In one of my first posts of this year, I jumped aboard a bandwagon with many bloggers and shared some of my writing goals.
Now that the year is nearly over, I thought it would be interesting to see what I accomplished!
Back in January, I set the following goals for 2019:
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
In June, I wasn’t feeling like I was making progress so I instead made some readjustments:
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
Now that we’ve reached the end of December, it’s time to look back and see how I did.
Finish the Current Draft of Guises to Keep and Leave It Alone
Much to my surprise, I can check this one off the list as accomplished.
Mostly.
Guises to Keep is my longest project and the one I’ve been working on for the longest amount of time. But it’s also the one that needs the most work, which is why I haven’t given myself much of a break before now.
Having gotten through this round of edits, which included rewriting and restaging the final chapter at the suggestion of my critique partner, I put Guises to Keep on the backburner.
For a little bit, at least.
I will admit I started another round of revisions with it last month, but I’m trying a new approach this time and just reading through it while jotting down notes on things I need to fix when I do start editing again. This way, it’s putting me in a different mindset and allows me to read the story without stopping as often and getting hung up on little details such as the way a sentence is phrased, but instead focus on the bigger picture.
Start the second draft of Bound to the Heart.
At the time of writing this post, I’m about halfway through my preliminary edits of Bound to the Heart.
I’m glad I revised this goal back in June because while I have made a great deal of progress on it, I still have plenty to go, especially as I’m creeping up on the last ten chapters which were rushed to an extent in order to meet the deadline I had to set for writing the first draft (for newer visitors, Bound to the Heart was written during my final semester in college as part of the research component for the travel course I participated in). While there is less to edit in comparison to Guises to Keep when it comes to the bigger picture, I am working to refine my narrative voice, which has taken some time to find.
Finish the first draft of Against His Vows
This is another item I can check off the list!
What’s more is I finished the draft two days shy of the one-year mark.
It’s by no means ready for publishing yet, but I’m glad to have finished it as quickly as I did because I actually put off my current project to write it. At the time, Against His Vows seemed more fleshed out in terms of the plot and its characters whereas Forged in the Salle was still just a concept. Writing Against His Vows even helped to shape the ending of Forged in the Salle because the fallout of one effects the other.
Stay Ahead On Blog Posts
This, I would say, is the thing I feel like I came the closest to achieving.
While I have been pretty good about keeping up with things, it hasn’t been easy between working on books and other obligations in my non-writer life. Lately, I’ve taken to using the WordPress app on my phone to do some blogging during my breaks at work. Depending on the topic, I’m typically able to make at least a bit of a dent in the articles.
Overall, I want to get better at time management so I’m not stressing about how many posts are prepared. I always want to have at least one scheduled in advance in case something happens and I end up unable to post.
Next week, I’ll be finishing up this year by sharing my goals for the new one.
I’m hoping to take some major steps in 2020, so be sure to hit that Follow button to come along for the journey!
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