2017 Goal Results (including December 2017)

written by Betsy Flak on 2018-01-04

Time for the monthly goal session! Since it's just past the end of the year and the end of a 90-day cycle and the end of December, we'll go through the results of all three, starting with December 2017 goals, then October - December 2017 goals, and finally 2017 goals.

December 2017 goals: The results

1. Success! Book 2 (previously Part 2) is ready for my print readthrough and I've edited the first few chapters of Book 3 (previously Part 3).
2. Success! Beta reader comments all accounted for and addressed.
3. Success! By the end of December, I finished my kindle readthrough of Book One. I'm still working on addressing my own edits and comments, so I didn't make the stretch goal, which is ok since, you know, it was a stretch goal.
4. Success (kind of). I mean, I did it...but not until January 3rd. But that's still before I updated the goals, so it counts. And yes, I did just game my own system.
5. Success (kind of). A bit of a cheat like #4. You know, since I'm doing it now. Right. Now. (And it's January.)

October - December 2017 goals: The results

1. Success! Delivered that ages ago.
2. Success! I mean, I had to work a bunch of extra hours to make it (including taking away some of my holiday vacation--good thing I like what I do!).
3. LOL. Nope. Didn't even start it. Although, I did end up prioritizing preparing Books 1-3 for publishing over writing Books 4-6 (what used to be Book 2), so it's more a change in priorities than anything else.
4. Complete! Sure, in early January 2018, but it still counts since I conveniently didn't update my goals until it was done. #Iamaterriblepersonwhogamesmyownsystem

2017 goals: The results

Note: these were updated back in April after being originally set in January 2017.

Writing:

1. Success! Published The Impossible Creation back in June.
2. Fail. Did complete self-editing on what were the first two parts (of three). But they got so long that they're now their own books. So maybe it's not a failure since I anticipated them being quite a bit shorter than they ended up.
3. Nope. Didn't even start rewriting what was Book 2, which is now Books 4-6. Which is ok. I prioritized working on Books 1-3, which makes sense, given that they're going to be published first (obviously). Plus it gives me something to work on this year!
4. And...no. Considering I didn't even get to Books 4-6, there was no way I was getting to Books 7-9 (what was Book 3).

Business:

1. Success! I even have a fancy new spreadsheet that lets me see how many promotions I'm involved with during any given month. Hint: it's more than one for every single month.
2. Success? I mean, I guess it was mostly within plan. Some things didn't happen (oops, sorry about no-paperbacks-available-yet for all you paperback-readers out there), but I still launched on the date that I selected and was reasonably successful. That said, it would have been nice for it to be about ten times less stressful. Perhaps that will be a #2018goal?
3. Success. I've even tweaked it a bit since I put it together for the big launch back in June.

And I'm going to stop there. Stay tuned for 2018 goals (along with the 90-day goals and January goals), along with a bit of discussion about why 2017's goals went so terribly astray (note that I updated them in April because the 2017 goals I wrote in January 2017 were already super far off...and then the ones in April ended up being wrong too!).

Normally, I would now link to the version of this post one year ago to keep track of what has happened in the course of a year, but 2017 was the first year I assigned goals to (at least as a writer). So that will just have to wait until the 2018 version of this post.