What's Next? - #MFRWauthor

Can you believe it? This is the final Friday of 2017 and the final #MFRWauthor blog post of the year. I didn't do the full 52 weeks, I started at week 4, but never missed a post after that. I count that as a win to having been consistent from that point til the end.
The final topic for this year: New Year's Resolutions. Those are something I don't make. I have in the past, but always failed (personal ones). Writing related, well heading into 2017 I did my first ever set of goals for the year and since I was planning a follow up post to that as well as a look ahead, that's what this will be.

 I made posts HERE and Here talking about my goals and plans for 2017. But if you don't want to read those the list was as follows:

1. Publish Not Broken
2. Increase my social media presence
3. Write a novella
4. Start on my third book
5. Participate in NaNo

The second post really laid out how I planned to (ideally) accomplish  these things.

So how did I do? 

• Well, Not Broken was released on Thanksgiving of this year! That was my main goal for 2017 so I was thrilled to make it. 
• As for my social media presence, well that has gone up. I've made some real connections with people on Twitter thanks to the hashtag games and general interacting. Instagram is still a mystery to me, but one I'll continue to try and understand. The YA authors seems to have a vast network on there, it's kind of amazing. I just need to figure out how to find that same one within the romance community. I've not grown my blog followers as much as I'd have liked. I think I only added one or two new ones all year. Blogger doesn't tell me how many are subscribed via email. I'm sure there's a way to figure it out, but I haven't tried. So followers are low, but I keep blogging anyway. This hop has been great to meet other authors and connect with them so still a win. I've not done Pintrest, maybe 2018. And Tumblr...yeah that's like really screaming into an empty cavern.
• Write a novella. It's been started, but it's not complete. Actually I have three novellas started, but only one is nearly done and will me my first release of 2018. I'm about 30k in on words thinking I'll finish round the mid 40's. 
• Start my third book, well that goes with the novella so count that as done. It's been started. I also have my third full length book started. That leads us in to the final thing on my list.  
• I did participate in NaNo. Notice how I didn't say 'win' it. I can't just word 'vomit' so NaNo was hard for me. I need to think about things, get the scenes and dialogue right, or as close to right as I can. The pressure writing of hitting a word count doesn't work for me. I however did manage 20,451 new words, they were split between my full length, and the novella, but they were words nonetheless.

Now to look ahead. What's next for me in 2018?

I don't want to over extend myself or put unnecessary additional pressures on me. I do it enough as is, so my goals will be simple just like last year.

1. Publish two books
2. Establish my 'publisher' name
3. Grow my fan base
4. Read all 25 books I bought

Again keeping it simple. I feel like I a good chance at hitting at least half of these, but we'll see. If I keep up the pace with my novella, I might have it ready mid to late March (don't hold me to that). The publisher name, I'm just trying to figure out what is the best between the LLC, DBA, or Sole Proprietor thing. Growing of my fan base, best way to do that is write more books. I'm slow, not sure I can speed up too much, but novellas will help. (I hope) Lastly, the 25 books. On Twitter Melanie Thurlow did a thing called #DecTheShelves where participates bought one Indie author book a day from Dec. 1-25th. Being an Indie author, I took part so that I could help support other Indies.

That's if for me. What are some of your goals for the coming year. Be sure to check out the other authors on this final post of 2017 to see what they have planned for 2018.

Until next time
~Meka