This website was archived on July 21, 2019. It is frozen in time on that date.

Sonya Mann's active website is Sonya, Supposedly.

Medium-Term Goals

“Success is the ability to move from one failure to another without loss of enthusiasm.” — Winston Churchill (or maybe not)

I am quite ambitious, but on a relatively small scale. I don’t want to be famous — “well-known in certain circles” will suffice. I won’t turn down riches if they pop up in my bank account, but my financial aspiration is middle-class comfort rather than stunning wealth. Hopefully that’s not asking too much of my own professional ability or of the economic context I live in.

Hell yeah, from now on I'm only shopping at Success Deli! Photo by Bruce Berrien.
Hell yeah, from now on I’m only shopping at Success Deli! Photo by Bruce Berrien.

There is value in stating goals. As a writer I subscribe to the idea that words have power, and articulating a desire makes it more likely to become an accomplishment. You could argue that I’m counting chickens before they hatch — luckily, the only consequence of predictive failure is embarrassment. The stakes are not that high. So here’s what I want to do, in roughly the order I expect things to happen:

Get more sleep.

Self-explanatory. I really need eight or nine hours; currently I’m making do with seven. Not healthy; not wise.

Start and run a sustainable lifestyle business.

I have an idea and I’m working on it! More on that soon, I’m sure. Anyway, I want to be able to support myself by running a small business within a couple of years and support both myself and my partner after ten years. (It’s okay if it happens faster! But I’m wary of over-optimism, since I’m interested in editorial entertainment, which is a saturated market.)

Cover of Liberty magazine in May, 1925.
Liberty magazine in May, 1925. Via Retrogasm.

Get married.

Even more self-explanatory than better sleep habits.

Write a full-length nonfiction book.

I’ve written and published various longish works of nonfiction, but nothing in the fifty-thousand-plus range that constitutes a full book. Someday! Fifty or a hundred thousand words is a lot, but I’m convinced that I can do it. The first book will probably be an essay collection, sort of a one-person anthology.

Write a novella or novel.

Fiction baffles me, but I’m still determined to tackle it. The books I have loved most have all been fiction, and I want to do for readers what authors have done for me.

Adopt a child.

Age is negotiable!


At some point I also want to start collecting art… but I could do that right now if I budgeted for it. Therefore it seems silly to put on the list.

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