If you read my earlier post from today, you’ll know that I’ve reflected on how 2017 went.  This inspired me to set my goals for the year ahead.

Blogging

I now absolutely love blogging.  I’m addicted.  It is has raised in my ranks of importance.  Here are my goals for 2018:

• Categories:  Currently, I am running three blogs.  One for beauty review, one for anything related to writing and books and another that shares the posts by both.  It is very time consuming and exhausting!  I shall now be migrating them all to this blog and using categories to present content relevant to the readers interests.
• Schedule:  
  • I was trying to post two articles a week and did pretty well but sometimes it was hard.   I need post regularly but once a week is sufficient and I can schedule posts.
  • I’ve been using loCal (free online calendar) to schedule my tweets.  I was unwell in December and never updated my tweets!  Aghh!  My poor followers had the same tweets for another month *cringe*.  Setting an end date is important.
• Personal:  Keeping to my categories has meant that when life is busy I haven’t anything relevant to post whereas if I start sharing more about me (like being a mum or working in education), I could have more content and make my life easier.
• Vlogging:  I did my first video blog this year and I was really impressed at how easy it was. I know I have more to learn to make my videos better but you’ve got to start somewhere.  I’ve also done some ‘unboxing’ videos on my instagram.
• Product reviews:  I need to not be shy to contact brands that I love to see if they’ll support me reviewing their product.  I hope that in 2018 I will get the chance to review more products as I really enjoyed my experience of reviewing Saal Digital’s photo book.

Writing

My dream is still to be published and I still would love to go down the traditional route but not found an agent (or publisher) but some of that is my fault as I don’t query enough.

• Drift/Jewel of the sea:  Stop editing and start querying!
• Glide:  I know how this story ends and I need to finish it.  Readers who loved Drift (on Wattpad) want to read the next book in the series.  I have had so much support and encouragement and one user even sent me pictures of Scotland to help me.
• Start a fresh new story:  I don’t want this to distract from the above goals but I’ve got lots of new story ideas and I really need to start something fresh.  I hope to make a start on this later in 2018.
• Conventions: I love attending YALC and Felixstowe Book Festival last year and I would love to be able to go again.
• Writer courses:  I’m very busy at the moment with a course for work but once that is out of the way I’d like to continue my studies with Write Story Books for Children and Write Romance fiction.  I’m enrolled on both these courses ready to complete when I have time.  I also would happily do another Curtis Brown Creative course online.
• Reading:  I got a Kindle at last!  I plan to start reading more in 2018 and hope to discover some amazing reads to review on my blog (and Good Reads).
• Twitter queries:  I need to learn when these are running so ~I