A Year In Review: 2011

It’s become a thing for me to review what I’ve done each year and to analyze my productivity on the last day of the year before I start setting goals for next year.  It helps me see where I succeeded and where I–well, I don’t like to say failed, but where I overshot my capabilities.  So let’s take a look at my declared goals for 2011:

  • At the top of the list is to immediately carve off the 7 pounds that Christmas has added to my frame.   Well, as I have no idea how much I weighed Christmas last year, I’m not sure if this was a success or not.  I think over the year I did carve that off, but of course I gained some over the holidays THIS year (isn’t that always the way?).  Not as much, though.
  • Over the course of the year, I plan to clean out the ENTIRE HOUSE.  I did clean out and get rid of a TON of stuff, even though it doesn’t seem like I did a thing.  So this is an ongoing thing.
  • I am shooting for 750 words a day as my new daily writing goal.  Well I came close.  I totaled up my average words a day on the days that I wrote and came up with 735.  I’m definitely satisfied with that level of productivity.  Now my real issue is with number of writing days.  I had 172 out of 365.  That’s less than half.  THAT is not okay with me.  Now there were, invariably a lot of plotting days in there (I should keep note of that in 2012), but still, I need to write on more days next year.  I’ll have to give some thought to whether I want to set a goal about that.  I had thought I’d get several more writing days in over the holiday break but I’ve managed almost nothing with all the company in town and my admittedly heavy focus on working my butt off to try and carve more of the holiday weight off (we’ll see how I did on THAT tomorrow).
  • I plan to finish, polish, and release Red by this summer. Well I finished it and released it in August.  When I set the goal of summer, I’d meant June.  But lots of stuff happened early in the year that blew up my brain for a while.  I got an agent.  My grandmother was gravely ill.  Then she died (it was a blessing).  Then our whole summer was taken up by all the BS surrounding trying to sell a house (which we DIDN’T manage and get to go through all over again in 2012).  I had to do a helluva lot of traveling for work (which is out of the ordinary).  And all this would be a lot of the reasons why I didn’t have more writing days than I did.
  • I plan to write one other title by the end of the year.  This didn’t happen.  Just flat didn’t.  I tried to write Devil’s Snare.  Epic fail.  I went back and tackled Til Death (one of my old romantic suspenses, which has one of my all time favorite heroes) and got stalled out on that.  I’ve done quite a bit of plotting on various and sundry projects since I released Red in August, but I’ve only JUST started the first book in a new YA trilogy, so overall this goal was a total fail.
  • I plan to read 1 print book for every ebook I read.  This one went out the window early as most of my books got packed up and put into storage for showing the house.  
  • I plan to NOT be writing a class over Christmas this year.  This one I actually didn’t have any control over, but thankfully, my department didn’t have any new ones for me to teach and, for now, I can keep the courses I have, as I have them.

On a non-goal front, I started a fabulous and vibrant writing challenge and community: A Round of Words in 80 Days.  That’s been pretty awesome and keeps growing with each round.  I made a backsplash in my kitchenI read a lot of awesome books.  I learned a heckuva lot about gluten intolerance and how to live gluten free, and I adapted my cooking blog, Pots and Plots, accordingly.  I’ve gotten darn good at gluten free baking, if I do say so myself.  I saw a substantial profit increase in my self publishing royalties, despite only managing to release one title this year (always good).  Nowhere near enough to quit a job, but still much appreciated and probably going to fund quite a bit of travel this coming year.

All in all, I think it’s been a very good year on most levels and I’m feeling really positive about 2012.

6 thoughts on “A Year In Review: 2011

  1. It sounds like 2011 was a good year for you even if you didn’t make all of your goals. You were able to knock out some of them, and that’s great. We can all look forward to setting new goals and getting things done in 2012. And thanks again for starting ROW80. It’s been a wonderful thing for so many of us!

  2. Congrats on what sounds like a productive and successful year. Nice to “meet” you in 2011–look forward to reading your posts and your books when I get a job and can afford to buy books again. (Goals for 2012).

    Have a great new year.

  3. Of all the stuff in the list, it’s that clean house that gets to me. I sooo want to clear out all the stuff building up in the two closets. And organise the garage. And get some sort of system in place so that every time I want a book that happens to be in miscellaneous bin #14 in the garage, I don’t have to hunt through bins and cardboard boxes to find it.
    Or, you know, win the lottery and get myself a proper dang library.

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