“A goal is a dream with a deadline.” – Napoleon Hill

I had this quote in my head today without actually remembering who said it. So I was a little surprised when I looked it up and found it attributed to Napoleon Hill. After all, I’m more likely to remember Charles Dickens, Hunter Thompson, or Frank Zappa than I am to remember the words of Tony Robbins, Jim Rohn, or the author of Think And Grow Rich. Nevertheless, there it is.

And it’s a new year, which means new goals, new dreams, and new projects.

I don’t usually do too much cross-posting on social media, although periodically I’ll share an article I wrote for my LinkedIn account via Twitter or Facebook. But today I’m actually featuring an image I created for my Instagram. It’s the intro to my work-in-progress (WIP), Whizzers, which I started to develop as far back as 2001.

Yes, 2001.

I know it sounds outrageous, but over all those years I was working on Miles of Files, I would periodically set it aside and start something else. And the years kept rolling along. In fact, I have two projects I started – Whizzers and a historical novel tentatively entitled Duty of an Educated Tyrant – along with a third, more nebulous project which only exists in a folder as notes, character sketches, and snippets of dialogue.

But Whizzers is something special.

It’s by far my most autobiographical work, and it’s also ambitious…in the sense that I don’t even know what genre to call it. It has elements of the supernatural or metaphysical, but…heck, I don’t know. I’ll work on categorization when it’s finished.

After I put out my first three novels, and my collection of short stories this past year, I knew it was just a matter of time before I’d have to get back to working on Whizzers. To be honest, I hadn’t actually planned on finishing it soon. I just hadn’t. Then I saw the hashtag #sixwordcommitment on Twitter on New Year’s Day, and absentmindedly tweeted “I will finish my fourth novel.”

Oops.

So now it’s on the internet, for all the world to see. I just set a goal of 12/31/18, at the latest, for the completion of Whizzers. Watch this space for more. And please feel free to let me know in the comments what you think of that intro!