Goals for 2017

I’ve seen many of my blogger friends posting about their blogging resolutions/goals for 2017, and it made me think about my own blog, and what I would like to accomplish with it this year.

Reading Goals

I signed up for the 2017 Reading Challenge on Goodreads, and set a goal of reading 45 books. Last year, I set my goal at 30 books, and ended up reading 61. I don’t think I’ll read double my goal this year, but it would be pretty sweet to beat 2016’s total.

Read more diverse books. This is something I’ve never consciously thought about when choosing what to read, until I saw a discussion about diverse books on Twitter. I’ve got a few lined up that are a step in the right direction: Everything Belongs to Us by Yoojin Grace Wuertz, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann, and And Then There Was Me by Sadeqa Johnson.

Stick to a reading schedule. The quickest way for me to fall behind on reviews is for me to get on Facebook or Twitter, so I need to manage time spent on those sites better. If that’s even possible?!

Netgalley Goals

Auto-approvals and the ‘Read Now’ list proved to be my downfall in 2016. I was doing great for the first several months—kept a tight rein on my requesting, fairly consistent with getting reviews out before or on publication day—but then I saw a LOT of books that sounded so good, and I was but a click away from being able to read them all. So I clicked… and clicked… and clicked. I clicked so many times, I was in danger of getting a blister on my clicker finger. My self-control was obliterated, and my shelf was bursting with books.

The inevitable happened, and my review schedule was blown to hell. I ended the year with 14 Netgalley books unread that were published in 2016 or earlier. Not to mention, I also have 14 more to read that will be published in 2017.

My Netgalley goals are to:

• control my clicker finger and give it a stern warning against being so greedy (unless it’s Bookouture because their books are so irresistible I can’t help myself)
• have ALL reviews for 2017 books posted by publishing day, if not before

Blogging Goals

There are so many things that fall under this category!

• Posting more regularly. If not daily, then every other day, at least.
• Improving my writing. I often find myself using the same tired phrases to describe things, and it drives me crazy. I like to think I have a decent vocabulary, but I seem to forget 80% of it when I’m writing.
• Make more time to interact with other bloggers. I always mean to be more chatty and visit more blogs, but there never seems to be enough time. I’d like to join in more often, so I need to figure out a way to make that happen.
• Content! Content! Content! There are so many things I’ve planned to write about, and haven’t written a single post about so far. Even if it’s only a few posts, I’d like to change that this year.
• Make better decisions about review requests. I accepted several requests last year, and ended up being unable to get interested in the book. I felt terrible about not reviewing those books, and hated having to tell the author. I’m going to be a lot more careful about what I do—and don’t—take on for review consideration this year… which means I’ll be tweaking my request form a bit in order to help me make better decisions.

There are many things I could add, but these are the main things I’d like to work on. Wish me luck… I think I’ll need it.