hey friends you ready to talk about writer goals because you know that your girl is always
excited to talk about goals now if you're looking for the video where i share all my
2022 goals that i hope to accomplish next year that video is coming very soon but
what i purposely do every year is also do a video where i do kind of like a year
recap or wrap up taking some time to look back at my goals that i set the beginning of the year
in my bullet journal in my notion i look back at the content i created pictures i've
taken and i write everything down that i can be grateful for and thankful for and that i want
to remember and you guys know that one of those things is that i finally am a published author
and i do this because i don't know about you guys but it is so easy for me to get so excited about
the future and what's ahead that i forget to really take stock of what has already happened
this way i can really dive into the future having a really great mindset being proud and thankful
for this past year also having learned a lot from the mistakes i've made and just ready to
bring that into the new year so i can have my best year yet i always love videos like this
because i think they're so inspirational and encouraging so i hope you guys do too
and i would love to hear down below in the comments what are your biggest accomplishments
this year what can you be thankful for or most grateful for or what did you learn because i'd
love to celebrate with you guys too the first thing i do when practicing gratitude for the
year is i go back to the original goals i set in january more specifically i organized those goals
into one to three main categories in the past few years i've had writing and kind of publishing is
in there and then i have had platform and then business but last year i realized that business
and platform was kind of becoming one in the same because they both support the main goal of
writing and publishing so i basically melded them into one then after i set my categories i pick
one main goal for each category that i'm going to shoot for for the year then i brainstorm a series
of tasks that i can spread across the year to actually get me to accomplishing those goals this
doesn't mean i don't work on anything else for the rest of the year but having a few main goals that
i focus on really acts as a compass for me when i have too long of a list of goals for the year
i can feel very pulled in like a million different directions and it's very easy to get distracted by
the shiny things but when i only have a few main goals it's really easy to go back to those goals
and ask myself okay these shiny things that may or may not be distractions are they actually going to
get me to reaching those main goals and if not or they're actually going to hinder me getting
to those goals then i can really think okay maybe this is something that i should actually say no
to these goals are actually part of an eight-step strategy that i've been using the last few years
to set and accomplish my goals and as you can see from some of these past videos i've had a
lot of success which has been awesome and i found this process so helpful that i ended up creating
a goal-setting workbook for myself that i also end up giving to my patrons over on patreon too
this workbook walks you through not only creating a gratitude log for the current year
but also narrowing down your new year's goals creating practical steps to actually achieve them
breaking that down into quarterly and monthly tasks creating a weekly time blog schedule tips
on how to find accountability buddies which i have found so helpful and also i added this
year some tips about what to do when you start falling behind because god knows all of us do
at some point if you'd like to use it yourself you can go join my writer support group over on
patreon for just two dollars and you get that downloadable along with a ton of other archived
templates and exclusive resources that only my patrons get but don't run away yet because right
now we're gonna dig in to my goals this past year and how they went for my first category of writing
slash publishing my specific goal was to finally become a published author by self-publishing my
whya fantasy series on wings of ash dust which i did even more specifically i wanted to at least
rapid release all the ebooks as a serial by summer of 2021. the fun part though is talking about how
i actually got there and i have a handy dandy list on my phone so i'm going to reference it a
little bit first of all i finished working with my developmental editor and cover designer then
i worked with a final round of beta readers and with my copy editor and i think i wrapped up most
of that around like may and june then i started working on formatting the ebooks i set up an arc
team which was so much fun to help me promote the books and then i fast released a new episode every
two weeks from august to mid-october one thing i want to celebrate too is some of the books
that got that number one new release sticker on amazon which was really fun and most of them hit
top 100 lists in the categories they were listed in but what was probably the most fun aspect and
one of my sub goals in this category was to start building a fandom for my books along with that art
team i mentioned that really got excited about promoting the books i created a fairy clan quiz
that anybody can take to find out which fairy clan for my book they belong in i ran weekly read-along
activities here on youtube and on instagram one of those was a fan art competition and oh my gosh
that was so much fun i'll show some of the artwork here it was so cool i started a fan
facebook page and i also sold a bunch of merch that has my characters on it and the different
fairy clans so people could represent their clan and it was just so cool to see people posting
how excited they were about the story and the characters and really getting into the world and
getting into the fandom i did also have some reach goals in this category that i didn't quite make
but again because the main goal was to get the books published these were kind of secondary and
i knew that i could always do them in the future so in this category i kind of set up good better
best goals and i've talked about this idea in the past but it's really really helpful when you can
take a specific goal and say okay my good goal is that i'm going to publish all of these ebooks
by the end of the year and then i'm going to take a much needed break after that then i said my
better goal was to not only do that but also release the paperback version of my book where
all the episodes are going to go into one physical novel now i didn't get this done but i do have the
book all formatted and pretty much ready to go so technically i almost got this goal done and
the paperback is due to come out by january so i was super close with this goal then my best goal
was not just to get the ebooks out and maybe the paperback out but to start working or at least
researching on how i could create an audiobook for this series now if you saw my video last week
you know that part of the reason why i didn't get the paperback done and didn't start working
on the audiobook is because i'm pregnant so frankly i had to slow down a lot i had to
readjust some things but again i hit my main goal of publishing the ebooks so i still consider this
category a success oh and i had one more kind of related goal to this category which was to
read more this year and i had a goal of 30 books which you can see on my goodreads right now i have
19 checked off but technically it should be more like 25 when you include me having to reread
my own books again and again as i was editing them so we'll see if in the last few weeks of
december i can read the last few books i need to hit 30 but i still think i read a whole lot more
than if i didn't set a reading goal at all and i learned a whole lot about writing from reading
the books i read which is part of why i put this goal in my writing category then my second main
category for the year was business and my platform is sort of under that and the specific goal i had
for that was to have a dependable monthly income kind of make that exceedingly more passive as time
goes on by creating content that gives value to you guys and supports my books and my business
and how did we get there here are the tasks one thing that really helps me is i have multiple
streams of income that i've set up i have youtube which includes monetization and also my youtube
membership patreon my author website course my book merch which i actually set up last year the
affiliates that i'm a part of and then this year i added income stream number six which is my books
financially i also had good better best goals and looking back i made at least my good goal every
single month this year i also need to celebrate that i finally started my llc which is called
fable song books and here's a cute logo that i created for the company and this helps me not only
publish my books under my own kind of publishing company but it also helps separate your business
finances from your personal finances which can be really helpful in the future one reach goal that i
had this year was for my author website bootcamp where i actually wanted to run the course live a
couple times this year but with publishing it was just a lot so i decided not to do that the course
was still available all year and i did get a bunch of sales which was really great but maybe i'll run
the course live next year so stay tuned for that specifically for my platforms which again helps
support my business and connect with you guys as my audience and my readership i finally hit over
10 000 subscribers here on youtube so if you've hit that subscribe button if you've been with me
for years or you've just found me oh my gosh thank you thank you so much 10 000 is just a really cool
milestone to hit and it also enables me to do a couple fun things on my channel like feature my
merch below my videos so thank you so much i also hit over 5 000 followers over on instagram over 4
000 newsletter subscribers and just recently i started a tick tock so that's a fun adventure that
i've kind of wanted to dig into so technically i can check that one off too overall i think we
can say i had a pretty good year and reliving it with you guys makes me that much more encouraged
and excited to dig into goals for 2022. once again i'll be using my goal setting workbook so if you
want to see how i end up doing that that video is going to be coming soon and if you want to check
out the workbook yourself again you can always join my patreon i know a bunch of my patrons have
already started downloading it and using it and i'm so excited to actually work with a few of them
in the higher tiers on patreon at the end of the month where i run a live goal setting workshop
where i help everyone not only hone their goals even more but create that step-by-step
game plan that can help them really succeed throughout the year and before the year is
over i actually really wanted to do a tutorial on my new favorite productivity tool which is notion
i've always loved my bullet journal but i've started using notion since publishing because i
had so many to do's i had to keep track of and it has been fabulous and i know some of you guys have
been requesting that tutorial so i'm working on it and it's coming soon if you don't want to miss it
make sure you're subscribed and i will also link it in the description when it goes live in the
meantime you can check out one of these two videos on goal setting tips and we'll see you there
you