UPDATE: The winner is…Debra Guyette!
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Hello, everyone! I want to start with a giant thank you to Delilah for letting me play on her blog again. It’s always a blast!

So, it’s the end of the year, time to take stock of what we accomplished in the past twelve months and take a look at what we want to do in the next twelve. I had big plans for 2019, and I’m sure many of you did, too. Did you reach those goals you set for yourself, or did you aim a little too high?

I started looking at my 2019 list back in October and shaking my head. They seemed perfectly realistic when I put them on paper last year. Since I managed less than half of them, I have to say that wasn’t true. Oh, sure, if I wrote full-time, I don’t doubt I could have pulled them all off—they were nowhere near the amount of writing I did when my kids were little and I was home full-time. But I have a day-job now, so I should have been more realistic, clearly.

That made me take a much harder look at my goals for 2020. I had already scaled them back a little, realizing my 2019 list was too much. Then I looked at them again and chopped off some more, thinking how much more discipline I could exercise in the new year to make things happen. Then I looked at them again the other day, with a voice in my head telling me it was still too much. Sure, lots of people can pull off half a dozen book releases in a year. But I haven’t done the self-pub thing yet, so it’s going to have a learning curve for me, and I don’t want to screw it up when I get there. That lopped a couple more things off the list, in case I need more time than I’m anticipating to navigate those new waters.

I’d like to say I have a perfect goal list in front of me right now, but I think I am still going to do some fine-tuning in the next couple of days before the new year starts. The way the past few years have gone, with family things and the day-job, I’m leaning toward giving myself plenty of elbow-room for my goals, enough time to actually make them happen, and happen right, not half-assed. I’m sure it still won’t be the perfect goal list—I’m far from perfect, so why would my goals for the near year be perfect? But it will be closer, and if I exceed my expectations, well, that would be great, too, and give me a boost of confidence when I start on goals next fall for 2021, right?

How much time do you take to work out your goals for each new year? Do you obsess over them (as I feel like I’m doing this year), or do you just put them down on paper and leave it at that without too much debate? I’d love to know—I’m always looking for new ideas that might help me out, and they may be useful to someone else as well—and I have a shiny new 2020 Llewellyn’s Witch’s Calendar (wall version) to give away to one commenter.

About the Author

Elizabeth Andrews has been a book lover since she was old enough to read. She read her copies of Little Women and the Little House series so many times, the books fell apart. As an adult, her book habit continues. She has a room overflowing with her literary collection right now, and still more spreading into other rooms. Almost as long as she’s been reading great stories, she’s been attempting to write her own. Thanks to a fifth grade teacher who started the class on creative writing, Elizabeth went from writing creative sentences to short stories and eventually full-length novels. Her father saved her poor, callused fingers from permanent damage when he brought home a used typewriter for her.

Elizabeth found her mother’s stash of romance novels as a teenager, and-though she loves horror- romance became her very favorite genre, making writing romances a natural progression. There are more than just a few manuscripts, however, tucked away in a filing cabinet that will never see the light of day.
Along with her enormous book stash, Elizabeth lives with her husband of more than twenty-five years, and frequent visits from her two young adult sons, though no one else in the house reads nearly as much as she does. When she’s not at work or buried in books or writing, there is a garden outside full of herbs, flowers and vegetables that requires occasional attention.

You can find her virtually at www.ElizabethAndrewsWrites.com or on social media.