2018 Goals: The Misses

Way back at the end of last year (doesn't that seem longer ago than it really was?), I posted a rather ambitious set of personal goals for 2018. It's time to look back and see how I did. I'm going to spread this discussion over two blog posts. Today, I'm going to list the goals I didn't achieve this year. Unfortunately, there were a lot more misses than I thought there would be. I didn't even finish the first draft of Dryads to Discover, which I started in 2017. Part of that is because I traded a lot of writing time for crochet, and I spent a lot of my remaining time working on short stories. (More on that next week.) I recently decided to make a major change to the plot, so I wouldn't have been able to publish Dryads to Discover this year anyway. My slow publishing may be linked with my slow sales, but there's only so much I can juggle along with my job and my family. Additional commentary on my failed goals will be added below:

Writing

Finish Dryads to Discover (new urban fantasy, first in series)--See above.

Start Dragons to Deceive (sequel to Dryads to Discover)--Obviously it's hard to start Book Two when Book One isn't done

Finish “The Unnumbered World"--I'm having so much trouble with the plot that I may shelve this short story indefinitely.Maybe I should move on to Catalyst in the Crucible, the next installment in the Catalyst Chronicles series.

Revise “The Fighting Roses of Sharon"--I need to revise at least two, if not all three, of the subplots. 

Work on Welcome to Costume City--Didn't have time for this one.

Plan overall arc for Selathen Avatars series (followup to fantasy Season Avatars series)--I wrote a short story bridging the Season Avatars series to the sequel series (which I may rename), and there are some rough notes somewhere. There's still a lot of plotting to be done here, though.

Publishing

Publish Dryads to Discover

Publish “The Fighting Roses of Sharon” as standalone

Marketing

Prepare at least one pull quote graphic for each novella/novel-I may have played around with some graphics, but I need to find some suitable quotes to use.

Send out at least four newsletters--I actually sent out three, but there's been nothing since June. Maybe I should send one out in the next couple of weeks.

Run a promotion every 1-2 months--I did paid sales and Instafreebie promotions for about the first half of the year, but they fell off afterward.

Sell 150 units (books, short stories, collections)--Effective selling is one of my biggest challenges as an indie author. I don't sell many books unless I do discounts and promotions, but even then the sales don't make up for the promotion cost. I really need to write and publish more so my works can promote each other.

WisCon?--I haven't missed a WisCon since Alex was born. We had other things scheduled that weekend.

I did almost nothing on the goals listed below:

Other

Finish Jedi costume!

General Leia costume?

Finish 2 Death Star pillows--I did one, but not the second.

Crochet blanket for Alex

Household

Garage sale!

Get compost bin?

Landscape back yard

Despite this long list of misses, I did have a few successes. I'll share those with you next week, along with (hopefully) more realistic goals for 2019. Until then, happy holidays!