Apparently this post got lost in the nether – I thought it was posted back in December! – so I’m just putting it up as is. I’ll definitely be posting these recaps quarterly now, I keep getting to them late and then feeling bad about it (and apparently losing some of them). So here’s the last, foreseeable Monthly Recap!
Old Goals
The goals I set for September were:
- 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
If you want to skip to my new goals for 2022 Quarter 1, scroll down to the New Goals header. If you want to know how my progress went this past month, read on!
December Recap
In November and December my productivity with reading and writing dropped significantly. I think this was primarily due to my failing to keep my dedicated worknights, and my schedule developing into holiday chaos. But I was still able to knock out a few goals, and I’m working on righting my schedule.
REVIEWS
Done! I finally got my act together and then got into a rhythm to get all my reviews posted up on the following sites: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Goodreads, Story Graph, Library Thing, and Bookbub. There were a few books that I wasn’t able to locate on some of the sites so there are 2-3 outliers on 1-2 sites. As I was finishing up, a friend told me about Net Galley, where I can also post reviews, so now I need to take that into consideration and add it to the list. I’m counting this goal as accomplished (finally), but since it will be an ongoing thing to maintain as I write more reviews, I plan to do one drop of all new reviews at the end of each Quarter, and I will be catching up Net Galley with my past reviews in my 2022 Q1 review drop. I’m so glad to finally have this done, there were a lot of months when I completely forgot about it, and a lot of months where it consumed almost all of my writing time.
BLOG
I have done nothing more than think: I should do that. I have a strong suspicion that my tackling of this goal will be very similar to my tackling of posting on review sites – I feel like I’m not prepared to actually do it yet, so I keep unintentionally putting it off. Welp, this will stay on the goals list until it’s done, just like the reviews did.
WRITING GROUP
I have been somewhat keeping to this, but not well. I really want to be diligent with dedicating this time because I know how much more writing I will actually get done.
READ
Done! I finished Age of Death (read the review here), also read Age of Empyre (read the review here), and with that finished Michael J. Sullivan’s Legends of the First Empire series! I also read Damian Myron’s I’m Not My Father (read the review here), Junji Ito’s Cat Diary: Yon & Mu (read the review here), Lee James’s Azriel (read the review here), and knocked out a Beta read for Michael J. Sullivan during the tail end of December and into the beginning of January 2022. I was actually impressed with how many books I read this year: about 20 – I didn’t keep perfect track, but that’s counting books I read on my own (including ARC reads and the Beta), and the Children’s chapter books. I think I may set a reading goal for 2022 to try and push myself to read a little more regularly, there’s just so many books!
New Goals
Looking forward to 2022 Quarter 1, 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)
- 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
Hopefully, getting back on track with my worknights, will help me get all this done before April. Have you had any well established rhythms or habits that went out the window this past year land you’re struggling to reestablish?