As the civil year comes to a close, I have been considering how the last year has gone and what I want to achieve in the coming months, starting with a pure retrospective on Strategic Primer on Wednesday and continuing with my “miscellaneous” goals for the year that was and the coming quarter on SaturdayA. Today, I’m turning at last to consider whether I met my goals for the Shine Cycle, my fantasy series-in-preparation, and to set out my goals in that quarter for the next three months.

2018 Goals

Here are the goals I set for myself one year ago:

Outlining and Plotting

Objective: Have one complete and detailed outline of The Invasion.

Goal: Finish the “detailed synopsis” that is Step 9 of the “snowflake method”
Goal: Adjust the main outline and all synopses created in the “snowflake method” to all agree.

Objective finally met.

Objective: Finish a presentable draft of The Invasion.

Goal: Get at least half-way through, or 50,000 words into, my new draft of The Invasion.
STretch Goal: Finish this draft of The Invasion.

However, I didn’t even start on this.

Objective: After I finish The Invasion, make significant progress on outlining The Adventure of the Royal Wedding

Stretch Goal: Follow the “snowflake method” to at least Step 4 for The Adventure of the Royal Wedding.

And so, of course, I didn’t come close to getting to this.

Character Development

Objective: Have a biography, history, description, and “character logline” or “motivation summary” for every named character.

Goal: Write at least ten character biographies or histories

I managed only four.

Goal: Create “character loglines” or “motivation summaries” for at least fifteen characters.

That goal I nearly met: I managed fourteen.

Worldbuilding

Objective: Create sufficiently-complete, sufficiently-detailed, maps of the worlds and areas with which the Shine Cycle is concerned.
Objective: Develop each race and culture that the Shine Cycle is concerned with sufficiently to portray it distinctly and excite potential readers’ interest.

Goal: Complete the “race fractalling system” for elves.
Goal: Complete the “race fractalling system” for dwarves

All that I did for any of this was to set out the granular steps I will go through to create the maps.

Blogging

Objective: Regularly post substantive Shine Cycle-related content here, as an incentive to continued progress and to attract interested future readers.

Goal: Post at least twelve Shine Cycle-related posts (not including writing status updates, year-end retrospectives, and the like; including posts already scheduled, but not including new posts scheduled for 2019) to this blog.
Goal: Post at least one Shine Cycle-related post (with the same restrictions) to this blog every month.
Stretch Goal: Post at least eighteen Shine Cycle-related posts (with the same restrictions) to this blog.

I managed only nine, so a clear failure on both goals.

Objective: Create blog posts using “worldbuilding” material created using the various “systems” and question sets.

2019 Goals (First Quarter)

Now, for the next three months. As with the “miscellaneous” goals, I’ve tried to plan out what is reasonable but not all that easy, and I’ve kept the same categorization as above. Since my plan is based on a limited time budget, however, only the Invasion “plotting” objective actually made it into this quarter’s plan, so the other objectives are merely left in as placeholders for goals I expect to get to later in the year.

Outlining and Plotting

Objective: Finish a presentable draft of The Invasion.

Goal: Get at least twenty scenes into my new draft of The Invasion.



Character Development

Objective: Have a biography, history, description, and “character logline” or “motivation summary” for every named character.

Worldbuilding

Objective: Create sufficiently-complete, sufficiently-detailed, maps of the worlds and areas with which the Shine Cycle is concerned.
Objective: Develop each race and culture that the Shine Cycle is concerned with sufficiently to portray it distinctly and excite potential readers’ interest.

Blogging

Objective: Regularly post substantive Shine Cycle-related content here, as an incentive to continued progress and to attract interested future readers.
Objective: Create blog posts using “worldbuilding” material created using the various “systems” and question sets.

We’ll see how the year goes; as I said, I’m trying to estimate conservatively, so, God willing, I should be able to meet most of these unless he decides to upend my life with some disruption or surprise.

Fellow writers, how did you do in 2018? And do you have any plans for the new year?