My 2017 writing goals

This week I've been working on my goals for 2017, both personal and professional. 2016 has been a phenomenal year for my writing career, what with signing my Lake Union contract and winning two of the Bards and Sages annual awards. I'm hoping to achieve even greater heights in 2017!

My writing will face a new challenge next year, as I'm embarking on an open-ended trip in April. I'll be working my way south from Toronto to the tip of South America, with no set return date. My trip might take anything between six months and two years, and along the way I'll continue to write my novels. Quite how I'll fuse the demands of backpacking with the stability I need to write is anyone's guess! I'm sure I'll work it out...

Part of keeping myself on track has been listing out my key writing goals for 2017. These include:

1. Being more organised and proactive with my marketing efforts. I'm the first to admit this isn't something I find easy!

2. Getting Guilty Innocence, The Second Captive and Sister Psychopath into audio book format.

3. Setting myself an annual writing target of 200,000 words, which equates to two decent-sized novels. I aim to write daily whenever possible and to track my efforts via a spreadsheet (see images below).  Thanks to Margaret McGaffey Fisk, who provided the template I adapted. You can find it via this link.
Unusually for me, I've gone low-tech with the rest of my 2017 planning. I've been using a combination of Microsoft OneNote and Mozilla Thunderbird to keep myself organised, but they don't really cut it for me when it comes to goal planning, and I didn't like having everything spread over two pieces of software.

Despite my best efforts, though, I couldn't find a digital planning system that worked the way I wanted, so I investigated analogue versions. I eventually settled on the 2017 Action Day Planner as the closest to what I wanted. It has the added advantage of not being likely to attract attention if I use it in public in some of the sketchier places I'll be visiting, unlike my laptop. I'm looking forward to using it!
What about you? Are you a writer who's been setting 2017 goals? If so, I'd love to hear what you have planned! Leave a comment and let me know.
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