Friday Fun: Goals Met? Goals Missed? How did you do in 2016?

Friday Fun is a group post from the writers of the NHWN blog. Each week, we’ll pose and answer a different, get-to-know-us question. We hope you’ll join in by providing your answer in the comments.

QUESTION:  If you set writing goals at the beginning of 2016, have you met them and/or missed them? And now what?

Wendy E.N. Thomas 

In 2016 I had wanted to get a manuscript done – completed from top to bottom. Not a NaNoWriMo one but one that was planned, thoughtful, and that followed a storyline, an arc. One that I could then shop around to agents and publishers.

Then my mother got sick and I spent two months shuttling between her in Connecticut and my family in New Hampshire.

Then my mother died.

Then I went on a New Hampshire border-to-border walk with my son.

Then I ran into some health problems.

Then the election happened.

Then it seemed that with everything going on, the world has finally fallen apart.

But guess what? In the spare hours (and sometimes minutes) that I could carve out of my daily schedule, I ended up writing a manuscript. It wasn’t the one I thought I was going to write, but it turned out to be the one that was important for me to write.

I have a full manuscript of my 220 mile 16-day walk with my son and the lessons we learned along the way.

Am I Super Woman for getting this done?  Not at all, normal-as-they-come-Wendy – glad to meet you.

But I did state my intent and even in the midst of chaos I set the time aside to work on it because it was so very important to me. Writing also grounded me and kept me on balance – it has kept me sane this past year. Add to that a burning desire to succeed and I ended up making my 2016 goal.

Yeah I know – it surprised the heck out of me as well.

Lisa J. Jackson: I purposely focus on my writing business and got a lot of new writing through that this year – so in that regard I met the goal of new clients and a certain income level even before December arrived. Several happy dances during the year to celebrate various milestones for those goals!

I’ve gotten back to my fiction writing, which was a goal, but I haven’t (yet) republished 2 novellas. I started NaNoWriMo this year and got a few words on the page — but didn’t hit the 50,000-word goal. However, I do have a fabulous story idea that has legs and so it’s a new goal to finish the first run-through in December (sort of doing NaNo a month later than planned).

I never seem to hit the exact goals I set out to do, but I end up with many things I hadn’t imagined and they are just as, or more, sweet than the goals I imagined.