As January is progressing quickly and time is ticking on, I think it’s time to talk about my goals for 2022, and my (loose) plans for Track of Words this year. I’m not really one for setting bold New Year’s resolutions or making too many commitments to big changes in my life, but I do enjoy challenging myself to goals that I can reflect on throughout the year. If you’re interested, you can check out the article in which I talked about my 2021 goals, and then another article in which I reflected upon how well I did meeting those goals last year. For the purposes of this article though, I’m talking about what I’d like to achieve in 2022, and in order to do that I’m going to split things out into three sections: a quick overview of where I see the site going this year, then specific Track of Words goals (i.e. what I’m hoping to specifically achieve on the site this year) followed reading goals (some of which may impact on ToW, others will not).
Forgive me if this gets a bit self-indulgent – hopefully I can make it at least vaguely interesting throughout, but to be honest I’m writing it as much for my own benefit as anything else. I find that putting plans and goals down on paper (well…sort of) is a useful way of keeping myself accountable, more than if I just keep them in my head. Also, this way I can quickly and easily refer back when I write my monthly roundup posts, and reflect on how I’m doing as the year progresses.
General plans for 2022
I’ve given my 2022 goals quite a lot of thought…in fact I’ve given a lot of thought to 2022 in general and how I would like Track of Words to fit into my lifestyle as a whole. Anyone who blogs, writes reviews or runs/contributes to a website will know that it’s easy to let this sort of thing take over, and certainly Track of Words has required a lot of work from me over the eight years I’ve been running it. Don’t get me wrong, I love running the site, but I’m increasingly keen to find a better site/life balance, and step back just a little to try and reclaim a bit more time for myself. I’m still planning on writing reviews and working on loads of cool articles and interviews, but hopefully I can find a way to still do that while giving myself a little more breathing room.
In previous years I’ve set quite specific goals, particularly for my reading challenge, but I’m going to change things up a bit in 2022 and set less quantifiable goals, focusing more on behaviours than anything else. I’m still going to set a reading challenge, and inevitably I’ll keep an eye on the site stats to see what’s proving popular and how busy the site is as a whole, but if I can step back a bit from spending too much time thinking about numbers then I think that will probably be good for me and my mental health.
A theme you’ll notice if you read through all of my goals is a gradual move towards Track of Words covering a broad range of SFF fiction and authors, and that’s something I’m particularly keen to focus on this year. I started the site purely as a place to publish book reviews (of everything I read, not just SFF), and while I eventually moved into writing articles and author interviews as well I also started focusing much more on Black Library and Warhammer fiction. That was great, and I enjoyed it immensely, but over the last couple of years I’ve deliberately moved back into talking about a wider range of SFF. I appreciate that won’t be to everyone’s taste, but it’s what I’m enjoying, and I hope at least a few of the BL fans who visit the site are tempted to try a few other books and authors too!
This year I’m hoping to extend that principle a little further, with not just reviews but also a broader range of author interviews than I’ve done before, and more in the way of guest content from authors and other people within publishing. I’d love for Track of Words to be a sort of one-stop-shop for SFF fans interested in both reading and writing, and while I have to be realistic in terms of the amount of time and effort I can put into the site I’m pretty confident that I can get a really wide, interesting range of content published this year. That will hopefully be of interest to SFF fans and also a great way to maintain my own enthusiasm for the site, so it should be a win-win situation! I’m always open to ideas and suggestions so do let me know if there’s anything you’d like to see on the site, and if you’re an SFF author then please do get in touch if you would like to contribute something!
Track of Words goals
Of my two sets of goals, I figure the Track of Words section will be of most interest to ToW readers, so I’ll start with this. Even if you don’t bother reading the rest of the article, this should give you a rough idea of what to expect from ToW in 2022.
Publish a similar number of posts to 2021
Some of the site stats for last year
Last year I published 169 posts, which works out as a little over three per week – that’s a fair amount less than I’ve published in some years (never again am I going to get anywhere near the 348 I published in 2018) but it’s still quite a lot, I think. Putting aside how long each post takes to write, I’d like to get to a similar sort of number in 2022, so I’m going to aim for three per week once again – that feels achievable (bearing in mind my next goal). I’m sure there will be some weeks where it’s only one or two, and others where it’s five or six (I’ll probably do another Advent Calendar in December, so that will bump the numbers up), so it should even out overall.
Having said that, as I mentioned earlier I do want to ease back a bit on the amount of time I spend working on Track of Words, so this goal goes hand in hand with the next one…
Focus less on reviews
My first guest post of 2022
I started Track of Words purely as a platform for book reviews, but over the years I’ve branched out into all manner of posts, and it’s these other post types – interviews, articles, and more recently guest posts/reviews – that I’m keen to focus on in 2022. Partly that’s because I’m finding reviews increasingly time-consuming to write, but it’s also because I really enjoy working on these other types of content…and it’s important for me to enjoy what I’m doing! I will absolutely still be writing reviews, but I think it’s probably unlikely that I’ll manage the 52 book reviews that I wrote in 2021. Of course it’s possible that I might make up the numbers with a few more guest reviews!
In terms of choosing what to review myself, I think I’ll focus mostly on new books published this year. I’m incredibly fortunate in that I quite often get sent books by either publishers or authors, which I’m very grateful for, so these are likely to be the books that I concentrate on reviewing. Those books I already have on the shelf, or that I just choose to buy myself, I’ll probably read purely for the sake of enjoyment (with a few exceptions, as you’ll see in one of my reading goals).
Broad coverage of SFF
A cross-section of the types of books I reviewed in 2021 – hopefully I can continue in this vein in 2022
I’ve talked a lot over the last couple of years (and earlier in this article) about how Track of Words became very much a Black Library-focused site, and how I’ve been working to broaden out my focus again to cover SFF as a whole. I’m keen to continue in this way for 2022, covering both IP fiction and original fiction, and maybe branching out into a bit more horror as well. I’ll always be a big proponent of IP fiction so I’m planning on covering plenty of Aconyte releases, and probably a few BL books too, but there’s so much great stuff coming out across SFF as a whole that it seems crazy not to try and talk about as much of it as I can – whether that’s in terms of reviews, interviews or anything else.
Reading goals
These next goals are a bit less specific to Track of Words, but I think they’re still relevant given that what I read has a direct impact on the books I review, and to a lesser extent on the authors I reach out to for interviews, guest posts etc.
Reading Challenge: 52 books for the year
Here’s my Goodreads challenge for 2022
This is my (now) traditional goal – to read a minimum of 52 books across the year, or one per week. I generally read plenty more than this, so I often end up extending the goal partway through the year, but I always start with 52. The last couple of years I’ve smashed way past 100, but I’ve a feeling I won’t get anywhere near the 136 of 2021! Ultimately that doesn’t matter though – even if I don’t hit 52, as long as I enjoy my reading then I’ll be happy.
Keep listening to audiobooks
I listened to loads of amazing audiobooks last year, including these three
For a long time I didn’t really listen to audiobooks, but in 2021 I really fell in love with the format and listened to 43 – so that’s not far off one per week, and it worked out as nearly a third of all the books I read across the year. The plan is to carry on with my current routine of listening while heading out on my daily walks and while hobbying, and even if I don’t manage as many this year I’d like to still get through a good number of audiobooks – basically I just want to make sure I always have an audio on the go. I doubt I’ll review many audiobooks, but there are lots more crime novels in particular that I’m looking forward to listening to.
Read both for fun and to review
I’ll often read crime, YA/children’s fiction and non-fiction purely for fun, and these are all on my 2022 TBR list
I think I found a pretty good balance in 2021 of choosing some books that I wanted to review and others that I just wanted to read or listen to for fun, and hopefully I can carry on in the same vein in 2022. As I said earlier, I’m hoping to focus a bit less on reviews this year, so it may actually be easier to find this balance – and that might be a good thing, to help make sure I’m always enjoying what I’m reading. There have definitely been times in the past when I’ve struggled to choose what to read because I’ve felt like I ought to read something to review…but when really I just wanted some escapism. Reading should always be fun though, so I want to make sure I remember that this year!
Read widely and diversely
I read some incredible books last year from non-European perspectives
I’ve had a goal along these lines for the past couple of years, and I still think it’s important to at least have it in the back of my mind because even in 2022, SFF can – on the surface of things – look very white and male. Of course I’m still going to pick up books written by white men, but I read SFF because it allows me to experience new things and see the world from different perspectives, so to my mind it’s only natural to want to read books written by as wide a variety of authors as possible. With that in mind I want to be on the lookout for books written by non-male authors and by non-white authors – and happily, while it may sometimes look otherwise, there are loads of great SFF books being published by diverse authors all the time. I’m not going to set specific targets here, just an overarching goal to enjoy another year of diverse reading.
Catch up on my 2021 TBR
Some of the 2021 releases I’m desperate to read soon!
One regret – if that’s the right word – from last year was that I bought or was sent LOADS of books that look fantastic…but which I didn’t get around to reading. That’s nobody’s fault but mine, but it really bugs me to have so many books on my shelf (or on my Kindle) waiting to be read, many of which I know I’m going to love. So this year I’m determined to catch up on as many of those 2021 releases as I can – it’s going to be an interesting juggling act, as inevitably there will be a great many temptations in the shape of new 2022 releases, but I’m determined…so we’ll see how that goes.
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So there you go, if you’ve made it this far then you should have a pretty good idea of what the year will hopefully look like on Track of Words, and the sort of things I’m keen to read and write about in 2022. As I mentioned earlier, please do let me know if there’s anything you would particularly like to see on the site this year, or if you would like to contribute anything yourself!
Have you set yourself any reading or writing goals for the year? I’d love to hear them, so let me know in the comments below or over on Twitter!
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