Before getting to my 2020 goals, here are my numbers for the entire year.

• Words written = 37,016
• Submissions = 125
• Rejections = 134
• Acceptances = 1
• Holds = 1
• Publications = 2
• Awards = 0
• Withdrawals = 2

How does that compare to years past? The word count is way down and the lowest of the three years I’ve been writing. The submission total is almost identical to last year’s, while I have almost 30 more rejections in 2019. I had the same number of publications as 2018 but only a third of the acceptances (1 v. 3). The hold was my first, so I added that category in 2019.  Unfortunately, it eventually became a rejection.

The words written represent a hodgepodge of projects. In that 37,000, there were 12 flash fiction stories and one longer short story (about 5700 words). The rest went toward the work-in-progress novel and a short story I’m co-writing with a friend.

I was not pleased with the drop off in words written. I took on several more time consuming volunteer projects in 2019. Those ate into my writing time and will continue to do so into 2020. So I’m going back to my 2018 goal and see if I can’t hammer out 50,000 words in 2020. I already have 700 of those thanks to a flash fiction story idea that popped into my head on Monday.  Only 49,300 to go!

I’d like to stay at 100 submissions again. To do that, I think I’ll need some new material though. The old stories have made the rounds, and I’m running out of markets. I’m also toying with the idea of putting the old stories together into a collection this year. Now that will be a big project, but it will be great experience for when I want to self-publish the WIP.

I was more successful with my other goal in 2019: reading one book a month. Before kids, I’d read 2-3 books monthly but hadn’t had as much luck since. Last year, I not only had the goal of reading one a month but reading those books I already owned. Most of these reads were physical books, though I slipped in a few ebooks, again if I already owned them. I’m pleased to say I passed this goal and ended with 19 books read.

For 2020, I plan to do the same, except instead of one a month I plan to read several large tomes collecting dust on my shelves. These are the 1000+ pagers that are difficult to hold and impossible to carry around. I’ll set a goal of reading three of these and hopefully can slip a couple smaller ones in here and there.

That was my 2019 and my goals for 2020. How did you end last year, and where do you want to go this year?