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Laurie Ann Thompson

year-end

Year-end reflection for 2023: Successes

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Failure is success in progress
 
I love par­tic­i­pat­ing in chil­dren’s author Julie Hed­lund’s 12 Days of Christ­mas for Writ­ers as part of my year-end reflec­tion and new year goal-set­ting process. Day 3 of the series is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to reflect on our suc­cess­es dur­ing the past year. 
 

Here is my pro­fes­sion­al suc­cess list for 2023:

  • I signed a con­tract for a new pic­ture book and deliv­ered the final man­u­script text.
  • I draft­ed an infor­ma­tion­al fic­tion pic­ture book I’ve had in my head for quite a while (but am still work­ing on).
  • I re-envi­sioned and re-draft­ed an old­er infor­ma­tion­al fic­tion pic­ture book man­u­script I’ve been work­ing on for a long time (and am still work­ing on).
  • I fin­ished revis­ing a non­fic­tion pic­ture book manuscript.
  • I took Elana K. Arnold’s Revi­sion Sea­son course and did sev­er­al revi­sion pass­es on my first-ever nov­el (and still have more revis­ing to do).
  • I did a ton of pro­mo­tion for my new books, You Are a Hon­ey Bee! and You Are a Raccoon!
  • I deliv­ered many school vis­its and appearances.
  • I updat­ed my school vis­it presentations.
  • I updat­ed my web­site with the new book infor­ma­tion and speak­ing details.

Per­son­al­ly, I also:

  • spent a lot of qual­i­ty time with my adult children,
  • vol­un­teered as a nat­u­ral­ist with my city’s parks department,
  • vol­un­teered in a vari­ety of roles with Cit­i­zens Cli­mate Lob­by, includ­ing lob­by­ing Con­gress (twice!) to take action to pro­tect our climate,
  • got CPR cer­ti­fied, and
  • took not one but two dream vacations!

I often feel like I’m not get­ting enough done, like I’m not work­ing hard enough, like noth­ing is hap­pen­ing. It’s good to look back and see, wow, actu­al­ly, it was a pret­ty good year!

2017 in review, and a sneak peek at 2018 goals

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2017

If you’ve fol­lowed my blog for a long time (or know me at all), you prob­a­bly know I can be a lit­tle obses­sive about set­ting goals and doing annu­al per­for­mance reviews. So, as 2017 comes to a close, I thought I should reflect on what I’ve accom­plished the past year and think about what 2018 might bring.
2017
One of my main goals for 2017 was to get more com­fort­able speak­ing in pub­lic.  It’s a good thing I was able to do that, since (and prob­a­bly because) I got a lot of prac­tice! Here’s a quick summary:

  • 24 keynotes, assem­blies, pre­sen­ta­tions, or work­shops for young people,
  • 17 Skype visits,
  • 7 pre­sen­ta­tions for adults,
  • 6 book­store appearances,
  • 2 round­table cri­tique sessions,
  • 1 radio inter­view, and
  • an 8‑week improv class.

The suc­cess I feel here isn’t so much from the quan­ti­ty, but from the qual­i­ty. First, it’s got­ten MUCH eas­i­er for me. I can do these talks in stride now and don’t stress out for a whole day pri­or and then need a whole day after to decom­press. That’s a big win! Also, the improv class was odd­ly ter­ri­fy­ing to think about, but so much fun and such a great expe­ri­ence in prac­tice. So, I’m real­ly glad that I pushed myself out of my com­fort zone.
I also had some suc­cess with major writ­ing goals and projects:

  • TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE: IT’S ALIVE! was released in June, and I put a lot of time put into pro­mo­tion, includ­ing devel­op­ing pro­mo­tion­al mate­ri­als like cur­ricu­lum guides and swag, and cre­at­ing new pre­sen­ta­tions around it.
  • We’re just now putting the final touch­es on the sec­ond book in the series, TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE: HISTORIES AND MYSTERIES, which we researched, draft­ed, revised, copy­edit­ed, and sourced pho­tos for all in the past year. This one is so good, I can’t wait to see it out in the world next June!
  • We have the out­line for the third TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE book just about wrapped up, too, so 2018 will see a lot of work (and fun!) on that front.
  • I wrote a brand-new pic­ture book from scratch, revised it, and it went out on sub­mis­sion! I’m hope­ful this one will find a home in 2018.
  • I revised my MG non­fic­tion project and sent it back out on sub­mis­sion. Alas, it looks like this one will need yet anoth­er fresh approach, which is also on the sched­ule for 2018. I’m mulling over a cou­ple of ideas about how to proceed.
  • I worked on revis­ing two oth­er pic­ture books, one fic­tion and one non­fic­tion, but nei­ther one is quite ready yet. More work to come on both of those in the year ahead, and hope­ful­ly they’ll be ready to send out soon.
  • I start­ed research­ing a new pic­ture book biog­ra­phy. I’m real­ly excit­ed about this one, and the research so far has only fueled my inter­est fur­ther. I hope I can com­plete a first draft in the com­ing year.
  • I had a new idea for anoth­er non­fic­tion pic­ture book and have start­ed research­ing that one as well. This one is still in the idea phase and will take some noodling to get just the right approach, so for now I’ll keep research­ing and think­ing and see what happens.

2018
As you can see from the above, I’ll have my work cut out for me in 2018 with one new book to pro­mote, one under con­tract to write, (at least) two pic­ture books to fin­ish revis­ing, the MG non­fic­tion to re-envi­sion, and the two new pic­ture books to research and draft. Phew — that’s a lot of big goals. Wish me luck! =D

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