It’s the first Friday of the month&the first Friday of the year! I’m reporting on my goals and setting new ones—come join in!

2013 goals and accountability

My writing goals for 2013 included:

• Publish two novels and a novella in the Spy Another Day series
• Write two novels: Spy Another Day #2 and #3
• Maintain my website and monthly email newsletter
• Coordinate book reviews & tours
• Sell 1000 copies of I, Spy
• Prepare another novel for publication
• Read 40 books
• Blog, usually 3-4 times a week.

And here’s how I did!

• Publish two novels and a novella in the Spy Another Day series—Yep! I actually made a day-by-day schedule to make sure this happened. Fortunately, I also built in a ton of room because I barely made it on time.
• Write two novels: Spy Another Day #2 and #3‐Same as above: I was way behind schedule, but I made it.
• Maintain my website and monthly email newsletter—Yep!
• Coordinate book reviews & tours—Did this, too. This year, I might look into hiring this out, though.
• Sell 1000 copies of I, Spy—I was scared setting this goal so high for a self-published debut, but I came sooooo close. I did my sales totals for the year yesterday, and it looks like it came to 989 copies of I, Spy sold.
• Prepare another novel for publication—This I didn’t do. I’ve really rethought the novel I had on tap, and falling behind schedule on writing and editing chewed up some of the time I’d allotted for this. But that’s okay—because the rest of the time was taken up with a different project: my first book on writing craft! (And another novella…)
• Read 40 books—I got 31. Not bad, but not as good as I could have done. I should read a bit more to help with burnout, I think.
• Blogging went . . . okay. I feel like the medium in general is in a decline, and my blog is included in that as traffic and comments have dropped off somewhat.

December accountability

My specific goals for last month were:

• Now finish my NaNo novel—DONE. Took longer than I was planning, and there are still a lot of rough spots, but I know I an keep working at it.
• Polish up the NaNo novel a bit—didn’t make as much progress as I’d hoped, but I’m still working on this.
• Write up the 2014 business plan, goals and production schedule—check!
• Think about my conference presentations for next year. If I’m feeling really ambitious, outline them—I did a quick outline last night while brainstorming. Good enough for me!
• Enjoy the holidays with my family—check!

And that last one makes the whole month worth it.

January goals

• Get Spy Another Day #3 ready for critique group & take it to them
• Polish up that novella I wrote in September
• Write enough to stay sane
• Start gathering materials for my next Writing Craft book

Man. That looks so DOABLE. So not like me. (Although really #1 and #2 hide a lot of work, eh?)

And big goals for the rest of 2014

• Publish a novella, two novels and up to three Writing Craft books. (It sounds like a lot, but the fiction is already written, just in various stages of editing now.)
• Write a short novel and a full length novel. And whatever else I feel like 😉 (falling under the “enough to stay sane” guideline here, too).
• Teach at LDStorymakers in April, and possibly other conferences, as my schedule permits.
• Do all that promotion and marketing stuff.
• Explore more collaborations & partnerships.
• Bundles! Box sets!
• Read. I didn’t intend to set a number goal last year, but then I did. Sigh. I think I’d like to average at least 3 books a month. So 36 books. Should be doable. Right?
• Try to sprinkle in a little fun. That will come with #2, #3, #5 and #7 of course, but I want to be careful to avoid burnout.

Whew! I’m looking at my color-coded production schedule and . . . it’s a little daunting (in some months). But I’ve adjusted my expectations for the year based on actual! data! and I’ve tried hard to reel it in a bit. Now to add back in the fun . . .

What’s on tap for you this month? This year? Come share!

Photo by Celestine Chua