Checking In With My Checklist | Have I Actually Accomplished Any Of My 2019 Goals?

Jun 2, 2019

June is the sixth month of the year, meaning we’re coming up on the halfway mark for 2019.

You might recall one of the earliest articles on this blog, posted in January, where I broke down the resolutions I made for the year and the goals I set for my writing.

Since we’re nearly halfway through, I thought it would be interesting to see what progress I’ve made towards these goals, if any.

In case you missed it, here are the goals I set for myself in January:

Finish the current draft of Guises to Keep and leave it alone
Complete a second draft of Bound to the Heart
Finish the first draft of Against His Vows, ideally by August.
Stay ahead on blog posts

Looking at this list, I can already tell you I haven’t made as much progress towards these goals as I thought I would have.

Why?

My time management skills are subpar. I’m easily distracted. And I try to do too much at once.

Back in January, I would have hoped to be working on the second draft of Bound to the Heart by now, or at the very least be able to have one or two chapters left to edit for this round of Guises to Keep.

I didn’t factor in how lengthy my editing process is. With all of the phases it consists of, it takes me a long while to go through a chapter and get it to where I can feel satisfied enough with it for the time being. As I’m writing this article, I’ve just finished edits on Chapter Thirty-Six of Guises to Keep, meaning I have ten remainings.

The second goal of wanting to have a completed second draft of Bound to the Heart by the end of this year is contingent on the first goal, as I don’t want to be editing two novels at once. As such, I think it is reasonable to assume I will not be able to achieve this at this rate.

Additionally, my attention is split between editing one existing novel while writing a new one. Last August, I began work on Against His Vows. My hope was to have the first draft completed by August 2019. Currently, I’m twenty chapters in, meaning I’m roughly halfway through (as I plantser, there’s no definite way to tell how close I am to the end of a story).

Now, being approximately halfway through at the halfway point of the year might seem like completing the first draft of Against His Vows by the end of August is doable. It may be. But I’m hesitant to declare it so.

Unlike Bound to the Heart, which I was able to complete in a single semester as part of a travel course I participated in, I am doing as I did with Guises to Keep and writing the first draft of Against His Vows by hand rather than on a computer. It means the progress I make with it is much slower, but I prefer this method because it lessens distractions, and being easily distracted is something I definitely need to work on.

I’m in the process of setting up my own writing space that isn’t in the living room I share with my mother or in my bedroom where I’m likely to become sidetracked with things like my piano or lounging in bed watching YouTube videos and Netflix. I’ll be doing my best to make this “office” a distraction-free zone, limiting the amount of lollygagging that ensues.

I’m willing to keep August as my goal for completing Against His Vows, but I also understand why it might not happen which is just as important as understanding what you need to do in order to achieve a goal.

So I’m not completely giving up on my plans for 2019. I am, however, reassessing them and redefining them so they become things I can actually accomplish in the remaining six months of this year.

Revised Goals

Finish the current draft of Guises to Keep and leave it alone
Complete a second draft of Bound to the Heart Start the second draft of Bound to the Heart.
Finish the first draft of Against His Vows, ideally by August.
Stay ahead on blog posts