Friday 28 December 2012

GOALS (a 2012 summary) and a Blog of the Year

With the end of the year so close, it's time for me to reflect on what I achieved/did not achieve in 2012. After 2011's goal blitz, I was feeling pumped this year, but I didn't quite live up to 2011's high standards. Don't get me wrong, though - I'm perfectly fine with it! I just didn't get a perfect score this year. ;) Anyway, let's break it down, referring to my 2012 Goals page and also my 52 weeks of tasks page:

Failures:

  • NaNoEdMo - I was travelling for a bit of this month, but still, I failed!
  • Writing one book review each month - I missed November
  • Attending one yoga/body balance class per week
  • Doing a beach walks on Saturdays/Sundays - failed this particularly as the year came to an end.

Successes:

  • Read 43+ books in 2012 - my goal was at least 43
  • Read The Catrina Chronicles stories up to date (though as of now I am behind again)
  • Wrote and recorded 52 songs for 2012's Chrysalis Experiment
  • Finished both 2011's NaNo novels, DANNA and VICTORIOUS
  • Hit 50k in BuNoWriMo 2012 with IVY NIGHT - though the draft is not finished
  • Won NaNoWriMo 2012, rewriting DAPHNE
  • Posted one Globetrotter post per month
  • Did a preliminary read-through/edit of FIRE (had no recollection of this till coming to write this post. ha)
  • Sorted the equivalent of 100 photos a week
  • Wrote the equivalent of 1k of new material each week, not counting BuNo and NaNo projects (worked on DANNA and SUNDOWN II for this)
  • Reviewed all 52 Chrysalis stories, except 2 that were DANNA excerpts

"Somewhere in between"s:
  • I did read 9 eBooks from my writer friends, but not always the books I had on the original list. I kept swapping really long books for short novella-length stories (with no e-reader, it's not easy reading eBooks!)
  • Complete edit of DAPHNE - I do count this as an achievement, but it was actually more of a total rewrite, and I didn't do what I originally wanted and put more of Daphne's mother's history into the plot
  • As of this post, I will have written the equivalent of at least one post a week this year. But I'm pretty sure I went more than 7 days between posts at least once this year.

Extra achievements:
  • Finished my rewrite of SUNDOWN, which was not on my goals list anywhere, but which I made use of in the 1k of new material per week goal on my "52 tasks" chart.


Aaaand that's a wrap, folks! But what about next year? Yeah, I've got plans, and I'll talk about 2013 goals in a few days... :)




In other news, the lovely Deniz Bevan received the Blog of the Year Award, and chose to pass it onto me and Laurel Garver. I feel very honoured to have received this award, so thank you Deniz! The official rules of this award are:


  1. Select the blog(s) you think deserve the Blog of the Year 2012 Award
  2. Write a blog post and tell us about the blog(s) you have chosen – there's no minimum or maximum number of blogs required – and present them with their award
  3. Please include a link back to this page Blog of the Year 2012 Award and include these rules in your post (please don't alter the rules or the badges!)
  4. Let the blog(s) you have chosen know that you have given them this award and share the rules with them
  5. You can now also join our Facebook group – click like on this page Blog of the Year 2012 Award Facebook group and then you can share your blog with an even wider audience
  6. As a winner of the award please add a link back to the blog that presented you with the award and then proudly display the award on your blog and sidebar... and start collecting stars...


The people I'm going to pass this onto are:
  • Hart Johnson at Confessions of a Watery Tart, whose posts are often entertaining but also tackle the tough issues many people are too scared to mention.
  • Jordan McCollum, who doesn't tend to get a huge amount of comments on her blog but who still gives a whole lot to the writer blogger community with her very helpful posts.
  • Michael Atkinson at Hypothetically Writing, whose little snippets of fiction shared throughout the year have brought delight to many. Michael's creative wit is, in my opinion, unparalleled, and he also makes a great bloggy friend!

16 comments:

  1. Wow, congrats on all your achievements! I found your 52 weeks of tasks chart interesting, too. I'm (slowly) putting together a sort of plan for me and writing in 2013. Up until now, I've been working on querying and whatnot. Now I feel the time has come to take publishing matters into my own hot little hands. ;-) Wish me luck!
    Some Dark Romantic

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  2. Congrats on completing SUNDOWN ...

    Looking forward eagerly to meeting you on our book giveaway at GoodReads

    Wish you happy new year

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  3. Congrats on all the achievements,including the in between's, which are just achievements in disguise :-). I never thought about making a 52 week chart (until now, that is), it shows how serious you take your goals. Happy new year!

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  4. Way to go! Wish I could read that many books in a year, but I'm a s-l-o-w reader -- and I always pick these King-sized mammoths.

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  5. You were doing WriMo and EdMo at the same time? That's amazing. Be proud of those accomplishments. What you didn't achieve, set a new goal and add to next year.

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  6. Congratulations on all your successes and extra achievements! The others don't seem such failures in the face of all that you've accomplished :-)

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  7. Congrats on the Blog of the Year award! And more importantly, congrats on having a longer list of successes than failures!

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  8. Seems that your successes far outweigh what you didn't quite get finished. That's a very SUCCESSFUL year in my estimation.

    Congratulations. And here's to 2013. May it be the best ever!

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  9. Congratulations on what you did manage to accomplish, which I think is a lot. And that blog award is teh awesome.

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  10. Way to go! As long as you're happy with everything that you accomplished, that's all that matters. I'm glad that you took the Chrysalis stories even further. I'm thinking about writing a short story a week or at least every other this year. We'll see how it goes. 2013 here we come! :)

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  11. It looks like overall you had a fantastic year! Your success list is a lot longer than the not-successful list, so good job.

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  12. Congratulations on your achievements in 2012! :) And congrats on the blog award as well.

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  13. I desperately want to add taking a walk on the beach as a daily goal. All I need is a change in geography and I'm good to go!

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  14. Wow. Well done. Targets can really focus you. Hoping 2013 is just as successful.

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  15. Ah!!! Thank you so much! And you did a great job this year! You accomplished a ton!

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  16. Oh, I didn't realize I haven't thanked you for this yet—thank you! And thanks for letting me know; it really made my day :) .

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Thanks for your words, me hearties! and don't forget to leave a link to your blog somewhere I can find it!