2016 Goal Results

 

Writing

Goal: Better than last year.

Reality: Over 400k more words

Blue to Purple, 2013-2016  monthly writing totals

 

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.

2013-2016 year totals

 

By June, I’d surpassed 2015’s count, and in July, I beat 2014.

I even surpassed 2013’s counts for 5 individual months.

 

I did not, however, manage to get myself more focused. Hopefully I can get on that for 2017.

 

 

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?