Kira Jeanette

Hello! On Monday, I shared my Reading Goals for 2023 and discussed my wrap up for 2022. I wanted to do something similar for my writing, and just kind of map out what I want to happen in 2023. I have done this in 2021 and in 2022 and I always like checking back in with them. In 2022 I shared my writing goals, so I let’s check in with those first.

2022 Writing Goals Wrap Up

Similarly to my reading last year, my writing year did not go to plan. I had so many plans and things that I wanted to write, unfortunately, it just did not work out for me. 2022 was a hard year full of many changes with many routine shifts. I felt like I could never come up with a stable routine to fit my writing in. I was disappointed with the words I wrote – both in amount and content wise – at every step. But let’s get into it:

• Journal at least once a week – I was doing really, really well with this and even journaled almost everyday in the first quarter of the year, but I started trailing off with it and there were only a few entries from April to October and I haven’t written anything since that last one on the 4th October. But I did start out really well on this one!
• Write at least one poem a week – if you added up every poem that I wrote in the year, it would amount to more than one poem a week. From 29th January to 6th March, I wrote at least one poem every single day. There was one day in February where I wrote 11 poems! Poetry was very consistent throughout the year – only in August and December did I not write one.
• Write one piece of flash fiction every month – I did not write a single one. I have even removed the column to track the word count for them from my 2023 spreadsheets. I just did not find the time for it and when I did want to write, I wanted it to be focused on my main projects.
• Track my writing in a spreadsheet – this I did and it worked really, really well! I have carried it over into 2023 and made it bigger and better than before.
• Write at least 200,000 words – I was no where near this number. I wrote 38,641 words in total in 2022. It was a terrible writing year. Within this section, I also mention NaNoWriMo and how I wanted to try and complete it this time. That did not happen either and I spoke a little bit more about it in my November Wrap Up.
• Finish the Rapunzel Retelling Rewrite – this also did not happen. In fact, I believe this is where my writing slump occurred. I lost the point with it all. It started heading in a direction that was not inspiring me and it was not where I wanted it to go. I got stuck in this idea that I had to finish it before allowing myself to move on. This was just a wrong move and I should have allowed myself to scrap that draft a long, long time ago.

That brings me nicely into my goals for 2023.

Writing Goals for 2023

• Finish the Rapunzel Retelling Rewrite – the old one has been scrapped and I am starting fresh in this new year with this project. I spent the last week in December plotting and positioning chapters and reading through that old draft. I pinpointed the exact place it all went wrong and I have a plan to fix this. I am feeling so much better about the project, now I just need to get it out and write it.
• Set more goals – by this I mean I wanted a word count to aim for every single month, and extending into the quarter. So for this month, I have set myself a goal of 20,000 words and the quarterly goal of 60,000 words. I want to tangibly have something to work towards every month, broken down into weeks and see if that helps me more to achieve my overall goals of finishing the projects.
• Write at least one poem every week – I think this goal worked really well last year and I would like to continue it and really aim to get one written every single week. I’ve always just poetry to look back on and track what was happening to me, and in the world around me during that time and I want to see more of the progression happening.
• Get back into journaling – I need to get back on track with this one! I had it for a while in 2022, but fell off it. I think it helps so much with my mental health and again it is something I like to go back and look at old entries and relive what I was doing, or alternatively see how far I have come since the last entry.
• Compete in NaNoWriMo – I want to take part in both the main NaNoWriMo and the Camps in April and July. I love taking part in them, and there is a great sense of writing community. I miss have a writing community, I haven’t had one since I was at uni and I think anytime there is a NaNoWriMo of some variation going on there is always a community.

Those are my writing goals for 2023! I hope it is a better year than 2022. Let me know if you set any writing goals for this year and what they are!

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