Happy 2018!  Starting into a brand new year makes it time to look at plans for the months to come.  I’m doing this a little differently this year…because I have kind of a lot going on.  So this is a bit more of a goals post than strictly (only) a Reading Challenges one.

Firstly–I don’t usually write hardly anything at all about my personal life on here, outside of reading and sometimes travel (usually with a literary bent).  But the beginning of the year, especially this year, seems like the right time to share some personal news.  Mainly, I got engaged this past summer! 😀 We’re getting married in May, so I am (and have been) deep into wedding planning, as you might imagine.  This is one reason I got a little distracted from reading challenges in the last few months…

So my biggest goal for 2018 is…to get married! ❤

Secondly, I’m obviously still going to be doing some reading (hopefully plenty of it).  I want to be more relaxed about it, though.  I’ve been reading the Newbery Medal winners for the past two years, and I want to finish out that goal.  I have 21 books left, which is about the same I’ve done each of the last two years.  Newbery Medals are usually pretty quick (though sometimes depressing!) reads, so that’s very do-able.  I also want to do the Diversity challenge again because it still feels tragically important, but I’m going to broaden my definition beyond just race.

So, my reading challenges for the year are to finish the Newbery Medal winners and to read 18 books with minority (race, orientation, anything else I’m not thinking of…) protagonists.

Thirdly, I had a weird writing year in 2017, I think in part because I decided to be a little more free and plan less.  But then I wound up kind of unfocused!  So I am making more writing plans, not too ambitious (because, see first point above) but definitely some clear goals.

I recently mentioned my Phantom novel, which has been mentioned on here off and on over the past four (?) years.  I finished the first draft for NaNo 2016, and spent a lot of 2017 on somewhat unfocused revisions.  Over the course of those revisions, I realized I’d actually written a trilogy.  Who knew?  So for this year, I’m focusing in on specific revisions needed for the first two books–book one is the closest to complete, book two is the farthest.

So my first two writing goals for the year are to fully complete Book One of the Phantom, and get Book Two revised at least to submit to beta-readers.  We’ll talk again in a year about 2019 publishing goals.

But because I don’t want to spend all year bogged down in revisions, I also plan to spend some time on less intensive writing, with a third writing goal to write three short stories.

I’ve always been more about goals than resolutions at the beginning of the year, so those are my goals for the upcoming one–a personal goal, reading goals and writing goals.  I expect I’ll still do quarterly check-ins as the year continues…so I’ll let you know how it all goes!

But for now, what are your goals for the year?  I’d love to hear!