It’s that time of year when we start to look back at the last twelve months, and begin focusing on the next twelve. The line from year to the next, is really an arbitrary one. There’s nothing to say we couldn’t start the reflection in June and implement in July each year. For those of us in the United States, it also aligns with the end of the tax year.

Looking back at 2021, my three main goals were to write more than 300,000 words, renew my project management certification, and publish 52 pieces of IP.

As of early December, my guess is the word count for the year will be just over 150,000 – slightly up on 2020 but not where I wanted it to be. Renewing my project management certification was essential for my day job. I ran it a little too close to the October deadline for my own comfort, but I did make it, and now have to start planning for renewal in 2024, which will be here before we know it.

At the beginning of 2021, I was about two thirds of the way through the Short Story Challenge of writing a story a week for a year. My thought was to take those stories and publish them individually, thus getting to the 52.

Separately, I learned a lot this year about publishing and what it takes to really achieve discoverability. Apart from publishing wide, the consensus seems to be, you need to look at having twenty or more major items available. Major items consist of novels, novellas, or collections. Individual short stories don’t count, so that led me to a slight rethink on the publishing approach for 2021, with the result I published five short story collections this year.

Reaching or getting close to the “magical” twenty number has driven a lot of my thinking around plans for 2022. As of early December 2021, there are fourteen more to go.

I’ll let you know how the planning progresses.