Writerly resolutions for 2021–the post mortem

I set ambitious goals for 2021 and I failed at them all. Perhaps I should set less ambitious goals? Or perhaps I should remember that the goals don’t matter in the end and that creativity doesn’t follow schedules and spreadsheets.

I had two goals for the year:

1. Work on We, The Rescued daily until I’ve got it ready for other eyes to look at.
   I didn’t do too bad on the daily part. I only missed 5 days’ work on the novel, but I didn’t get the first draft done as quickly as I would have liked and I’m still some distance from finishing the rewrite.
2. Workshop a new piece of fiction monthly.
   I workshopped something every month, but I had to dig into my stash of rejected stories that I still want to submit most of the time. I did succeed in getting two new pieces into workshopping, but that’s ten less than twelve.

But even with missing my goals, I did have two stories and five poems accepted in 2021, so there’s room to not be too hard on myself over my performance.