Hello Lovelies, and welcome back to the blog.
It’s a new quarter, which means it’s time to set some new goals, so let’s jump straight in.
Here we are back at the Kanban-style Trello Board. If you’ve been here a while, you’ll already be familiar with this, but for those that aren’t, I use Trello as a digital sort of Kanban board. I still have categories for my tasks, but I don’t use the “to do, doing, done” modifiers. They all just stay on their lists and I modify the cards within them with checklist tasks that are small and actionable. In other words, either I complete them or I don’t.
I’ve already talked about my yearly goals in another post, so let’s jump right in and you’ll see how my quarterly goals match up with the goals I set at the beginning of the year.
Writing – 54 Goals
I am not sure why I am so not into this rewrite. It has taken me all year to get through a 40,000 word children’s novel rewrite. I am even excited that the story and character arcs make much better sense. I have no excuse for not getting all three of these stories rewritten this year. I’m going to try much harder to complete the draft of at least the first book this quarter and get it through at least one serious editing pass.
Also on the docket is to finish the outline which I started on my other novel idea. I don’t generally write in this genre, read it, or watch movies in this genre, but I seem to intuitively know how they “work” in practice. I mean, I read an entire book about its structure and have already talked about this genre this year, so I feel like I have a good sense of how this goes. I don’t intend to even ever write this, but my brain hates having loose ends distracting it. Now that I’ve got enough dumped out and started an outline, I have to see it through to the end and you can already see that I’ve made progress this week toward that very end.
Business – 3 Goals
I have an Etsy Shop called Hello Lovelies where I create high quality, (mostly) writing-related downloads and printables for you to use in your writing practice. I try to add one new thing per month to my shop to increase the amount of shop items available, but also because I’m constantly trying to make useful things for myself and my own writing practice, and I want to share them with all of you.
This serves two purposes. One is that I continue to build my Etsy shop more intentionally than I have been since I started it. The other is that it forces me to get comfortable with talking about my shop and products here on the blog.
On that topic, if you have writing-related downloadable items like infographics, spreadsheets, or something of that nature that you have ideas for and think others might be willing to pay a small amount to have already designed for them, I’d love to hear your thoughts on what they are so that I can look into creating them for you in the future! Definitely tell me in the comments section of this post!
Marketing – 28 Goals
As is usual, I intend to keep up with both my blog and my podcast by posting at a rate of one blog or episode per week.
More than that though, I want to “get ahead” a little bit. When I actually DoThEtHiNg and get ahead, even for a few days, I feel so much less stressed. It does not necessarily equate to more writing time, but what it does equate to is freeing up *space* in my life and my mind. Things get cleared off my task list that have been sitting stagnant forever because I am constantly behind, or barely on time with the blog and with the podcast.
I am also starting to look ahead to 2023 and what next year will bring. I am sure I know what that means, but I absolutely need to get farther ahead than I currently am in order to have the head space to make that a reality and not put it off for another year.
Travel, Training, Meetings – 3 Goals
I am going to try to set up one writing-related meeting per month with my bestie. I do also have a discord for writers, if that’s a thing you’re interested in joining. The link’s waiting for you below!
Join the Discord for Authors Like You!
Quarter 4 Overall – 88 Goals
At the start of Q4 I have 88 total goals. I completely bombed last quarter so having less goals to start, especially approaching NaNoWriMo season, seems like the thing I need to be doing right now.
Discussion Questions
- How often do you set goals and how often do you check in with them?
- How was your quarter?
- How many goals did you set and how many of them were you able to accomplish?
