2016 Goal Results
Writing
Goal: Better than last year.
Reality: Over 400k more words
If you’ve been following along with the monthly goal
reports, you’ll have seen that I spent the year kicking 2014 & 15’s respective
butts. There are only 3 months that I didn’t surpass them both, and of those
three, I still got the silver medal.
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2013-2016 year totals |
By June, I’d surpassed 2015’s count, and in July, I beat
2014.
Publishing
Goal: 8.
Reality: 5.
This year was one of getting to understand myself in a
better light. One of the self-discoveries I came to was that my pace on things
is not a constant. Some edits are the easiest thing in the world. Some are like
pulling out my own fingernails, still others find me staring at a page and
wondering if English really is my first language.
Some drafts are easy to map out, easy to tap out those words
and follow the twists and turns that pop up in the middle. Others… Characters stop
in front of me, put their hands on their hips and just say “no.” leaving me to
figure out how to fix the problems that keep them rooted in place (looking at
you, Archie).
Two of the books I’d planned to put out this year are like
that.
In other cases, something that isn’t entirely in my control
come up and that’s okay. It’s one of the reasons I try to be loose with my
schedule and try not to make any concrete promises until I know I can fulfill
on them.
That said, I am an overachiever… and I’m pretty sure that personality
trait isn’t going anywhere.
Reading
Goal: 100.
Reality: 71.
Part of the reason this went so poorly this year is that sometimes, when I’m trying to figure out what’s wrong with a book, the easiest way to figure out how to do the thing, is by reading someone else’s work wherein I know the thing is done well… and dissect it so I can figure out how it would work within my story. This means reading things I’ve already read, and I don’t count those toward my yearly reading goal, but they still take time out of my reading schedule.
I’m okay with that making me miss this goal, honestly.
Editing
Goal: Get through some of the mess from 2013
Reality: I started.
The thing about picking up a 3+ year old book and working
through an edit is that I’ve grown enough each sentence needs fixing. Each paragraph
is rearranged and fiddled with… and each page can take upwards of 20 minutes.
Which is both frustrating and fun at the same time. But it means I’m elbows
deep in words for weeks at a time and I have to work my schedule around it…
which was not as easy as I expected.
Blogging
Goal: so vague there’s no way to measure it.
Reality: I guess I win by default?
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