Thursday, December 28, 2017

Celebrating Successes from 2017


As I've done for the past couple of years, I’ve been trying to think about celebrating successes from the year instead of revisiting what I didn’t accomplish and resolving to do better (for more on this approach see Julie Hedlund’s recent blog post). Her suggestion is to use your successes and achievements as a foundation for setting new year goals.
This was a year of struggles in my personal life and they seemed to squelch my creativity and time for writing. I can claim only a few writing and reading successes for 2017, but I’m sharing them anyway, proud to have accomplished anything in the face of so much emotional change:
1. I participated in the 12 x 12 Picture Book Challenge again and for the first time completed the challenge by writing 12 picture book drafts in 12 months. (No one said the drafts had to be good.)

2. I read over 300 new fiction picture books and board books as a first round panelist for the Cybils Awards. It was so much fun discussing these books with my fellow panelists!

3. I worked hard on revising a middle grade novel and am close to finishing my revisions.

4. I revised several picture book manuscripts and my agent sent some of them on submission.

5. I participated in an adult fiction book club at my local library. 

No matter how they are, taking time to celebrate successes lifts you up. I urge you to give it a try and dive into 2018 on a positive note! What are you most proud of this year? I hope you feel good about your successes!

No comments:

Post a Comment

I love to hear your responses and thoughts! Your comments will appear after moderation (I’ve decided to enable moderation due to excessive spam).