When I posted my 2020 Writing Goals on the first of January, Australia was basically on fire. My city was shrouded in smoke, as were others, and N95 masks had sold out across the country. At the time, we thought it couldn’t really get much worse.

March 30 was my first day working from home. Things changed so quickly that month. I am incredibly fortunate to live not only in Australia, but in a region that has barely had a COVID case in the last few months (at time of writing, we currently have 1 active case – an overseas arrival in quarantine).

I was back to working in the office pretty much full time by the end of August, and our public spaces re-opened not much later.

Instead of going through all my 2020 goals and giving myself some kind of pass/fail grade, talking about whether I succeeded or not, I decided to just make this a post of the wins I achieved in the last twelve months.

Tomorrow, I’ll be back with my 2021 goals.

What I achieved this year: 

For the most part (apart from one deviation in early May), I managed to avoid the temptation to stress myself out by signing up for word count challenges.

I submitted 3 short stories to 4 different places. This was my first time regularly doing this, and reworking stories as I went, making them better all the time.

I reached a point where I considered the first draft of my big WIP, Facing the Music, as completed as it was going to be. There’s still lots of work to be done on it. 

I participated in Bryan Cohen’s Five Day Amazon Ad Profit Challenge three times, with varying degrees of completion due to external factors. Amazon ads require a fair bit of on-the-job learning so I’ll be continuing with these courses. 

I also completed Ellie Marney’s self-publishing course. It was great to work with an author I’m a big fan of and get her insights!

Armed with the knowledge from these courses, I went ahead and published Operation: Sugarplum as its own ebook in the lead-up to Christmas. And I scored such an awesome cover!

I performed a light edit on A More Complicated Fairytale and have got it ready for reformatting and re-publication next year.

I started a mailing list. It’s pretty small fry at the moment but I’ve read some books on mailing lists now and I have Plans for it in the new year. 

And I registered emilywrayburn.com and had my beautiful author photo shoot! 

On the non-writing front, I was also privileged to still be able to participate in the local theatre scene. I played two roles in The Thornthwaite Inheritance: the Musical. I will admit that Zoom rehearsals through the period of March to May were incredibly tedious, but I’m immensely grateful for the friends I made throughout this process. 

I could beat myself up about the things I wanted to achieve and didn’t, but there’s no point to that. 

Please share your 2020 reflections with me, either in the comments, or with a link to your own posts. I’ll be back here tomorrow with a list of 2021 goals nearly as ambitious as this years!

Take care. xx