I don’t know what came over me. Last Friday was April 1st. That was my day to write out my progress for March and goals for April. I had something on my mind for last Friday, however, and went with that, not even remembering what I had planned for that day. So here is last Friday’s post, being written on Tuesday April 5th. I’ll give progress through today.

• Finish pulling my research notes for the church Centennial book together into a format and organization that will make the job of a future researcher easier. I made a good start on this, but didn’t finish, and will include it in April’s goals. I feel so much better about it, however. The notes are much better organized.
• Continue to shepherd the church Centennial book to publication. …Almost certainly this will go to the printer in March. This did go to the printer in March and production is underway. The books are scheduled to be ready by the end of this week. The church is thinking for a May release.
• Continue to plug along on There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel. I’ll finish going through it this last time, getting critique on two more chapters, while waiting on beta readers. I’m not sure of the timing of the cover, but should know this week. Not much change in status. Still waiting on beta readers. I did meet with the cover designer. We worked through her drafts, selected the one to use for the final, and came up with the design that looks good to both of us. I haven’t heard from her since that meeting, but I assume she’s making progress. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to run chapters past the critique group until the cover is ready. At that point I’ll publish, whether I have beta reader feedback or not.
• Make good progress on the Last Supper Bible study. I’d like to finish three more chapters in March. I accomplished this! I have fallen into a rhythm of writing, switching off between the two. I’ll have a blog post about that before long. This stands at approximately 28,000 words, a little more than half done.
• Begin work on a Gethsemane Bible study. Since I’ll be teaching it beginning next Sunday, I hope to make my notes this time in publishable format, being essentially done with it by the time the study ends. And this goal was met as well! Today (4/5/2022) I finished chapter 5 (of 7 chapters), at 29,000 words. That doesn’t mean I’m 5/7th done, however. This will need lots of editing, as will the one from last year.
• Attend writers groups. I expect this will be three online and three in-person meetings.  Done, except one on-line meeting wound up being cancelled.
• Blog twice a week on Monday and Friday. And I did this, not missing a blogging day.
• …revamp the “Available Works” page on my website. I made a small beginning on this in February, and would like to make significant progress on it in March. I did some of this, though actually not until April. I’m creating sub-pages for my published works, making the whole thing more organized and, I hope, easier for someone to go through. I wish I had finished, but I’m very, very happy with the progress made.

So, now the goals for April. It will be a shorter month for goals, given that I’m going this late.

• More work on those pesky research notes for the church Centennial book. I don’t know that I’ll worry about whether I finish it or not. Another hour or two will result in being close to done.
• Continue inching along with There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel. Not much for me to do but work with the cover creator and do a little more editing, by myself and with the critique group.
• Work on the two Bible studies hand-in-hand. I anticipate finishing the “guts” of the one for this year, on Gethsemane and Arrest. The one on the Last Supper I don’t expect to finish, but who knows? I’m actually ahead of where I expected to be by this time, so maybe I can get the “guts” of it done too.
• Attend writers groups.  Three will be in-person, and three on-line. I anticipate missing two however, due to a scheduled heart procedure that may require an overnight stay in the hospital.
• Blog twice a week, Mondays and Fridays. I’m not quite as well organized on this as I was in March, but I ought to be able to do it.
• Continue work on the “Available Works” part of my web site. Based on how much I have done, I ought to be able to do this.
• One irregular item: Work on and finish the presentation I’m scheduled to make to the Northwest Arkansas Letter Writers Society on May 10. I have what I want to say planned out, have begun writing it, and have pulled together some graphics for a power point presentation.

That’s a good amount of goals. I’ll be doing well if I accomplish them all, what with everything else going on.

In my post last Friday, I recapped what my writing progress was in 2021, and promised to make my next post about my writing goals for 2022. So here I am, as promised.

But, as I do so, I have only a few goals. Is that because I have no writing planned? No. It’s because I’m close to the end of two projects, have three others started. Will that be enough to fill the year? If not, I can conjure up more works later on.

But enough chat. What shall I do this year?

1. Finish the church Centennial book. At present, two people besides me are proofreading it. Once we complete that, there will likely be a few more words to add. Besides that, I have to do a fair amount of work on photos, trying to enhance the quality, moving them to the exact position they are supposed to be. I suspect that will take a lot of hours this month. We have already found two printers for it, at least one of which can do it in our price range. Someone else on the committee will handle the cover. If I had to guess, I’d say we are two or three weeks away from having the words done, four weeks away from having the photos done, and just two weeks away from deciding on a printer. That means the book should be issued in late February or early March.
2. Finish The Forest Throne. Yesterday I reached the second main plot point, where the protagonist figures out how to solve the problem. That’s at the 29,000 word point. Which means I have only four or five thousand more words to go. Which means I should finish the first draft in less than two weeks. I have two beta readers lined up, plus my three oldest grandchildren. I’ll be working on it during that time. No predictions about when it will be done, but I doubt it will be published before April.
3. Publish at least one Bible study, and work on three. I will discuss this more in a future post, where I’ll discuss where my different Bible-studies-in-progress stand. Right now, I really can’t say which of three I’m thinking of will be first. Also, I can’t say how long any will take to complete. Those details will have to develop as the year unfolds.
4. One goal remains as it has for three years: blog twice per week, generally on Monday and Friday.

The following two items are goals, but right now they are not firm. I think they will both happen, but who knows?

1. After numbers 1-3 are complete, begin serious work on the next book in the Documenting America series. More on that in a future post. The research is done, though I did it so long ago I’m not sure I’ll remember it.
2. After number 5 is done, or maybe simultaneous as I near the end of it, begin work on the next volume in the church history novel series.

That’s what I’ll add for now. But I suspect, even as 2021 did not go as I thought it would, I suspect 2022 will be the same. I’ll update this at different times during the year.

December 31 is a Friday this year, my regular writing day, also the end of my 70th journey around the sun. Time to look at what I accomplished this year, how well I did relative to my stated goals. I won’t then add goals for 2022. I’ll do that in January. Here, I’ll paste in the goals I posted on January 4th, and say what I did on them. Then I’ll add some things at the end, things I did that weren’t part of my original goals.

• Finish and publish The Teachings…I might have the book ready to publish in April. Mission accomplished.  I completed the writing in February, took almost two months to edit, proofread, and receive feedback from beta readers. The e-book went live on April 13 and the paperback on April 25. As to sales, it’s had a whopping 7.
• Write and publish one Sharon Williams story. Mission accomplished. I wrote Foxtrot Alpha Tango slowly as the year progressed, ran it by the Scribblers & Scribes critique group, and published it on December 15 after letting it sit two months. In a little twist, I did the actual publishing steps while on a Zoom conference with two 4th grade student who are interested in publishing.
• Write and publish one Documenting America volume. I’m planning for this to be Run-up To Revolution, covering 1761-1775, the documents that led to our rebelling against England. Nope, didn’t get this done. Too many other things got in the way. I read some more for research. In fact, the research is done, except I will probably have to re-read some once I actually get on the book. I did make a lot of notes as I researched and planned out which source documents will go into which chapters. Thus, I won’t have to start at ground zero.
• Write and publish a Bible study. I’ve planned out what I want the next one to be: Entrusted To My Care: A Study of 1st and 2nd Timothy.  Alas, I didn’t get this done. I did work on a Bible study, in fact put a lot of effort into it. But it wasn’t Entrusted To My Care.  My research and the beginning of my writing was in March-May on the Last Supper, which I taught in adult Sunday school class. I dusted that off in the summer and combined multiple files into one, and again in November when I tried to assess where I was and how much effort was left. If I get either one of these published in 2022, it will take a pretty concentrated effort.
• Maintain a twice per week blogging schedule. This I did, mostly. I may have missed a time or two just due to busyness. A couple of times my regular blogging day snuck up on me and I only did a quick, no-information post. But I consider this a complete task.
• Write some poetry. I did not accomplish this, though I tried. Several times I took pen and paper in hand and tried to set down lines of poetry, but nothing came to me. Instead, I planned my next poetry book. I scoured my already completed poems, found the ones that would work with the theme I chose for the book, and loaded them into a Word file. That gives me an idea of how many poems I still need to write (a bunch) to make it a viable book.

One thing that was on my mind last January, but which didn’t make my goals list, was to write the young adult novel I’d discussed with my oldest grandson. Tentatively titled The Forest Throne, it’s about adventures in unrequested, undesired time travel. I began writing it on June 8, never working on it intensely, but sporadically. As of last night I had ±21,000 words written, on the way to, I think, 40,000. I ought to be able to finish it in 2022.

And, another thing I did was significant digital decluttering. This goes along with the physical decluttering the wife and I are doing. I had old computers to pull data from and get rid of. I had multiple folders from prior computers loaded to the cloud that needed to be coordinated with other, more active folders. I made major progress on this.

It included going through my email inbox and outbox and sorting, saving, discarding, and archiving my emails since I started using this address in 2005. I’m working backwards on that and doing well with it. I completed all years up to and including 2011. I have 590 e-mails to go in 2010. For an exercise, I dumped my saved 2011 emails into a word document with an eye on creating a book out of them. Not for publication, but for my easy use and reference. Then I can discard some things from notebooks, reducing physical clutter.

And, one more writing item that took up more time than anything else: writing our church’s Centennial book. I began the research in January and managed to write 1500 words by month’s end. The research and writing took more time than I had planned on. But it is done. The book is being proofread by two people, and by me, and we are looking at publishing options. While this was time consuming and certainly pulled me away from my other writing, it was also fun and satisfying.

So there’s the year in review.