My Goals for 2018

New Year’s is here, and it’s time to reflect on what we accomplished in the past 365 days and to create new goalposts for the year to come.

Last year I wrote 11 goals I wanted to complete by the year’s end. I managed a few. Some I didn’t come close to accomplishing everything. In my defense, the ones I didn’t complete, I thought about a lot. That might count for something.

What I did finish

I finished the first draft of my first book. I even managed to get some editing done. This was by far my biggest accomplishment for 2017. I still can’t believe I finally finished writing a book, even if I will have to rewrite the whole damned thing several more times.

I’ve also begun to build up my author’s platform, although I must admit to spending more time with DuelingLibrarians than my own site.

Running several times a week happened for a long while. Most of the year, actually. Then my knees decided they’d had enough, and I had to give it up. Then there was the issue with my son getting booted from preschool for behavioral issues. Being a full-time stay-at-home mom doesn’t leave much time for exercise.

What about the other nine goals?

This is where I blatantly failed to accomplish and move on to what I’d like to do in 2018.

1. I recently completed all 26 modules of Google’s Marketing Certificate. In the next few days, I’ll be taking the final for the certificate. I get three chances to pass it. Wish me luck!
2. Keep editing and working towards a second draft of Dragons of Kalda.
3. Finish the copywriting course on Udemy (last year’s #4).
4. Start the Write Story Books for Children course (#2 of 2017).
5. Continue to build my author’s platform with constant content and social media posts. This means more personalized posts, sticking to my posting scheduling, and giving more love to Wattpad.
6. Continue to learn about marketing for indie authors and authors in general.
7. Enter at least five writing contests. I managed to enter one contest and submit to three literary publications this week, so 5 in a calendar year shouldn’t be that hard. That’s the theory, anyway.
8. Check-in every month on this list. I didn’t do that in 2017 and many of my goals were totally forgotten. I’ll try to do better in 2018.