into two sections: Realistic Goals, and Wouldn’t-It-Be-Wonderful Goals.

Realistic Goals

• Finish editing A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 1 and publish it. I’m targeting the end of January for completing this.
• Pull Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution from Kindle Vella, and publish it as a print book and e-book. This will not be a large project. I’m targeting February for completing this.
• Write A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 8, simultaneously with teaching it. That should be February through April. Publishing will be delayed until the rest of the series is published.
• Write A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 2 and publish it. This, I hope, is a four-month project, or maybe a little more. This should be a fairly easy project to complete, because I’ve thought much about it and done a fair amount of planning.
• Get to work on A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 3. I’d like to say “and finish and publish it,” but I’m not yet sure if my other projects will be completed on schedule.
• Make final edits to my short story, “To Laugh Again”, and publish it. I suspect this will happen in odd moments during other projects. This should be in the first half of the year.
• Write and publish the next book in the Documenting America series. I hope to decide what the subject of the book will be by the end of March, and to write the book the second half of the year.
• Begin transcribing the letters from our years in Saudi Arabia. I’m hoping to start this in February, though more realistic is in the second half of the year. Part of the problem is I don’t really know how many letters there are, so I don’t know how big the project is. That’s why I can’t plan on when I will finish it.

So those are the Realistic Goals. Now for the Wouldn’t-It-Be-Wonderful Goals.

• Update The Candy Store Generation for the last several election cycles, and re-publish. I’d like to do this by July.
• Work on the John Cheney book. By the end of2024, I’d like to have the full structure of the book known, and several chapters written. If I do work on this, it will be in odd moments, multi-tasking while watching TV. I have no goal for when to publish it.
• Work on the Thomas Carlyle bibliography. As with the John Cheney book, this is for off hours, multi-tasking. Again, I have no goal regarding publishing.
• Work on One Of My Wishes, a new poetry book. Since at present I have no inspiration for writing new poetry, I’m not sure if this will ever happen.
• Outline the next book in my Church History Novels series. I won’t say any more about that right now.

So that’s it. Lots of plans, lots of hopes, lots of effort and efficiency needed to come close to all of this.