I chose to do Quarterly Recaps rather than Monthly Recaps, and I still missed one!
Old Goals
The goals I set for the first Quarter of 2022 were:
- Blog email – set up email host (on the goals list until I actually do it)
- Blog Pictures – get book cover pictures on all Book Review posts
- Writing Time – rededicate Writing Group and writing work night time strictly to either WIP writing, or Blog content and maintenance
- Writing – get all the work on my current WIP typed up, and redraft the timeline and world map
- Read – read and review Effie Joe Stock’s Child of the Dragon Prophecy
- Quarterly Review Drop – post new book reviews to external review sites
If you want to skip to my goals for 2022 Q3, scroll down to the New Goals header. If you want to know how my progress went for January through June of 2022, read on!
Q1 and Q2 Recap
Early in 2022, I struggled to prioritize my writing time, but have been slowly working into a more regular rhythm. I have found that even a little bit of accountability with friends has helped me consistently keep writing time for writing. I focused a lot more on strictly writing during the time that I did set aside, which means that basically all of my blog work and reading got pushed back and ignored. I feel like the pendulum is about to swing back to blog and review work as I try to catch up.
BLOG EMAIL
This did not happen. I really only thought about it when I realized that I would have to write another Recap with no progress in this area. It’s still something that needs to happen, and will eventually, so it stays on the list again.
BLOG PICTURES
Done! Early in Q1, I put a lot of time towards developing a header image template for my book review posts. Now, I am able to, with minor edits, make a book-specific header image from the template, and so can use the resulting images for all my book review posts. This image will show up at the top of every book review post, as well as the on the blog landing page in the respective blog post previews. I also now have an image of the respective book cover within every book review post, which is all that I had intended to do when I set the goal … before I went down a rabbit hole with the header image.
WRITING TIME
Some progress, but still working on this. I am doing a little better with dedicating my writing group time to my work, and I have been very successful with putting almost all my work night time (2 nights a week, I work until 5am) towards writing. There have been some outliers, particularly with some work nights when I am exhausted by 2am, and either muddle poorly through some work, or end up heading to sleep early. I am going to work on getting to sleep earlier on other nights, and on adding a Pilates break into my work nights, to try and consistently reclaim that time.
WRITING
This is so close to being done! I spent a LOT of time on copying over the work that I have already done on my WIP. I handwrite my first drafts, but the writing is incredibly sloppy; the page is a mess from scribbles, changes, and notes; and the papers are not all in order in one spot. I handwrote everything into one legible first draft, did some very loose edits on it, and got it all put together in one spot so none of it gets lost. I fixed the timeline so it was accurate to what I have written currently, and redrew a world map. But I haven’t gotten any of it typed up yet. During the loose edit, I was able to identify a few things that really needed more work – like a whole secondary character that needs to be added in. I plan to catch up on some blog work (ex: writing this recap, posting book reviews, etc.), then dive into those edits and type it all up as I go.
READ
Nope. I did not read Effie Joe Stock’s Child of the Dragon Prophecy. I started it, but just couldn’t really get into it, so I kept putting it aside to do other things. Finally, I picked up another book instead, so I did read and review a book, just not this one. I hope to work my way back around to Child of the Dragon Prophecy soon, but I’m not sure where it falls in the TBR list right now.
QUARTERLY REVIEW DROP
I did not do this either. I got reviews written of the few books I read these past 6 months, but I didn’t get them posted on here, let alone get anything posted to external review sites.
New Goals
Looking forward to 2022’s Q3, I’m going to be working on the following goals:
- Blog email – set up email host (on the goals list until I actually do it)
- Writing time – get better sleep on days that aren’t work nights. Pilates break midway through work nights.
- Blog Pictures – get images up on all Recap posts
- Writing – finish necessary edits on WIP, and type up the draft
- Read – read and review 2 books
- Quarterly Review Drop – post new book reviews to external review sites
I’m looking at this list of things to do, and it is a lot. I really don’t think I’ll get it all done this quarter. I’m going to prioritize: writing for my WIP, focusing my writing time, and getting pictures up on the Recap posts. I feel like I have made great progress with my WIP the last few months because I was able to be more consistent with my work nights towards the end of Q2. That in mind, I hope to keep that consistency, and knock some of these things off the list – I feel like a lot of them will just stay on the list until I get them done … which means the list will just stay long until I do them.
Do you find you are more successful at accomplishing something when you continue to remind yourself to do it (even if you know you won’t get to it for a while), or when you set it aside for a while and come back to it once you have completed other things?