First blog post of 2023! I don’t know about you, but I like goals. I like setting them, I like working towards them in measurable ways, and I like accomplishing them. Goals work well for me.
I’m combining three different types of goals into this post. Let’s start with the publishing goals first.
Goal #1. Publish A Challenge by the end of the year.
I want this to be the year that A Challenge is finally published. I’ve been working towards this for nearly a year and a half now. I want to make it happen this year. A year gives me a lot of leeway, which I’ve definitely learned I need with this book.
Goal #2. Do a Preorder on A Challenge.
I never got to do a preorder or any sort of lead-up to Beneath the Willow Tree’s publishing date. But it’s definitely something I want to do for A Challenge and probably every other book after that.
Goal #3. Have A Challenge Printed in Hardcover.
This is also something I want to do that can’t be done with Beneath the Willow Tree. I want to have A Challenge available in three formats, E-book, paperback, and hardcover. How that’s going to happen, I haven’t finalized yet, but I’m going to work towards it.
Those are the three main goals when it comes to publishing. Now for the writing side of things.
Goal #1. Finish the editing and rewriting of A Challenge
I mean, this is a pretty obvious goal to have, since if I don’t meet it, none of the above goals are going to happen.
Goal #2. Pick the next writing project set for publishing and start work on it.
Whether it’s writing the first draft of a new project, or starting the editing and rewriting of another, this is a goal that I definitely want to meet. Once A Challenge is truly on the way to being published, I might take a bit of a break, but then we’ll see.
Goal #3. Figure out some sort of writing schedule.
I currently don’t have one at the moment. It’s more like whenever I have a bit of unused time during the day, which is available for the most part, but also too often is filled by other things.
Now, finally, for reading goals!
Goal #1. Read at least 3 books a month and 36 books this year.
However, the Goodreads Challenge is set for 85 books this year. I started it out at 24 books last year, just to give myself an easy reachable goal, but I quickly met that and started upping it. In the end, we made it to over 80 books, so I want to see if we can make that again this year.
Goal #2. Finish reading The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne.
I started this like, forever ago (before I joined goodreads, I think?) and never finished it. Just didn’t. The reason I started it was to find some answers to that crazy ending in 10,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Now I’m not so sure I’ll get the answers I want, but I definitely want to finish it.
Goal #3. Expand my personal library.
For the longest time, I didn’t own books. The majority of my reading was done through the library. (And still is. Libraries are AMAZING.) Part of the reason was I didn’t have a lot of money. The other was that I had no desire to buy a book when I could just check it out from the library whenever I wanted.
But finally, in the last couple of years, I’ve started building my own personal library. And that is something that I want to continue doing this year. I’m not expanding this library with just any books, but books that I know I want to own for years to come and have available on hand to reference or read at my own pace.
Goal #4. Actually participate in a Goodreads group read?
I put a question mark at the end of that for a reason. It is definitely something I’d like to do, but the time has just never seemed right. Either I’d already read the book and wasn’t in the mood for a reread, or just never got around to ordering it in from the library… So we’ll see.
Well, in total, that makes 10 goals for my book related things this year. We’ll see how many of those I meet!
Until the next post,
Abby