I didn’t post my writing goals this past January, not because I didn’t have any, but because I wanted to focus on the journey of writing, rather than word counts and timekeeping and spreadsheets, though I did that too, behind the scenes. Also, my goals occasionally evolve during the year and – full disclosure – sometimes I simply blow them and start over.

Blogging. This year, I committed to posting on the blog twice per week, a reasonable compromise between posting daily and keeping my sanity. With the exception of last week’s  mini-break, I have posted on time every time, and usually have a few posts in the drafting stage well before it’s time to knuckle down and hit my deadline. There have been a few mornings I’ve finished posting five minutes before the post is scheduled to publish, but you don’t get extra cookies for finishing too early.

What I underestimated was my time commitment. My calendar shows I have exhausted my blog writing time for the entire year, and here we are in July. Yes, I keep track of my hours. When I have to do this for work, time tracking is a tedious bullshit chore that I resent terribly and forget to do for weeks on end. In my personal life, though, I love tracking my stats. Time allowance aside, I’ll keep posting, but I might not always post twice a week. I’m committed to posting weekly, more when I have time and something pithy to contribute.

On advice of experts, I also started a Substack, which mirrors what I post here. I’ve doubled my readership, which isn’t a high number, but that’s not nothing. I also started a monthly newsletter, and have published that on time every month, as well. I’m actually rather productive when I’m motivated and have a manageable schedule and my boss isn’t a dick.

Creative work. Conversely, I’m way low on my time allowance for non-blog creative writing. I won’t even comment on my number of creative writing hours per week, but it was much less than I planned for the year. I still have time to “catch up,” and even hitting my planned schedule won’t amount to a tremendous weekly average for the year.

Shockingly, I’m still hitting my word count goal – an average 500 a day, which can be 30 minutes or 2 hours of work, depending. I’m about a month ahead of where I should be mathematically, assuming I wrote exactly 500 words per day, no more or less. I’ve been on a good roll the last month or two and will likely hit my yearly word count goal sometime in October or November. Ideally, I’ll have 6 – 8 weeks to focus on editing without keeping track of my writing pace.

Finishing. The jury is still out, but with six months to go, I feel good about finishing my fantasy novel-in-progress and having a meaty outline/sloppy draft of the second. It is not impossible that I could finish both, but I’m not tempting fate. I think the second book will be easier to write, because I have a stronger plot foundation. I don’t expect Book 2 will need as much reorganizing and rewriting as Book 1. All the work I put into Book 1 has paid off as I’m planning Book 2 and I believe that will make the work go faster.

Community. I set a goal to get more connected with my writing friends and the community. You know that’s been an ongoing challenge. I had high hopes for A Writing Room, but the community there seems focused on poetry and memoir. The chat forum has lots of inspirational quotes and photos of tea, but not too much craft discussion. The critique board was not too active last I checked, which is a problem because members can’t post work to be critiqued until they review someone else’s work and if no one is posting, then… ?

Earlier this year, I started an online silent writing meetup with friends. We get together Wednesday evenings eastern and write together over Zoom. There aren’t many of us and a few have already dropped out, but I’m keeping it. I like having the appointment on my calendar and seeing a face or two while I write.

After Jane Friedman’s business workshop a few weeks ago, I corralled a bunch of the other writers into an informal networking group. We’ve met only once so far, but the group has settled on a semi-formal structure for future meetings, which will focus on the business side of writing. Nothing complicated: our blogs and websites, how we use social media, conferences worth attending. It’s a decent-sized group and everyone seems enthusiastic, so I have high hopes. Let’s say medium hopes. I have medium hopes but facing upwards!

Social media. A few weeks ago, I posted about my tech stack, mentioning some of the automation tools I use to share my blog posts to social media, and I’ve already stopped using them. Social media is such a freaking chore. I still post in a few places, but keeping up with it all is a huge time suck and it’s incredibly disheartening. My Facebook and Bluesky lists are nearly 100% writers or writer-adjacent people and nearly 100% of their posts are about…well, they’re not about writing, let’s leave it at that. I keep hearing that TikTok and Instagram are great for writers, and today I read that Pinterest is one writer’s secret sauce for selling books, and honestly, right now I’d like to go back in time to kick Al Gore right in his internets.

How’s your creative year going? Are you happy with your outcomes? Are you making any adjustments for the rest of the year?

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