Late on a monthly recap again. I’m considering making these quarterly recaps going forward, that would help me not fall behind in posting them, but it might also mean I put off working on my goals because of the longer time between self-check-ins. I’ll think about it.
Old Goals
The goals I set for July were:
- Reviews – finish rehashing and reorganizing reviews and get them posted on Goodreads, StoryGraph, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.
- Read – finish Age of Legend
- ARC – read Home Truths and have review posted on August 11th
- Blog – set up email host (because I’ve had this blog up for 1 year, and still haven’t gotten that done)
If you want to skip to my new goals for September 2021, scroll down to the New Goals header. If you want to know how my progress went these past two months, read on!
August Recap
I’m continuing to have success with my weekly Worknights. If you don’t already know, every Monday and Wednesday are worknights for me, where I stay up late to work, sans kids, until about 5:00AM. I have been dedicating Monday Worknights to household tasks and Wednesday Worknights to writing and reading only. This has really proven to be crucial in my getting any writing and reading done, otherwise I devolve into chasing the endless list of To Do tasks.
REVIEWS
I did absolutely nothing with these. I’ve hit a point where I’m not sure how to format my printable book review page, and I’ve been avoiding it. It sounds like a stupid little technicality, but I tend to get caught with things like that sometimes. If I know how I want something, but just haven’t been able to get it there, I stop and don’t even d it anymore. At least it’s only hanging me up on posting my reviews on other platforms, and isn’t keeping me from writing book reviews all together. Looks like this will be on my goals list again … gotta do it eventually.
READ
Done! I finished Age of Legend, wrote the review, and posted it (read the review here). Thank you, Wednesday Worknights. I have also since started the next book in the series, Age of Death.
ARC
one! I was nervous about getting Home Truths read and reviewed by the release date, but I actually got it done a little early (read the review here). Read, reviewed, and posted (posted to Amazon and Goodreads as well, per the publisher’s request). Again, thank you Wednesday Worknights. I did have some trouble with posting the review to Amazon, but it just needed a little ironing out and it’s all set.
BLOG
I did absolutely nothing with this goal either. Just like the book reviews, I’ll be keeping it on my goals list until I do it because it really needs to get done.
I also got a bit of writing done on my Work in Progress (WIP), and on a second project. This is another thing that happened because of Wednesday Worknights, while I hadn’t planned to do any writing until having finished reading Michael J. Sullivan’s The Legends of the First Empire series (2 more books to go!), there were a few scenes that just kept poking at my brain and needed to be written. I probably should have been focusing on my other goals during those Worknights, but I had a ton of fun getting some written in.
My Worknights are going really well, and it’s making me think I may have to work on my focus in another area too – my weekly writing group. This group holds a special place for me, and is where I got most of my writing done when I first started seriously writing, but lately it has devolved into me using that time to complete To Do tasks that require the internet (because I don’t have internet at home). I’m thinking that if I can get my writing group time turned back around and focused on writing, then I should be able to get all my goals done more readily.
New Goals
Looking forward to September, I’m going to be working on the following goals:
- Reviews – finish rehashing and reorganizing reviews and get them posted on Goodreads, StoryGraph, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.
- Blog – set up email host (because I’ve had this blog up for 1 year, and still haven’t gotten that done)
- Writing Group – dedicate this time strictly to working on either WIP writing, or Blog content and maintenance
- Read – finish Age of Death
I am so glad that focusing my Worknights is continuing to work, and has helped me move some things forward. I’m interested to see if I can stick with the same dedication for my Writing Group time.
Do you attend a writing group? If so, is that when you get most of your writing done, or does that time tend to devolve into something else?