It's January again and so it's time for my Yearly Goal Post. :-) Whoops! It's actually February, so that I'm already behind time! I hope that this isn't the way the rest of the year goes.
In terms of productivity, last year was far better than the year before. I didn't meet all of my goals by any means but I worked more, and more often, and with better results than the year before. I even broke it up with major surgery, elective though it was, and a recovery that took far more out of me than I had planned for. So I definitely do better when I focus a few times a year on whole project and then work on cleaning up projects in between. I do need to make more time to work during the in-between periods. So there is that.
I've been doing some thinking about goals and how they work in my life. I tend to over commit to myself. This year will be no different. But I need to find a way to make that work for me. Some of my thoughts were prompted by some of the other bloggers I follow. (Hello Art of Procrastination blog!) One thing that I think I should do is to set up some year goals. I can cut those down into smaller bites and, from there, even smaller, more agile bites.
On that note, my yearly goals are to self-publish the next Lilith's Children book, to continue to clean up the other two Lilith's Children sequels. I will finish the contemporary menage romance, have it beta'ed, and shop it to some of the erotic romance publishers. I will polish the steampunk ghost-hunter book and shop that one around too. And I will get two new projects off the ground.
Thus, for the rest of February and the beginning of March, I need to concentrate on edits for that Lilith's Children book and on putting together a cover. But first I'm going to fix the cover of the book I self-pubbed last year. As a series, all the Lilith's Children covers need the same visual feel.
I'm debating making April a new project month along with a new project in November a la Nano.
During the late spring through mid-summer and I would work on the two Lilith's Children books that are mostly written but need work--quite a bit of work, actually. And by the late summer, I might be able to squeeze in finishing and shopping the contemporary and the steampunk books. Or conversely, I could swap times and projects, finishing and shopping the non-Lilith's Children pieces first and working the Lilith's Children's pieces second. Either way, the Lilith's Children books need to be out to beta readers and the others shopped about at publishers by October 1. If I manage more than that, I'll give myself a gold star. :-)
So I might be biting off more than I can chew. There are blog posts to add and jewelry shows that I will probably need to pony up time and pieces to, not to mention the rest of my life. But I'm not giving up those new projects. New projects keep me motivated.
I don't think I'm going to drill down any further because I really do want the weekly goals to be easily changeable, able to pivot on the fly. But they do need to exist. So, on Mondays, I will create them. And that is a goal.
The proof is in the pudding. If I make most of these goals, I'll be ecstatic. But it's here in 'print' for all the moderately interested world to see. It will haunt me all year. Just the way it's supposed to.
