Time Management Tuesday: The 2023 Recapitulation Post

It appears that I didn't do a recapitulation post for 2022, which makes sense because I was suffering trials and tribulations and disappeared from Original Content for a while. But things are much better this year.

So this is the tenth time over eleven years that I've done what I call a recapitulation post.  My whole recapitulation thing was inspired by an article called Out With the Old by the late Sally Kempton in Yoga Journal, which I can no longer find on-line. But Kempton wrote about recalling "things we'd accomplished," "changes," and "conflict," all of which seemed to me back in 2012 to be things that would be useful in planning for a new unit of time. The very next month, I used my first recapitulation post to make goals and objectives for 2013, and the two events--the recapitulation posts and the time-to-make-the-goals-and-objectives posts--have been tied together ever since.

So this year's recapitulation post is all about how I did with this year's goals and objectives. Goals, remember, are what you plan to do. Objectives are what you are actually going to do to achieve your goals.

What did I do this year?

Goal 1. Finish 143 Canterbury Road As An Adult Book

• I won't go over all the objectives for this, because I met this goal. Got a technical reader to read it and even did another draft during National Novel Writers' Month. 

Goal 2. Work On Adult Essays, Short Stories, And Humor

Objectives 

• Complete and submit something every month to a Medium publication I made 14 Medium submissions, which averages out to more than one a month, though I'm not doing the reading to see if I managed this on a monthly basis. I had 7 acceptances, which is one more than last year. However, this year I didn't get anything accepted off the Medium platform. But I had my most successful Medium publication to date, so there's that.
• Revise some short stories and essays, preparing them for publication. I think I did that with one piece, which did end up being published at a Medium publication.
• Increase my reading of both traditional and on-line journals--market research. Yeeees, though I could have done more.
• Spend more time with flash and essay Facebook groups. No, I just can't seem to get to that.

Goal 3. Revise An Adult Manuscript Called Good Women

• Again, I will not go through all the objectives, because I met the goal.

Goal 4. Submit Adult Books To Agents

• Submitted Good Women to a number of agents. Is anything truly a waste of time?

Goal 5. Community Building/General Marketing/Branding

• Provide social media support for adult writers and continue supporting children's writers when appropriate, which means when the spirt moves me. Can always do more of this.
• Attend virtual events for adult writers, fewer for children's writers. Again, can always do more.
• Attend workshops for adult writing. Yup.
• Use NetGalley to support authors with new books publishing this year. This didn't work out that well this year.
• Continue promoting Original Content at Facebook communities, Goodreads blog, and X. Not making good use of that Goodreads blog, though I love keeping track of my reading there.

Overall, I made 31 submissions this year, both short-form writing and novels. That's one submission less than last year.

Next week I will use what I accomplished, and didn't accomplish, this year to plan what I'll do in 2024.