Pulling It Together: ROW80 Round 4 Goals

2013 has been a blur. I published my second book and first young adult novel, and my family and I moved from Maryland to California. My goals, both personal and professional, have been all over the place and always changing this year.

Round 4 is an opportunity for me to pull it all together and head into 2014 with momentum and a sense of purpose and achievement.

But before I state my goals, I wanted to share a great post by Julie Glover. A Round of Words in 80 Days (ROW80) has brought some amazing people into my life. Julie is one of those. If you don't follow her blog, please do. She's funny, always willing to share, and a fellow word nerd.

Yesterday, Julie shared her goals along with tips for choosing them: Tips for Choosing Writing Goals. Some of her findings...

* You should include goals in multiple areas of your life.
* Goals should be SMART (her post details the acronym).
* Consider your values when determining goals.
* Keep it simple.

Then she shared some goal strategies from the book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It's a book I have not read. But based on Julie's recommendation, I ordered it and will read it this round. I've been a bit scattered this year, so now is a great time.

Thanks, Julie. Please check out her post for some inspiration.

My Round 4 ROW80 Goals

* Write 1,000 words a day Monday through Thursday through October 31. Then, I plan to join NaNoWriMo. I did NaNo last year, and I found it focused me to keep writing first in my to do list. For that challenge, I need to complete 50,000 words in the month of November.

* I will attend #ROW80 word sprints (2:00pm EST on Twitter) at least three days a week. More if I can. This supports my writing goal.

* Finish 25 books to meet my GoodReads reading goal of 100 books this year.

I'm going to keep the main goals simple. But if my reading and writing goals are met for each day:

* Perform my ROW80 sponsorship duties.
* Visit blogs and be social on Twitter and Facebook.
* Write reviews and share book news here and on Mom in Love with Fiction.
* Put Depression Cookies on Smashwords (it's ready, I'm behind).
* Get my author website up and running (in process).
* Editing.

And finally, I will exercise at least 3-4 times a week. I started to put a focus on family goal, but that is always number one and will supersede everything here. Round 4 is always a bit tricky with Thanksgiving and Christmas, but I am focused.

Whatever your goals may be, I wish you well.

And for those of you who don't know about ROW80. From the website:

A Round of Words in 80 Days is the writing challenge that knows you have a life.

We are all different and we all have different demands on our time.  Why should we all have the same goal?  The simple answer is that we shouldn’t.  If you want to be a writer, then you have to be able to roll with the punches and adapt to your changing circumstances.  If that means changing your goals when your life blows up, so be it.  ROW80 is the challenge that champions the marriage of writing and real life.