Planning for 2023

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. I wrote a blog about that all the way back in 2018, but I do like setting goals. Seeing as I’m already two weeks behind from the beginning of the year, I’m not sure how all of this will go. But if my life is proof of anything, you just have to keep trying and keep moving forward. You’ll get there; it just might take longer than you thought. So here goes.

Last year

My writing last year stalled until about June. Then I suddenly woke up. (Though December was a dud for both years.) I did have goals set at the beginning of 2022, so hopeful for what was to come. I didn’t make them. But I never do. My hunger seems to always be larger than my actual stomach. I’ll never stop trying though. So let’s see how I did in an attempt at objectivity.

2021 Writing Spreadsheet

2022 Writing Spreadsheet

2023 Writing stats

I wrote about 20,000 more words this year than last year. I’ll take the positive momentum. (I took off the blog word count because I’ve started to count them as complete items instead of a word count kind of thing.) All of the projects moved from 2021 to 2022 since I didn’t complete them. We’ve already talked about how hard 2021 was for me personally which obviously affected my writing. This year The Healer and Tarbin’s True Heir comes off. It’s nice to have completed projects.

So we’ll call it an okay writing year. At least progress was made.

It appears that my revision totals went way down, but if you’ll notice for 2022 I took off my freelance editing and Cursed Dragon Ship editing. I edited nothing personally in 2021. At least last year I re-read and fixed up Tarbin’s True Heir to a nice clean version and edited The Healer in time for its release. If I’d included my professional editing in this spreadsheet, it would have tripled the number in 2022. The publishing company has kept me quite busy in 2022 and promises to keep me even more busy in 2023.

So we’ll call 2022’s revision goal as much improved over the previous year since I completed two projects instead of zero.

The blog posts, the one goal I did over 100 percent on, gives me a bit of pride. Yet, those were mostly business blogs and not personal ones. And newsletters were pathetically low. I’ve got to do better next year.

So a win for blogs and a loss for newsletters.

Now that I’ve analyzed, let’s try to make a realistic set of goals for 2023.

2023 Writing Goals

Ella the Godling or Children of Gods or The Baker, the Apprentice and the Thief (I’ll figure out a title eventually) will be completed this year which sets it for release in Spring of 2024. I’m deep into the draft and it’s flowing better than most stories I try to write.

The Twins third book in the Emergence series will also get written. I’m excited to see how Fauna handles this next challenge I’ve set out for her. I have no doubt that I’ll get this book written and on time. So that goal I tackle with confidence. If Ella doesn’t get done on time, I’ll set it aside to finish Twins because it’s a third book, not a first, hence is a much higher priority for the fan base. You waited patiently for The Healer; I will reward that loyalty by making sure The Twins is finished on time.

I’m a bit worried about the short stories. I’ve had more trouble writing them from my universes than I have from a random prompt. But I’m going to try. My reader magnet for joining my newsletter isn’t from either of my worlds and I need to fix that. So keep me accountable! Ask me how it’s going until I feel so guilty that I sit down and make myself write them.

Making these goals moves my projected word count to over double what it was in 2022. Do I think it’s ambitious? Yes. Do I want to lower it? No. I can do it. I can totally do it.

I’m moving the blogs up to thirty-six for an average of three a month. That will give me two for the business and one for me personally. I should be able to keep up with that. Of course, should and will are two different verbs. Nevertheless, it’s the beginning of the new year so I’m still pretty positive about what it all looks like.

Other Goals

After Girl Scout Community camp with 300 girls this weekend and the fact that everything hurts today, I need to get serious about exercising. I don’t know why it’s so hard to fit it in. But it doesn’t matter. If I want to keep traveling and volunteering and, quite honestly, doing anything, I have to make this a priority. I have a gym membership at a location with an indoor pool, so my joints aren’t even an excuse I can lean on. I’ll try a few times and a few different techniques to talk myself into it. It’s so ridiculous that I know I need to do it and just can’t seem to cross that threshold. I’ve got to solve this problem this year. If y’all have any advice that isn’t “just do it,” I’m listening.

What Are Your Goals?

What are you looking forward to this year? What do you want to accomplish?

And if you’re interested in this spreadsheet that I’ve used for years and am not sure how I’d keep track of my productivity without, you can get a copy for yourself here.

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