December and 2017 wrap-up; January and 2018 goals

Days written: 20/31
Words written: 6,054
Words of fic written: 4,158
Stories worked on: Four
Stories posted: Three
Words written in 2017: 99,143
Fic words written in 2017: 41,400
Fic words posted in 2017: 46,214

( Charts are as glad as anyone to see 2017 come to an end. )

( December and 2017 )

( January and 2018 )

Reading goals: 2017 wrap-up, 2018 goals

This was my first year ever of doing reading goals, and it was an interesting exercise. I think it was useful in a couple of areas, but I completely ignored them in others. My overall goal was to read 50 books, including novellas, of which 25 were to be books by authors of color; of those, at least 10 by new-to-me authors (i.e. authors whose work I've never read before). I also wanted to read 5 non-fiction books, at least one novella and one piece of shorter fiction each month, and 10 books or graphic novels/comics collections that I bought in 2016 or earlier.

My final count of books is 36, a bit short of the original goal (I set the goal at 40 before deciding to count novellas) and notably short of the final goal. However, I only read 28 books (including one novella) in 2016, so at least it's gone up. Of these, 13 books were by authors of color, which makes 36%; a miss on my 50% goal, but it's another notable improvement over 2016's 25%. This is probably the place where setting goals did me the most good -- when deciding which book to read next, all other things being equal, I often chose the book by an author of color, and every book I read in October was by a black author. Counting by unique authors, I actually came quite close to 50%: 12 authors of color versus 14 white authors. A good chunk of the books by white authors were by one writer, Seanan McGuire, both because she's prolific and because I caught up on the InCryptid series this spring. That accounts for 8 of the total. I also read multiple books by Lois McMaster Bujold, Kate Elliott, and Yoon Ha Lee.

(Although I didn't set goals for reading female authors, because I basically default to mostly white women if I'm not paying attention, I will note that I only read 6 books by men in 2017, and of those, only one, The Collapsing Empire, was by a white man. This also means that I read more books by Seanan McGuire than I did by men, which is kind of hilarious, but also speaks to that whole "default to white women" issue.)

As for my other goals:

Read at least 5 non-fiction books: Nope, I only read one (Trevor Noah's memoir). But who can blame me for not being in the mood for non-fiction in 2017?

Read at least one novella and one piece of shorter fiction each month: Not quite, especially not on the shorter fiction. I have found that I really like reading novellas, though. They hit a sweet spot for me, of being long enough to feel like a complete story, but short enough to read quickly. I love that I can finish a novella in a day or two. I got really bogged down in a few of my novel choices this year, so it was always refreshing to polish off a good book so quickly.

Read at least 10 books that I already own: I only got 6, and 4 of those were from the aforementioned InCryptid catch-up. I want to do much better with this one in 2018.

So, armed with this new data and knowledge, I want to set some reading goals for 2018, giving myself a mix of loftier goals and goals I might hit pretty easily. So here's my plan:

• My total goal for the year will be 50 books, including graphic novels and novellas.


• At least 20 books by authors of color. (40%, a little less ambitious than last year, but still a year-by-year improvement.)


• At least 10 of these by authors who are new to me.


• At least 10 books that I already own, with 6 of them (one every other month) to be reviewed for my ladybusiness column, Tales from the TBR.


• At least 4 graphic novels -- I didn't read a single one in 2017, which makes me sad.

This post is already quite long, so I'm going to decouple it from my favorite media post (scheduled for ladybusiness on Wednesday). Look for that soon!