Did I Meet 2020’s Writing Goals?

As we approach the end of 2020 at long last, in the last week of the year I usually look back and reflect on my writing goals for the past twelve months. Did I reach my writing goals or not?

Let’s review my writing goals for 2020 and see how many I completed!

1.) Write a million words of new fiction.

I did that. With the rough draft of DRAGONTIARNA: VISIONARY, I got to about 1,278,000 words. Which is an improvement over 1,119,000 in 2019, though I did have twenty-three days of 10k words in 2020, which definitely moved the needle forward.

2.) Continue the DRAGONTIARNA series – reach book #8 or #9.

I almost did that. I published DRAGONTIARNA #7 (CROWNS), and finished the rough draft of DRAGONTIARNA #8 (VISIONARY). I would have published VISIONARY this year, but I really slowed down in August/September, partly because CROWNS was really long and complicated. But if all goes well, VISIONARY will be out sometime in January 2021.

3.) Continue the CLOAK MAGE series.

I did that! CLOAK OF ASHES came out in the end of March 2020, and if all goes well I should return to the CLOAK MAGE series in mid-2021.

4.) Continue the GHOST NIGHT series.

I did that as well! GHOST IN THE VISION came out in November, and I’m hoping to conclude the GHOST NIGHT series in 2021.

5.) Reach 34 total audiobooks on Audible.com.

I had planned to get to 34 audiobooks, but now I actually have 44 audiobooks available, so that went really well.

6.) Pass the 100,000th copy of FROSTBORN: OMNIBUS ONE.

I am pleased to report that I was able to do that at the end of February, with FROSTBORN OMNIBUS ONE my first title to pass over 100,000 copies sold.

7.) THE LINUX COMMAND LINE BEGINNER’S GUIDE audiobook.

I was able to release that in February as well, my first nonfiction audiobook. That one title has been 7% of my total audio sales for 2020.

8.) Project Colossus.

“Project Colossus” was what I called the audiobook of THE GHOSTS OMNIBUS ONE, a massive audiobook that came in at 39 hours. Unsurprisingly, this was my bestselling audiobook of 2020, weighing in at 18% of my total audiobook sales for 2020.

9.) Project Shard.

“Project Shard” was of course the WRAITHSHARD series, which finished this month. I wanted to try releasing a new series completely in Kindle Unlimited, and it did pretty well. But I doubt I will do the Kindle Unlimited thing for new releases again, since I don’t think the KU page reads quite made up for the lack of sales on the other platforms. It also forced me to up my cover design game by a considerable degree.

So of my nine writing goals, I got, say, eight and three-quarters of them. Pretty good! Especially for 2020! 🙂

In a few days, I will go over my writing goals for 2021.

-JM