This is long overdue. I was hoping to stay on top of the quarterly recaps, but I just kept prioritizing other things, and so here we are, a whole year later.
Old Goals
The goals I set for 2023 Q1 were:
- Writing – type up all handwriting on my WIP (2023 goal: finish writing WIP first draft)
- Writing time – nail down time/day for writing nights. Figure how to keep focused during it
- Reading – read and review 6 books (2023 goal: read 24 books)
- Blog email – finalize campaign email copy
- Quarterly Review Drop – post new book reviews to external review sites
If you want to skip to my goals for 2024, scroll down to the New Goals header. If you want to know how my progress went in 2023, read on!
2023 Recap
How we choose to spend our time directly determines how productive we are – we all have have times of highly focused productivity, times of complete distraction, and times of distracted production. 2023 was the latter, and it was so productively unproductive, it was maddening.
And that was primarily due to two main things: book reviews and people.
I wanted to read 24 books in 2023, so I found myself prioritizing more time to reading than I had in past years. I like to write the book review before starting another book, and some reviews took considerably longer than others, so a good chunk of my writing time went toward writing book reviews for this blog. Productive, yes. But was it in the areas that I most wanted to be productive? Close, but not quite. I would much rather all that time have gone toward writing for my WIP.
I also spent a considerable amount of time on moderating for a writing group that I am part of. It doesn’t take terribly long to tweak copy in the description of an online event when edits are needed, but it takes a significant amount of time to hold the hand of someone who is brand new to the group, says they will be attending the online event, asks all sorts of questions about how to do so and how to use the event platform, and then doesn’t show up … or does but only for five minutes never to be heard from again. I gave them so much of my time. So much.
So, 2023 was a train heading down an unintended track, and I didn’t realize it until late into the year. As you can guess, my successes with my goals reflect that.
WRITING
Done! Ish. I typed up all the handwriting of my WIP. While typing, I ran it through a quick edit, catching typos and adding description and clarifying sections, I also created a full timeline spreadsheet and character glossary. Then I did a stronger edit on the first four chapters, which cleaned them up enough for me to feel comfortable sending it to some friends for their thoughts. However, I made very little progress in writing more on my WIP and am hardly closer to finishing it than I was this same time last year. Even though I didn’t hit my 2023 goal, and my first draft is far from done, I am very pleased with my progress in typing and editing what I have already written, as it gave me an understanding of just how much I have already done (it’s a little tricky to gauge that when handwriting).
WRITING TIME
Still tweaking. I have nailed down the times and days that work best in my schedule to get writing in. However, that time was definitely not focused on writing, but on so many other things – again, primarily on book reviews and people.
READING
Nope, didn’t get it. I knew reading 24 books in one year was an ambitious goal for me, but I have so many I want to read! I only read 11 books, however I also completed both a gamma read and a copy edit read. So all said, my count is at 13 books read; just over half of my goal. Click through the following links to read my reviews of all my 2023 reads.
- Shannon Lane’s Temperance
- A. C. Cobble’s Conspiracy
- Damian Myron’s Dig Down
- Scott Chantler’s Squire & Knight
- Shawn Speakman’s The Tempered Steel of Antiquity Grey
- Dan Santat’s A First Time For Everything
- Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows
- Damian Myron’s Lock the Doors
- Randy Frazee’s The Story, and Adam T. Barr’s Exploring the Story (combined review)
- Lucado, Frazee, and Hill’s The Story for Children
BLOG EMAIL
I haven’t even touched it. With all the time that I was putting towards other things that already weren’t what I really wanted to be prioritizing (WIP writing), I wasn’t even going to start on this goal.
QUARTERLY REVIEW DROP
I didn’t work on this at all. For the same reason that I didn’t work on my blog email, I had no desire to add one more thing to the pot to take up more of the time that was already taken up.
New Goals
Looking into 2024, I’m going to be working on the following goals:
- Writing – finish writing WIP first draft
- Writing time – keep focused during writing time, limit other writing/ reading projects to prioritize WIP writing
- Reading – read 24 books. For most of these, I’m planning on reading through all Michael J. Sullivan’s books. His Riyria Revelations series is my favorite, and as he is still writing books within its world, I am itching to read it again.
And that’s it, that’s all I’m planning. Yes, there are more things I should get done. Yes, there are even more things I want to get done. But it boils down to the fact that my priority is to finish writing my WIP first draft. And, if how 2023’s goals went highlights anything for me, it’s that by repeatedly giving my writing time to so many other things, I didn’t actually make that priority my priority.
So in 2024, I’m pausing most of my other writing-related work and goals to prioritize my writing. I’m planning to post quarterly updates, but let’s be honest, I might not get another recap posted before 2025.