I generally have a lot of things on the go and what Jane Yolen described as a ‘Magpie energy’ that keeps me flitting from one shiny thing to another so one thing I like to do at the beginning of each year is to set some goals for myself. They provide a sort of framework where I can see all the projects I’ve taken on for the year, which provides some focus to help me zero in and get things done, while at the same time hopefully inspiring continued growth. I share them here on my blog so that I have a sense of accountability.

I’ve been doing this for a few years now, and I really find that it helps 🙂

Last year was severely over-scheduled. This year is going to be all about rediscovering work/life balance and not spreading myself so thin. Given that I call my to-do list The Hydra (on account of the fact it is freaking huge and every time I cross something off it two more things seem to sprout up in its place) I’ve decided to dub this year ‘The Year of Hydra Slaying!’ because it sounds a wee bit more dramatic than ‘The Year of Finding Balance and Getting Shit Done’ :-p

My Goals for 2018

• Write a book
  • I know this is super vague and that’s intentional. I have several ideas tumbling about in my mind and I haven’t settled on one yet.
• Make at least one blog post a week
• Read at least forty books, including the rest of the ones on my partial reading list from last year.
• Increase the number of my books available in libraries
  • I wish I had a more concrete goal to go here, but I still need to figure out what my system is going to be (Am I going to focus on a specific book? If so, which one? Am I going to focus on a specific library location? Where? How much time am I going to dedicate to this?). As I figure out the details I will share them on this blog.
• Attend the Creative Ink Festival
• Attend When Words Collide
• Successfully participate in NovPAD
  • NovPAD is November Poem-A-Day. I haven’t successfully pulled this off in ages, and I miss it.
• Successfully release the following titles:
  • E is for Evil
  • Fire: Demons, Dragons and Djinns
  • Tesseracts Twenty-one: Nevertheless
  • Prairie Starport
  • The Other Side of the Door*
  • Magical Menageries Colouring Book*
  • Starry Night (exclusive for mailing list subscribers)
• Have a successful submissions window for Grimm, Grit and Gasoline
  • Have a Table of Contents decided by the end of the year.
• Continue in my role as Assistant Editor for World Weaver Press
  • At present this looks like it will include acquiring and/or editing at least three titles.
• Edit the next book in E.C. Bell’s Marie Jenner books
• Work on putting together TOC for [Top Sekkrit] anthology
• Organise a Giftmas Blog Tour
• Increase my mailing list subscribers by 20%
• Increase my BookBub followers by 20%

(‘Success’ in regard to launches and submissions windows may sound subjective but I generally set concrete goals for myself when I create my launch plans or begin an open submissions period.)

I have a few other ‘Balance’ related goals as well, which include things like regular face-to-face meetings with friends and spending less time staring at screens, but because they don’t really connect directly to work I’m not going to post them here. But I do want to note I’m setting goals which are quality of life oriented in addition to my work-related ones 🙂 And because fitness counts as work-related because it relates to every-freaking-thing:

• Create and maintain some sort of routine that encourages more consistent body movement (this may include going to the gym, exercising at home or some other sort of getting off my ass and moving)
  • Successfully run at least three 5k races
  • Continue to use swimming as meditation and do more of it

That’s a lot for someone who is trying to do less this year but a fair amount of the work for the book releases was done in 2017 so I’m optimistic that not only can I pull most of this off (honestly the fitness stuff always has huge question marks around it) but that I can stay sane while doing it. I guess we’ll have to wait and see 😉

*Free advance copies to people who donated $40 or more to the 2017 Giftmas Blog Tour