2017 Report Card

So another year begins and with it that one-week-ish period of introspection where I see how I did in the year in regards to my goals established last January. It was an odd sort of year where I did more of what I didn’t expect to, less of what I did expect to, and where it was all sorts of odd for obvious reasons in regards to my Home of Puerto Rico. This will probably mean I will do things differently from how I did last year, because I wasn’t thrilled with my final results, but that’s another post where I also talk about not busting your own balls. There I will share different types of goals I have and will monitor them a lot more closely, but for here, I’ll copy/paste my written goals from last year so we can see how I did.

1. Publish 2 new poetry collections before February is done. My two publications for 2017 were Black Tie Affair and Roulette of Rhymes. I’m very happy with both and I honestly think I pushed myself in regards to my poetry and will continue to do so.

2. Transcribe, edit, finish, and publish my first YA novel before the end of March. I finished this novel but after some initial observations from beta readers, edited several things and will be looking at it with fresh eyes this year to do it right. That also means a second round of beta readers so if you’re interested in being a beta reader, drop me a line on social media. To make matters more curious, it went from YA to middle-grade, and I think that's actually a great thing.

3. Finish, transcribe, edit, and publish Sci-fi novella before the end of April. I progressed in this but still only around 65% done with the first draft and beta reactions inspire me to finish and then begin the first round of edits before beta-searching again.

4. Daydreams on the Sherbet Shore, Volume 2. I did not finish this goal for 2017 and not happy about that. Did work on one of them, but will be pushing this when the time comes and pushing hard.

5. Noir novel. I didn’t even start this project because my notes are back home in storage… still. As you can tell, not thrilled about the result of this goal for several reasons.

6. Non-fiction book about my relationship to water. Didn’t even begin this one but finished drafts of two others. Not the result I wanted but will be working towards this one when the time is right, not a priority right now since I have 3 non-fics already either done or well on their way.

7. Non-fiction work about my philosophy on life. Peace, love, and maki rolls was my NanoWrimo project and I’m happy with the first draft and suspect I’ll be adding several thousand words soon.

8. Philosophy project. This is still ongoing, but out of my control. Will write again to see if there’s an ETA for it.

9. Blog collection. For Writing Out Loud will be my first release of 2018. Stay tuned for dates. :D

10. Haiku book. Still designing interior but this shall be finished this year most likely.

11. Greek mythology project. Another project I couldn’t begin because my notes are in Puerto Rico. Another result I’m not happy with.

12. Social Media. I think I did pretty well on social media last year but the question arises, how can I make this more efficient and also get more support for my work while I continue making a positive impact. Over 38K likes on Instagram, over 100K impressions on twitter, broke 100K visits to my blog, and progress on all social media connecting with great people. :)

13. More songs. More songs were done and a lot of new ones. This year I’ll continue posting new songs on YouTube and if you’re curious as to what I sound like in song version, here’s a link to my songs on my BookTube/YouTube channel.

14. More interviews. Had several interviews and participations in panels, which is always fun. Will work on this more and look for interviews in local publications and other book blogs. If you’d like to interview me, let me know. In that line, I’ll also be doing more interviews and collaborations for this blog, so keep an eye out for that. :D

15. Book Events. Apart from the Puerto Rico Comic Con, I didn’t have a book event in 2017. This will change in 2018. Period.

16. Puerto Rico Comic Con. Last year was my fourth year in the Con. It’s always a rewarding experience and last year was no exception with plenty of beautiful surprises. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll be able to make it to the Con this year mainly to do with a money situation. In short, I do well in shows, but when you add travel to my costs, I went under last year and need another year to save up to be able to do the Con back home and stateside, while continuing to publish work. I will instead focus on events in Georgia and Tennessee and see how those go. Might still have some type of participation in the Comic Con, but only time will tell if I can do what I have planned.

17. Love poetry collection, Heartbreak collection, and more. There will be a month this year where I only work on poetry or at least mostly on poetry. And if you’re wondering, this is that month.

OTHER Goals

- Get more reviews. I got more reviews, but still way under what I need to get any sort of traction. Will see what I can do to improve this.

- Might finally change my blog to wordpress or something else. Still pending…. Grrr……

- Be on the best of year list of at least 10 people. I know I was in the best of list of at least one person. As January progresses, I’ll see if I get into 9 more lol.

- Get nominated for something lol. Didn’t happen, don’t know how to make this happen, any suggestion on this, by all means let me know.

- Grow further on social media but focus on one platform at a time to make sure I reach those goals. I grew on all of them but will be refining my goals for this year to make it easier to achieve.

- I would love to be part of any school/college project. Didn’t happen in 2017 but completely open to it for the new year. We’ll see how it goes.

- Finish writing to all the people from my Comic Con yearbook. This I did and I’m very happy. It’s important for me to be thankful to the people who support me and my writing, especially those who are kind enough.

- Smile more, travel more, be happy more often, share that with as many people as I can while focusing on messages of positivity. Always do my best to share the good but wasn’t a year of much travel. We’ll see how this year goes, but thank you to everyone who has read and supported throughout the year.

So all in all, and also taking into consideration what happened during the year, I’d give myself a B- grade in regards to how I performed in the last year. I’ll be doing an in depth analysis of this a bit further on. Some people might think I’m a bit harsh, some think I’m generous, but giving it some thought, I think that’s a pretty accurate grade in regards to how I feel about my performance… which inspires me to bring up my GPA.

How about you? Any thoughts on your performance this year? Any thoughts on my grade before I give a full assessment? Anywho, thanks for all the love and here’s to an epic year!

Peace, love, and maki rolls.

JD