My 2023 Writing and Personal Goals

I have a previous post describing my bookish goals which you can find HERE but in this post I am chatting about my Writing goals and other personal goals for this year. I am putting up a content warning that at the end I talk health and fitness goals, please feel free to skip that section.

WRITING GOALS

I am more of a Plantser than a Planner or Pantser. I need a basic sketch of an idea, then I need to discovery right for a bit to establish my plot ideas before I can plan. In 2022 I really made time investment into my writing. I joined the Edinburgh SFF Writers group joining them in several meet ups and on discord. I have found them so inspirational and motivating. I ended up starting many books creating full outlines. I do find I am a bit of a mood writer when it comes to genre and did find it easy to switch between projects when I got stuck with one.

1) FINISH ONE OF MY ONGOING MANUSCRIPTS

I currently have three manuscripts I am working on. An Urban Fantasy that had 27, 000 words and a full outline of around 10,000 words. A Sci-fi which has 15k and a 7k outline and a Horror Rom Com with around 13k and a short outline. I want to fully finish one of these. Most are outlined to be between 80k-100k. At the moment I am leaning toward the Horror Rom-Com but my Sci-fi is actually the most developed and probably the easiest to finish.

2)MAKE TIME FOR WRITING

I want to make sure I have time to get into the creative zone and to work on my Works in Progress over the next year. I want to put at least a couple of hours a week aside to just make some notes do some discovery writing and play about with characters. I would love to have a full first draft of one of my projects by the end of the year but I don’t know how achievable that is.

3) ATTEND CHIMERA FESTIVAL

The Chimera Festival is an SFF writing/book festival that is held in Edinburgh every year. I have only ever attended Digitally and I missed 2022’s festival as I was in Venice celebrating my 35th birthday. This years festival is running from the 2nd -4th of June. The second happens to be my Birthday and I know a lot of the members of Edinburgh SFF are attending so I am looking forward to celebrating with them .

OTHER PERSONAL PROJECTS

Crochet

I taught myself to crochet and knit during the pandemic and for me it has grown into a hobby I really enjoy. I even made the jumper I wore on my work’s Christmas night out. I have seen many posts of people making temperature blankets over the year and I really like the idea so this year I have picked out a colour scheme and picked a pattern and I am going to attempt to make my own temperature blanket. This is the colour scheme I have chosen:

Nail Art

Another Lockdown hobby I want to improve on. I started by painting gel tips in bookish themes. I want to improve in my painting and application of the nails and learn other techniques, especially to make them last longer. I get really good response on my Instagram to my bookish nail art so this factors into my bookish goal of increasing my instagram posting.

FITNESS GOALS

Last year I decided I wanted to improve my overall fitness and I hired the amazing Kerry Smith Fitness as my Personal Trainer. I am lucky to be in a position to afford a PT and it has completely changed my attitude to the gym and working out as well as really helping with my mental health and attitude towards food. So I have set myself some Fitness related goals to keep me going on my journey.

1) Gym 3 Days a week

One day a week I work out with Kerry but I want to try and do two independent days as much as possible. It would like to build the habit of going consistently.

2) 10k steps a day

Working from home has drastically reduced how much I move every day so I want to make a conscious effort to get out of the house and go for a walk. My goal is to try and get at least 10k steps most days. To help with this I have signed up for some Conqueror Challenges. These are virtual races that record how many km you walk and at the end you get a gorgeous medal to celebrate your achievement. In 2022 I completed the first leg in there Lord of the Rings Walk to Mordor Challenge in which I walked the equivalent from the Shire to Bree sharing in Frodo and Sam’s Journey. I really enjoyed the app and looking at the map to see where I had reached at the end of each walk. This year I want to complete the other four challenges. This morning I reached Weathertop!

I have also signed up for the 2023 challenge medal. In this one you set your own goal. I decided that 6km a day was manageable for me so I set a distance of 2190km for this year which is giving me the motivation to put my trainers on and get out of the house.

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I would love to chat all things bookish with you! You can comment down below or find me on Twitter or Goodreads!

Very Happy New year to you and Happy Reading!