Back in 2020, I made a list of everything I wanted to achieve by the end of 2021 to do with my writing, and I decided to come back and look at how well I did with my goals. A lot has changed since I made these goals, I spent a lot of 2021 pregnant and then had a baby to care for, so I had to do my best to achieve what I could. the goals I had set were:
- Finish writing and editing my books from 2020
- Publish Three books
- Write 200k by march (June at the latest)
- write a total of 500k in the year
- get at least ten sales on Wrongful Love
- upload at least one blog post a month on writing blog
- keep twitter and writing page up to date on my work
- upload twice a month minimum on Wattpad to get more exposure.
- Make my writing blog more appealing to readers.
I will now go more in-depth over each goal with how I did.
1.) Finish writing and editing my books from 2020: I had started and been working on a lot of books in 2020 and I knew I wouldn't be able to write and edit twelve projects especially since seven were part of different series; so instead I made a list of all the books I did want to finish in 2021 and decided to completely finish my hybrid trilogy (Project Curse, Project Choice and Project Hybrid) I also wanted to finish Project sisters, Project Endo, Project Hope, Project Love and my short story collection.
I was able to finish writing Project Curse, get half way though editing project hybrid and endo and got a few thousand more words on project hope & love.
While trying to finish my short story collection I started to wonder what the rush was; I started that project because every now and then I would get a short story idea and I wanted a place to put them. so I had to decide if I just shared them online or just kept slowly writing stories as they came to me until one day I had enough short stories to publish a whole book. In the end I decided to just wait to write it and instead focus on my other projects.
2.) Publish Three books: This was going to be one of the hardest ones and I knew it. I had been trying to get my trilogy taken on by an agent since 2020 with no luck and I had no idea how I could publish three books when only one of my projects I had planned to self publish and after the disaster with wrongful love and everything going on in my life that was added stress I didn't want to deal with.
In the end, I decided to scrab this whole goal and instead just focus on my family and writing and editing so that come 2022 I would have more time to try and deal with it.
3.) Write 200k by march (June at the latest): this definitely did not happen. by the end of March, I had managed to write 18,942 words which was way under what I had wanted. up until April, I had been barely writing and I knew there was no way I would manage to write an extra 181,058 words in three months and I was right because at the end of June I had only written a total of 50,000 words.
4.) Write a total of 500k in the year: Because I had failed so badly by the halfway mark I knew I wasn't going to make it to 500k especially since in this last half of the year I would have a baby to look after and my writing was to be put on the back burner. It's not the end of 2021 yet but I don't plan on doing much more writing this year but I did manage to finish the year off with 150,000 words.
5.) Get at least ten sales on Wrongful Love: It's hard to make it as a self-published author no matter how much discounted sales I had on my book, how many hours I spent advertising over the year it seemed impossible to get any sales. by April 15th I hadn't gotten one actual person to buy my book. But by December 31 2021 I had sold three copies of wrongful love and even had a review.
6.) Upload at least one blog post a month on writing blog: I passed this one with flying colours. I posted a minimum of once a month here on my writing blog and this month alone I will have posted three times by the start of 2022.
7.) Keep twitter and writing page up to date on my work: This I definitely passed. I was keeping twitter and my facebook page updated weekly on what was going on from word sprints to just general parts of my books looking for advice.
8.) Upload twice a month minimum on Wattpad to get more exposure: I definitely failed at this goal but that was because I slowly started to realize that sometimes the books I think won't make good books for publishing can and will be a good book even as a short story. I still did upload a bit just not as much as I wanted to.
9.) Make my writing blog more appealing to readers: I wasn't sure how I was going to even know I had done this. I made sure I was writing better blog posts which definitely made me feel better about my work but how I was to know if it was more appealing to you guys, the readers.
I decided to look at my 2020 stats and then compare at the end of 2021 to see if views were up which would give me a good idea if people were drawn to my blog more so now than before.
In 2020 I had 0 followers, 0 comments and 624 views across my blog.
In 2021 I had 0 followers, 0 comments and 525 views
