2018 in Review: Laura Teagan
Given that I’ve pretty much taken the rest of the year off from creative endeavors, I thought it would be fun to go in-depth on a review, looking back at 2018 and what a year it was. Over the next two weeks, I’ll tackle my goals from 2018 and how I did on all of them. Today I want to talk about my “Laura Teagan” goals, specifically for reading and writing.
My Reading and Writing Goals for 2018
While I didn’t list out my reading goals separately at the beginning I’ve begun merging them into Laura Teagan’s goals as I talk a lot about reading books on her social media platforms. But for writing goals, well, there were some big changes this year.
- publish Justice & Lies
- publish Hit List
- write three short stories
- possibly publish short story one
- make some big changes to the Laura Teagan website so it works better
- create an editorial schedule for the website
- begin using Facebook ads to build my mailing list
- grow said mailing list to 100 people (which you can sign-up for here if you’re interested in book updates)
I didn’t publish anything, let’s just put that out there. I know I didn’t, and I’m okay with that. Back in April, when I finished a round of rewrites on Hit List, I decided I needed to make some changes to my writing schedule. Then, I started on the new short story I was working on. That short story is still in the works, though it’s basically become a novel by now, oops.
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There are two more stories that come after that, and once I move in January and get my writing space back, I’m planning to spend Quarter One of 2019 really leaning into my writing. There are so many stories I want to tell, even some not on that list, and I want to really spend 2019 wrapping up what is already in progress now so I can start something new again.
It was August when I launched the new website and actually wrote down the rules for branding, like the logo and fonts for Laura Teagan. I’m terrible about that, so having all that documented is super nice. Just last week, I sat down and created a calendar for content on Laura Teagan’s website for Quarter One in 2019. For a while I was doing a monthly recap of my reading and writing, but stopped when I moved.
I’m hoping to start that recap again in the new year.
I didn’t do any Facebook ads, but I’m hoping to dabble in with those as I release new projects. With no new projects, it’s all right that I didn’t dabble in ads or grow my mailing list. Both of those will be goals for 2019.
I will say though, at the beginning of the year, before I moved, I was finishing drafts every month, and I hope once I get my space back I can go back to that. While 2018 wasn’t the best year in writing, it was a solid year for setting up next year up for success.
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Reading wise, though? Man I crushed it. My original goal was 30 books and I’ll read 70 by the end of the year. A large part of that is the In Death how little details can ruin series by J.D. Robb. 47 books in the series, and each one is written with this consistency I’ve never encountered in a book series. I’ve talked about parts of a series before, but J.D. Robb either takes ridiculously good notes or has the best memory ever, because she recalls details from thirty books ago like it’s no big deal.
There are so many lessons to learn from 70 books in a year as a writer, and I look forward to seeing how my writing turns out next year because of it.
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