Today is the last day of 2015 which means many people will be making resolutions to make 2016 a better year. Rather than make my own resolution to eat healthier or exercise more (because let's face it, those resolutions only last through the month of January), I've decided to invest more of my time in doing what I love: reading and writing. 

Reading Goals

I started this blog back in September with the overall goal of reading 1,001 books. For a full explanation of why, click here. I didn't put a time frame or deadline of when I wanted to have read 1,001 books because, well, that's a lot of books. However, looking at the number 1,001 can be a bit daunting, so I've decided to create a more manageable reading goal for 2016. I still aim to read 1,001 books, but I'm going to break that goal down into a series of smaller goals.

Before I set my reading goal for 2016, I thought it would be important to look back and see how many books I've read from September-December of 2015. I didn't read any books in November because I was participating in NaNoWriMo. So, that means I read 10 books in three months. 

September Reads: The Darkest Part of the Forest and The Rosie Project

October Reads: The Archived, The Storied Life of A. j. Fikry, Howl's Moving Castle, The Disappearing Spoon, Liesl and Po, and Seraphina

December Reads: Wedding Night and Code Name Verity

I read 2 books in September, a whopping 6 books in October, and 2 books in December. As I am a teacher, this trend makes perfect sense to me. In September, it was the beginning of the school year which is always crazy busy, and the same is true for December because you are trying to hold the attention of students who are dreaming about winter vacation.

So, based on my reading habits of the past four months, here are my reading goals for 2016.

In October of this year, I decided I should read more nonfiction books for fun. I made it a goal that for every ten books I read, one of them will be a nonfiction book. I plan to continue this goal in 2016.  As it's my goal to read 35 books in 2016, that boils down to about 3.5 nonfiction books. 

My other passion, of course, is writing. I am currently working on a novel which I began planning way back in August. If you're interested in what my novel is about, you can read the synopsis here. 

In November, I participated in NaNoWriMo with the goal of writing 50,000+ words of my novel in a month. I am thrilled to say that I met my goal and wrote 50,006 words of Cursed in one month. The novel is far from finished though. At the end of November, I was only about halfway through writing the book. I estimate I have another 50,000 or so words to write to complete the story. This is the first draft of the story, so I think it's better to aim for a higher word count as it is easier to cut a word count down in edits. 

I realize I am giving myself six months to do what I did in one month, but I'm being realistic. I don't have time during the school year to pull off another NaNoWriMo.  Hopefully, I'll be able to reach this goal way before June, but we'll see what happens.

I really liked watching the bar move on the NaNo site as a visual reminder of how close I was to completing my goal, so I recently joined My Write Club to keep track of my progress. You can add multiple goals which I find handy.

With luck, I'll have finished the first draft of Cursed by the end of June. I will probably let the first draft simmer for a bit before I dive into the first round of edits. 

Camp NaNo has a session in July. Even though this November was pretty crazy, I plan to participate in Camp NaNo. I haven't planned out the story I will write in July, but I think it's important that I plan to work on something other than editing over the summer.

I may only have my writing goals planned out to the end of July, but that's really as far ahead as I can think right now. Without a doubt, I will update my writing goals as the year goes on, and I'll be sure to let all of you know when I do. 

Do you have any reading or writing goals for 2016? Share them in the comments below!