My Creative And Business Goals For 2022 With Joanna Penn
“We make plans, God laughs.” The old Yiddish proverb will no doubt stand true for another year, but I just can’t help myself! I need to make plans to have something to aim for, but given how 2021 didn’t turn out as expected, for 2022 I will hold my plans and goals loosely and won’t be surprised if they change. If I start off with lower expectations, perhaps it will turn out to be a spectacular year for us all (fingers crossed!). Here’s what I’m planning, and I’d love to hear about your goals, so please leave a comment here if you’d like to share and we can keep each other accountable. * Embrace multi-passionate creativity — and optimize for curiosity* Books for authors — Joanna Penn* Fiction as J.F. Penn — thrillers, dark fantasy, crime, horror, short stories* The Creative Penn website and podcast* The Creative Future — putting new technologies into practice* Books and Travel* More tech, less tech. Health, travel, and connection* Financial Goals Remember, I am a full-time author-entrepreneur so I have a lot going on — if your goals are simpler — like finishing your book, or publishing for the first time, or selling 1000 copies, then fantastic! You don’t have to have such extensive goals as me! Embrace multi-passionate creativity — and optimize for curiosity Every year, I think that I “might be more successful” if I can focus on a limited number of things, but as Walt Whitman said, “I am large, I contain multitudes.” As much as I try to say ‘no’ more, life proliferates and I find so many things interesting along the way that I want to do it all, or at least investigate things further. As Lisa Cron pointed out in episode 592, “Emotion telegraphs meaning.” If I am excited about a project or a topic, then I need to give it some time, even if the practical application (and the revenue) might not be obvious. I’m an author (across multiple genres). I’m a podcaster. I’m an audiobook narrator. I’m a course creator. I’m a speaker. I’m a futurist. These days, I optimize more for curiosity than for maintenance of the status quo. Following my curiosity, J.F. Penn book research trip, Lisbon 2019 — featured in Tree of Life Yes, there needs to be a balance, but I’ve been a full-time author entrepreneur since 2011 and so it cannot just be the same old, same old. It can't just be ‘write, publish, repeat.' I cannot write to market, and I cannot write because I have to. I refuse to grind it out. I have so many things I want to create in 2022, and so many more things I want to learn about and share with you. I know I can’t do it all, so I will embrace my multi-passionate creativity, follow the paths my curiosity takes me down — and see where the year takes me. Here are my creative and business goals — some of them will happen, some won't, and I am far more accepting of that these days! Books for authors under Joanna Penn I have three current works in progress, all with significant words in draft form: * How to Write a Novel — 95K* The Shadow Book (working title) — 30K* The AI-Assisted Author — 50K Although I’d love to say I’ll write and publish them all, each is a significant piece of work, and I have a lot of other things I want to do, so there will be at least one non-fiction book for authors— but I don’t know which as yet.