2024 Bookish Promises Final Update

Happy New Year, everyone! As we enter another year of life and blogging, I wish all of you a lot of fun on your journey through another year in books, publishing, writing, and more!

As I put last year to bed, let's review the bookish promises posted last January and see how I did. 

Bookish Promises for 2024 - Final Update

Complete my Goodreads Challenge.

As the week ended, I posted my last two reviews, which brought my total to 77 books/14,469 pages read. That is two books more than planned. You can see my reading year details here.

Read 15 books from my TBR Pile.

I squeaked by on this one, reading 16 books from my TBR Pile. Only three were books I added in 2024 and had no obligation to review, and this didn't include any new professional or personal development books I read. 

Read 8 leadership books from my TBR Pile.

I read a total of three leadership books this year, opting to focus on overall professional development, personal development, and entrepreneurship instead. There were 12 books in that category this year that I finished. 

Read one book in a genre I don't usually read. 

I read one middle grade fantasy and one magical romance this year. 

Weed out my Goodreads and Kindle freebie "Want to Read" lists.

I continued to tackle this a bit at a time throughout the year. My current "Want to Read" list stands at 724. I'm sure more can come off of it, but this will continue to be a low priority item.  

Finish editing my NaNoWriMo project.

This is my most significant accomplishment of the year. Tackling NaNoWriMo for the first time in years, at the end of 2023, I had a completed manuscript. I spent several months this year finetuning it. Though the first publisher rejected it, I submitted Home for the Heart to an agent in September. When I checked in at the beginning of December, they were still reading it. Sure beats a fast rejection. I'm working on the second book in the series in between editing jobs to distract me while I wait. 

Plan out the next steps in my writing career.

This continues to be a work in progress and partially dependent upon the response to my small town Christmas romance. This is truly the direction I feel my writing is going, but I have several finished children's picture books that I don't want to abandon. I would self-publish them, but I can't draw to save my life and illustrators are justifiably expensive. I also am close to finishing the middle grade historical that I've worked on forever. I love it and don't want to see it sit in a virtual drawer. 

I am ready to have a redesign done of my website by a professional. They will create separate pages for my adult and children projects. After that, I need to figure out where I want to spend the majority of my time in 2025. 

Re-organize my works in progress.

Thought a lot about this. It really ties into the above promise. Likely something I will tackle in 2025 as I finalize decisions. 

Submit one short story.

I opted to focus on my longer projects this year instead. Not sure if I will keep this as a promise in 2025.

Participate in NaNoWriMo.

I did. Failed miserably. Knew I wouldn't be ready because my real estate business went into overdrive from July through the end of the year, so I didn't have the preparation time I did in 2023. I've always wished NaNoWriMo were in January or February, but that is not to be these days. I guess I could always hold my own personal NaNoWriMo if I felt strongly enough about it.

So, that was my year. How about you? What were some of your greatest accomplishments? What are you looking forward to accomplishing in 2025?