2020 Goals

 

So, this hellish and bizarre year is winding down. It's been a year that often felt like five. I still can't believe it's ending because it feels like we've made no real progress in the pandemic department. 😣

I've never had more trouble keeping track of days and weeks because the global pandemic turned everything upside down and made it so hard to keep track of things.

Still, I didn't let that stop me from staying busy and losing myself in a bunch of projects and books. We made the most of the lockdowns and the social distancing/isolating thing.

It's time to look back at the writing, reading and other stuff on the Goals List I posted at the beginning of the year (before we knew what lay ahead). 

Here's how everything turned out:

• Continue the awesome habit of going for two daily walks: OKAY, WE KEPT THIS GOING UNTIL APRIL. AFTER SYDNEY WAS PUT ON LOCKDOWN, WE HAD TO CUT THE WALKS TO ONCE DAILY. STILL, SOME DAYS WE DID SQUEEZED IN TWO WALKS OR WENT FOR LONGER ONES.

• Try to get back into doing two yoga workouts a week: BECAUSE OF THE LOCKDOWN IN APRIL, WE STARTED DOING MORE YOGA WORKOUTS. MOST WEEKS WE ENDED UP DOING THREE WORKOUTS A WEEK.

• Write between 100-200k words: ENDED UP WRITING 304,696 words & EDITED 2,078 pages. (These totals make me VERY happy. 😃👍)

• Read 100 books: READ 150 BOOKS. (Only 7 DNFs.)

• Finalise at least two horror novel first drafts: UNFORTUNATELY, I TOTALLY FAILED THIS ONE BECAUSE I SPENT THE YEAR WRITING NEW STORIES, REVISING & COMPLETING THEM.

• Write two new novels:  I WROTE TWO FIRST DRAFTS. An Adult horror slasher (61,044w) and an Adult adventure horror for NaNoWriMo (65,560w). 

• Finally write at least one novella: THIS IS FINALLY THE YEAR I ACTUALLY DID WRITE SEVERAL NOVELLAS! (3, to be exact.)

• Keep writing short stories & sub: I WROTE SEVERAL SHORT STORIES & REVISED THEM. (I subbed quite a few stories to a bunch of places and actually got several acceptances. 2 stories were finalists in Crystal Lake Publishing flash fiction contest.)

• Take part in NaNoWriMo: I  TOOK PART & GOT MY 14th WIN! (This time I wrote a fun demonic horror/adventure with UF elements. 😁)

• Keep spring cleaning/sorting clutter all year: TOTALLY DID THIS ALL YEAR & I'M STILL DOING IT NOW. THIS YEAR I'VE GONE THROUGH MY BOOK STACKS & DONATED HEAPS TO THE MANY STREET LIBRARIES WE HAVE NEARBY!

• Actually play games on my 2DS & Switch Lite: WELL, THIS WAS A BIT OF A FAIL BUT I DID PLAY A BIT OF TETRIS ON MY SWITCHLITE.

Well, there's my list of completed goals for this year. Considering all the extra and very unexpected crap, I'm really happy about what I achieved. 😀

I'm also super excited about having two short stories published in these awesome Women of Horror anthologies from Kandisha Press:

 

And that my novella THE BONE FACTORY was published by Demain Publishing:

This year, I might not have revised the past books I intended to, but I did something else. Something totally new to me. I made sure that even after leaving a bit of time between drafts, I completed every story I wrote during 2020 from start to finish. The only one I didn't have enough time to revise completely was my NaNoWriMo novel. 

Very happy with all the stuff I accomplished this year. 😃

2020 Summary:

Now it's time to come up with a 2021 Goals List...