I’ve been talking a lot about my goals and themes lately. Still haven’t come up with my 2010 ones–maybe I’ll find a couple of quiet hours on New Year’s Day to decide on them. But meanwhile, I figured it’s time to come clean on my 2009 goals. These goals don’t include my work-for-hire writing or my various freelance jobs that are the bread and butter of my income. These were the goals I set in areas of my writing career that I wanted to change/expand–like my trade writing, school visits, and online classes–and also the routines I try to keep to bolster my creativity and feed my inner writer. (Though I create a business plan each year that quantifies all the areas of writing-related work. Shoot. Something else I haven’t gotten to yet this holiday season!)
Do 20 days of school visits (10 days)
Work on trade books: Aim for 3-5 newly finished trade manuscripts to submit (I wrote three picture book manuscripts that are currently being sent out to editors. I have two more picture book manuscripts in progress, and I wrote first drafts of three chapter books. I can’t really call them in progress since I don’t know whether I’ll even continue on all three of them.)
Figure out agent stuff (yes)
Take poetry class at Loft (yes–loved it)
Read 5 poems daily out loud (mostly)
Read 3 collections every month (yes)
Do daily poem (mostly)
Try forms in poetry diary: tanka, sijo, metaphor poems, etc. (no)
Offer new/more online classes – homeschoolers, mentorships, etc. (no)
Rhyming nonfiction books: Aim for at least 2, if not 3 (these count out of trade mss) (yes)
Promote Stampede as much as I realistically can (yes!)
Goal result I’m most proud of: Promoting Stampede. Sales aren’t great, but I know I’ve done everything I could realistically do to help spread the word about my poetry book. It wasn’t comfortable and it wasn’t fun. But I committed to doing it. And now I have a much clearer grasp on what works and what doesn’t, and what I’ll include in my next book’s marketing plan.
Goal result I’m least proud of: School visits. Booking school visits in 2009 was tougher than expected. I did a fair amount of marketing, but I really want to increase this number and get out to talk with more kids at more schools. I’d love to start doing out-of-state visits, too. So, I’m going to push myself on this in 2010.
What about you? Any goals you reached that you want to share? I’d love to hear about them! Or confessions of goals unmet–those are kind of fun, too. So we know you’re not perfect:>)