2017 In Review
It’s December already (made clear when my wife and I panicked shopped this past week on Amazon for Christmas–came out of nowhere!) and so that means looking back at the 2017 writing goals and assessing how well I met those targets. The goals for 2017 were:
- Finish and publish Sunken City Capers Book 4
- Read 10 fiction books
- Read 10 nonfiction books.
All targets hit! Which is good, since 2017 was deliberately supposed to be a nice and easy year after the horror of 2016. I finished and published The Brummie Con: Sunken City Capers Book 4 in October (whew). That book was a lot harder to write than I thought it would be, so I’m quite pleased it’s done. I have some theories as to why it was such a pain, but I’ll let those thoughts stew some more before sharing.
To date, I’ve read 17 fiction books! I’m ridiculously excited about this. I love reading! Love. It. And I’m pretty sure I’m going to finish an 18th before the new year. This year also included my first audio book listened to–not really my thing. It was good for when I was painting my office (boring, tedious work) but after that I had to listen to it in the car and I learned I really prefer music and to let my thoughts drift on my drives. What would’ve really made it better was if the ebook came free with the audio so I could read it at night (audio books are expensive!). I read a whole lot faster than a narrator can, and the slow pace drove me a little nuts (I did train my brain to listen to it at 1.5x speed, but that was the fastest I could go and still process it). My personal favorites for the year were Ready Player One by Ernest Cline and The Green Mile by Stephen King, both were awesome (for different reasons), but I recommend either to anybody that will listen.
I read 11 nonfiction books that ranged a whole gamut from writing, to parenting, to finance, to Christian theology. My favorites for the year were Creating Character Arcs by K. M. Weiland, The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman, and Heaven by Randy Alcorn (a bit repetitive, but a really, really worthwhile read for Christians).
So 2017 targets hit! It was a good, peaceful year compared to 2016, for which I’m grateful. Next time I’ll post a joint entry of 2017 lessons learned and 2018 targets.
Onward!