Reflecting on 2009

Well it’s New Year’s Eve.  This year is almost over.  This is the part where I go back and reflect on 2009’s resolutions.

:goes to find them:

• Plot and write Hunted In Shadow. I am determined to finish another book in 2009. Done!  Well, first draft anyway.  I have also completed 2/3rds of a novella.
• Continue worldbuilding as pertains to the Mirus. Done in spades!  I’ve got reams of notes regarding this world and the series I have planned for it.
• Reread GMC.  Done.
• 250 words a day until my class is finished getting set up entirely, then 500 words a day.  I honestly can’t say how I measured up on this.  I think I was usually pretty good about getting my 250 words a day and for some stretches I upped my word count to 500.  It just varied a lot depending on what was going on.
• Read 50 books.  Done!  I read 50 on the nose.
• Come up with 2 topics to guest blog about and schedule guest blogs at 2 different sites.  Well I wrote 1 guest blog post, which wasn’t all that outstanding, but thanks to Shiloh for letting me do it!
• Cut down my Bloglines subscriptions.  Done.
• Set up a posting schedule for Frugal Intuition (3-4 days a week).  Defunct. I decided after a month that I couldn’t keep up with this blog and dropped it.

So as New Year’s resolutions go, I didn’t do half bad.  To the list of achievements I would add:

• I managed to lose and keep off 13 pounds
• designed 2 online courses
• successfully juggled 3 jobs without totally losing my mind
• made exercise a more regular part of my routine (which went along with those 13 pounds)
• learned a great deal about story structure, planned massive revisions to the second draft of Hunted in Shadow
• moved my cooking blog and built a very respectable following
• took steps toward expanding my online teaching–long term planning toward allowing me to do so full time someday
• finished my bathroom renovation
• wrote an informative and much visited blog post series From Pantser To Plotter for Lynn Viehl’s Left Behind and Loving It

All in all, I’d say it’s been a productive year.  On Twitter today, there was a trending topic about where we were ten years ago.  I stopped to think about it and, well, I’d rather not think about where I was a decade ago.  It was bad.  We’ll leave it at that.  But the year following, I met my sweet hubby, so things have done nothing but improve since then!

As the year comes to a close, I thought I’d share with you what I’ve been messing around with the last couple of days–a cover mock up for the novella.  I’m not decided on the title, though it seemed to suck the least out of the 50 or so I came up with.  I plan to self-publish it later in 2010 and use it as a means to build a readership.  I’m kinda jumping the gun working on a cover already, but my pal Zoe Winters just redid her website and it looks awesome, and it’s had me itching to play in Photoshop.

I do love Photoshop.

Anyway, I hope you all have a fabulous New Year’s Eve and don’t get into too much trouble!  I’m off to make some nachos!