Onward and Upward [2023 Recap//2024 Goals]

 

Back when I wrote my 2023 Goals post, I described 2022 as straightforward, busy, and "pleasantly predictable." And here, at the end of 2023, I just have to say . . . I miss pleasantly predictable. Pleasantly predictable was nice. So was straightforward. 2023 has been neither of those things, unfortunately. It's been rather challenging. Not entirely — 2024 also contained many good things, some that were "We wish this hadn't had to happen, but under the circumstances, it could have been MUCH worse" and some that were indisputably excellent. Still, I suspect I will look back on this year with very mixed feelings.

I confess that, as a result of, well, everything, I kind of forgot about most of my goals about halfway through the year. Still, we'll recap and see what I managed, and then we can get on with setting some new goals for 2024. But first, don't forget that my New Year's Eve short story posted last night, and y'all should read it! Also, if you're watching for the second half of my 2023 Reading Celebration/Best of 2023 list, I'll post those on Friday. I read a lot of good books in 2023, so I'm going to have to make some tough decisions there . . . but that's a problem for the me who's already finished writing this post. Let's stick with one thing at a time.

(Before I go on, though, one more quick sidenote: Through a Shattered Glass is free on Kindle through January 4 because it was chosen as the Fellowship of Fantasy book of the month for January! So, if you haven't read it yet, now's the time to get a copy.)

2023 Recap // 2024 Goals

2023 Recap

Year of Water and Grow

• My theme for 2023 was "water and grow" — maintaining what I've achieved and growing myself and my skills in various ways.
• In theory, these themes (based on CGP Grey's "Year of . . ." theme method) are supposed to guide the whole year, but I just kind of use them to set goals and then assess at the end of the year.
• I would say that I had . . . mixed success with that theme. In some areas, I definitely achieved both watering and growth. In other areas, I was doing well if I just managed the watering bit.

Writing

• My goal for 2023 was roughly the same as the one I've set the last several years: to actively and regularly work towards specific writing goals at least ten out of the twelve months in the year. And I can say without hesitation that I have done that! In fact, I spent all twelve months actively working towards specific writing goals! Did I meet every monthly goal? No, because "finish Bastian Dennel, PI #4" was one of my goals in multiple months, and I just accomplished it a week ago. But that's ok!
• My total wordcount for the year was 286,032 words. That's lower than last year, but I also worked on fewer projects this year, and I had other tasks taking me away from my writing more. It's still a good 100,000 words higher than 2021, and it's only about 50,000 lower than 2020, so I'm more than satisfied.
• I also achieved another general writing goal/dream when Through a Shattered Glass won the 2023 Realm Award for Novellas. I'm still a little astonished at this, actually — I expected that I'd be dreaming of this award for quite a few years yet. But I'm also delighted, and winning the Realm Award was one of the highlights of my year.
• Additionally, I attended two events to sell my books: Eat Local, Read Local and Doxacon. I can't say that I attended solo because the lovely Heather Halverstadt shared my table and gave me some great direction at both, and L. Jagi Lamplighter was also at our Doxacon table. Still, these feel like pretty significant milestones!
• Regarding specific project goals:
  • I wrote, submitted, edited, and published Song of the Selkies with the Stolen Songs Arista Challenge. Last year, I described the idea that became Song of the Selkies as "shorter and faster to write [than my BDPI Little Mermaid story]." Past me, you sweet summer child, you had no idea. I worked on this right up until release day, with only a few brief pauses. Still, it's out in the world, I'm happy with it, and other people have enthusiastically told me how much they like it, so, hey, I'm not complaining.
    
  • I released a short story with the Wags, Woofs, and Wonders anthology. "Grim Guardian" was fun to write, and I'm so glad that it was accepted into the anthology! I didn't get to do as much with the release as I intended, but I'm still pleased.
  • I finished drafting Bastian Dennel, PI #4. I originally thought I'd be done with this back in February. That's hilarious. But, y'know, I made progress! I also decided that it's going to require a hefty rewrite and will probably become book five in the series, but that's ok. In that sense, I sort of accomplished my goal of drafting BDPI #5 . . . but I didn't write the story I originally thought would be BDPI #5 (which will now be BDPI #4, so I'm not giving myself too much credit there).
  • I know what I'm doing for the 2024 Arista Challenge (tentatively). I intend to start writing it today or tomorrow, in fact. The only reason that "tentatively" is in there is because I have learned my lesson.
  • I have kept up with my Defenders of Serys D&D campaign. We spent a bit over half the year in Middle Earth, which was good because it meant I knew where things were going, but also got a little unsatisfying to write after a while. And now we're back in Serys, working through an adventure I've had in mind for a while, and that's been fun.
• I've mostly kept up with blogging and author socials. I took a few more blogging hiatuses this year than in some past years, and I definitely missed more Wednesday Instagram/Facebook posts than I intended. Still, I think I did ok under the circumstances.

Reading

• As per the usual, I'll cover my reading goals in my Best of/End-of-Year Book Celebration posts. For an early look at my stats, you can check out my tracking form results.
• By way of a brief summary: I shot way past my overall reading goal (101 books) with a total of 155 books read. I also did pretty well with tracking my reads in detail, and I think the new version of my Google form worked well. However, I didn't succeed at most of my more specific reading goals because I decided to go with mood-reads instead.
• I also did a much better job of tracking what I watched! This was actually easier than tracking my reading, as I could usually enter the details of what I was watching while I watched it. I ended up using a Google form based on the one I have for tracking my reading, and that worked well. A few statistics, in case anyone is interested:
  • I watched 72 distinct movies, episodes, or videos.
  • The majority of those (79%) were episodes of TV shows.
  • The shows I watched the most were Over the Garden Wall (1o episodes), Leverage (9 episodes), Fairy Tail (6 episodes), and Hogan's Heroes (6 episodes).
  • I did most of my watching in May, June, and October, which makes sense — in May and June, I was watching a lot of shows with my sister, and in October, I rewatched Over the Garden Wall.

Life

• I started online grad school. This was my unspoken job-related goal in last year's goal post, and . . . well, I'm a third of the way through a Master's in Professional Writing! I'm doing it! I did spend a lot of the time second-guessing my decision, but I haven't thrown in the towel yet!
• My job is still going well. This year's work has involved slightly fewer new things, though there have still been some interesting challenges: we changed printing companies (which meant I had to find our new company), we ran into new and exciting troubles with the livestream and internet (cue many groans), and we finally managed to pull off an EDDM (neighborhood-based) mailing (after a false start and a failed attempt — the catalyst for our change in printing companies).
• I'm still practicing German . . . and I went back to learning Irish. For once, I surpassed past me's expectations on a goal! I said I wasn't adding a second language . . . but a few of my friends were talking about learning Irish, and I happened across an explanation of some concepts that befuddled me on my first attempt, so now I'm doing both German and Irish on Duolingo. It seems to be going ok so far.
• I did not figure out a consistent exercise method. I did pretty ok for the first eight weeks or so, when I could usually spend some time on the treadmill a couple times a week while working on grad school assignments. However, that didn't work super well with my second class, nor was it ideal for my novel writing, and then the summer happened, so . . . yes.
• My whole family had a weird, stressful summer and fall. Go back and read my May 2023 Doings post if you want more detail as to why, but long story short for those who missed it (or for future me, looking back): my grandpa fell and broke a few vertebrae shortly after my sister's graduation. The injury was far, far less serious than it could've been (thank God for protecting him), but it still meant my mom was up at his house most of the summer — the first weekend of May through Labor Day weekend, minus about three weeks in July — while my dad, my sister, and I stayed in Virginia and took fairly frequent weekend trips up to see them both. Then, about a month and a half after my mom was able to come home, my grandpa's health went downhill again, and he had to have open heart surgery . . . which went well, but was also scary. Praise God, he's doing much better at this point, and I am praying so hard that 2024 is better for him. So, yes. There were many miracles over the course of everything, but that doesn't mean it wasn't hard for everyone (my mom especially).
• However, this summer did still include some fun things! Namely:
  • I drove all the way to Ohio to attend a book signing featuring W.R. Gingell and Suzannah Rowntree! This was absolutely awesome — and not just because meeting some of my favorite authors was absolutely awesome. My sister drove up with me, which meant we got to spend lots of time together, and we stayed with a very good friend of mine (my former roommate) who I was delighted to see again in person.
  • I attended Realm Makers for a second year! This was my first year at the St. Louis location, which I'd heard a ton about. It was much less overwhelming than Atlantic City, though also much more cramped. This was also my first time flying solo, which ended up being much less stressful than I expected — in fact, it was actually pretty fun! Of course, the highlights of the trip were the Realm Awards ceremony and getting to see my friends (especially Kendra E. Ardnek and Wyn Estelle Owens) in person again.
  • My family went back to White Sulphur Springs for a joint retreat between our Bible study and another Bible study in Ohio. White Sulphur Springs is one of my favorite places in the world, so this was a very good time.
  • I got a lot better at and more comfortable with cooking as a result of having to do more of it this summer while my mom was away. I'm still not great at juggling a lot of tasks at once, but I can make several of my favorites, and I can improvise on certain types of foods! So that's a win.
• My D&D group defeated one of our major nemeses (twice) and found out we're pretty close to finishing the campaign. This is notable mostly because we all hate the now-defeated nemesis more than the actual BBEG of the campaign, and also we made his final defeat on the last session of the year, which was kind of satisfying.

Well, that wraps up my Year of Water and Grow. Again, it's not really what I expected or hoped, but I know God was working in all of it. And now it's time to lay out my 2024 theme and goals to hopefully start the New Year well.

2024 Goals

Year of Staying the Course

• I thought about dropping the whole "Year of" themes because I forget about them well before I forget my actual goals.
• But then I realized during church yesterday (while praying about my goals and themes) that there was a theme that would work well for this year . . .
• And that theme is Staying the Course. With writing, with grad school, with work — the key is, as always, consistency. And I know from last year that I'm going to have challenges in some of those areas. That I'm going to wonder if I can do the thing I've said I'm going to do. But I want to stay the course, to keep going, unless I receive a clear indication that doing so is the wrong choice.

Writing Goals

• Not much new here. I'm repeating my overall goal from last year: I want to actively and regularly work towards specific writing goals in at least ten of the twelve months of 2024. Again, these can be wordcount goals, or they can be project goals like "Write this much of [book/story] by the X date." I'll probably switch back and forth depending on what best suits what I need to get done.
• I am deliberately not increasing the number of months in that last goal because my other overall goal for the year is to keep up better with deadlines so I can build in time to rest between projects and I'm not working on things until the last minute. In 2023, pretty much the only times I took a creative writing break of more than a couple days was when I was either sick or working on a big grad school assignment that took up all my time, and I was terrifyingly close to the wire on some projects. While everything worked out, and while I think I had some pretty extenuating circumstances, I don't want to repeat that in 2024. I want to make sure I have some proper time to rest and refuel between projects, and I want to go back to finishing things well ahead of my deadlines so I have wiggle room if anything goes wrong.
• Of course, we also have some specific project goals:
  • I want to write, edit, and publish Daughters of Atirse #2, which is also my 2024 Arista Challenge project. I aim to have it drafted by the end of March, which will mean lots of writing in the next three months . . . but will also give me plenty of time to have beta readers take a look before I edit, polish, and format so it's ready for a September release without having to scramble.
  • I want to write, edit, and maybe publish the new Bastian Dennel, PI #4. As I mentioned earlier, the BDPI #4 novel I worked on the last few years is being pushed back to book 5, and what was book 5 is now book 4. This should be a much shorter book (given that it's a less complicated plot with fewer POVs). My hope is to have it ready to go either around the end of 2024 or early in 2025.
  • I want to write and submit a story for H.L. Burke's DOSA Files anthology. I love the SVR universe, and I'm super excited for a chance to write in it! This has a wordcount cap of 10K words, so if I can block off a week or so, I should be able to get it done. The trick is just picking that week.
  • If I manage to hit all three of those goals and still have time to spare without denying myself rest, I want to either edit BDPI #5 (formerly #4) or draft at least half of Daughters of Atirse #3 or #5. Again, this is only if I hit my other goals and can pick up another project without overdoing it. And, yes, I said either #3 or #5 of the Daughters of Atirse series because I'm really excited for #5, and it's a direct sequel to Song of the Selkies, as opposed to a prequel or spinoff-sequel like a lot of others I have planned. Since the series order is a little looser, I can probably afford to write some of them out of order if I really want to. It'll just mean sitting on the draft longer.
  • Finally, repeating a goal from last year, I want to keep up with writing my Defenders of Serys D&D campaign. This is an essential project, but since my group tends to have short sessions, it's not an overwhelming one. I anticipate I'll need to write two or so adventures for this, and I know what the next one is. As long as I don't get bogged down in making three million NPCs, I shouldn't have any trouble.
• Moving on to some writing-related, but not novel-related goals, I want to keep up my current blogging and social media schedule (and be better about not missing weeks on social media). As a reminder for myself, that's a blog post and one to two Facebook/Instagram posts per week, three weeks out of every month.
• On a related note, I want to finally post some of the backlog posts I've been sitting on from earlier in the year, particularly the results of my music and focus study. I just need to rework it from what I submitted for the class, and that's not something I've wanted to do when I have current classwork.
• Last but not least, I want to attend as least three author events to sell my books in-person. I hope to repeat two from last year, and then I just need to add one more.

Reading Goals

• My reading goal for this year is 93 books. Yes, I'm dropping my goal from 2023 even though I surpassed it, and you'll see why in a few bullet points.
• I'm reattempting last year's read-more-old-books goal, aiming for 12 books published (or written) before 1975, at least nine of which were originally aimed at adults. I know why I failed at this one last year: I got stressed and switched to exclusively mood reads and ARCs. I know I can do it, though, if I'm a little more deliberate about finding older books that I'm excited to read.
• I'm also reattempting last year's genre goal of reading 15 non-speculative fiction books in 2024. Again, I know this is something I can do; I just have to not get distracted by mood reads.
• This is a little vague, but I want to decrease the number of physical books I own but haven't read. Which is to mostly say that I want to read more of the books that are on my shelf but I haven't read yet. I'd like to be more specific — get down to fewer than some number of unread-but-owned books — but doing so requires figuring out how many books are in the category in the first place. This ties in with a goal in the life section as well, as you'll see.
• My last reading goal for 2024 is to catch up with H.L. Burke's SVR-verse books and Sanderson's Cosmere and Secret Project releases. I'm behind on both of these, though for different reasons. In the case of the SVR books, I started off behind, and Heidi tends to release new books while I'm not looking. (To be clear, I know they're coming. I just don't realize they're actually out.) In the case of Sanderson's books . . . at first, I didn't want that much of a distraction from what I needed to do. Then, I was stressed (as I've said before), and anything longer than about 500 pages felt like Too Big a Commitment. But I love both of these authors, and I know I'll love all the books I haven't read, so I really want to get up-to-date with them.
• I want to keep tracking what I read and watch. I've done pretty well with this the last couple years, so I'm not sure I still need to set it as a goal, but we'll go one more year before I decide it's enough of a habit that I don't need to specify.

Life Goals

• This should go without saying, but I want to finish another four grad school classes, which comes out to one part-time year. I've registered for the first two of those; the other two will happen in the fall.
• I want to keep up with learning German and Irish. I have a system worked out pretty well, fueled by bonus XP boosts and my desire not to lose my streak, so hopefully it'll keep working!
• Once again taking a shot at a goal I repeatedly fail: I want to figure out a method of exercise (or at least physical activity) that I can enjoy enough to do once week. I am pretty sure that the bar is on the ground at this point, but y'know. Gotta start somewhere. (I did discover a month or two ago that I can walk on the treadmill and play D&D at the same time, though, as long as my character sheet app works and I don't set the speed high, so that may help.)
• I want to return to Realm Makers. I've actually already started making plans for this, and I'm watching the Realm Makers site like a hawk for when conference registration opens up. I'm so excited.
• This is a bit smaller than some of the other goals on my list, but I need to weed and reorganize my bookshelves. This has been on my to-do list for most of 2023, but I keep putting it off. I know I have a lot of books that I'm not likely to read or reread, but I'm holding onto them for various reasons — because I think I should read or at least own them, because I bought them new, because they're pretty, because they make my shelves look better, and so on — and I need to fix that, if only so I have more space for books I genuinely love. 
• I want to make one recipe per month from my new Baking Yesteryear cookbook. I got this for Christmas, and I'm very excited to try some of the recipes. I think one recipe per month is doable, but I may dial it back to one every two months if necessary.

What were your 2023 highlights? What goals, themes, or resolutions do you have for 2024? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!