Top 10 Tuesday: Bookish Goals For 2013

Hosted by The Broke and the Bookish

Congratulations, you have made it through the first week of 2013! I feel a bit like a time traveler, congratulating you on making it thus far as I sit back in January 1st. By now, some of you have undoubtably broken a New Year resolution or two. That's okay, as long as you don't use the lapse as an  excuse to quit.

I have here my own book-related resolutions. Technically, it's a repost of my resolutions from the final part of my End of the Year Survey with additional commentary. I cheated. It's okay. Not cheating was not one of my resolutions. :)

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10. Keep up with my new scheduling system. For the majority of 2012, I was very good about writing posts in advance. However, I would simply write them (or half-write them, as the mood struck me) and let them sit until I felt like scheduling them. Memes were left completely unwritten until the weekend before they were needed, and reviews sat in a cluttered virtual pile. Then the latter half of November and most of December exploded with to-dos, so I attempted to figure out my posting schedule ahead of time through iCalendar. Glory glory, I shall never go back. Even if I leave some things unwritten until closer to the post date, I know ahead of time where I want everything to go, so I'm freer to join in on challenges, blog hops, and the like. 

9. Be more proactive about writing reviews after reading a book. New scheduling system aside, I'm still pretty bad about letting unwritten reviews pile up. Ideally, I'd write a review a day or two after reading a book. Instead, a good book often makes me hungry for my next read, so I end up three or four books behind. This year, I would like to write my reviews in a more timely manner.

8. Find more contemporaries that I like and can recommend to others. I adore recommending books, but contemporary fiction is clearly my weak spot. I'm a fantasy/sci-fi girl. Contemporaries have a tendency to veer into "issue book" territory or "dysfunctional family" territory, both of which very rarely win me over. However, many of the books I listed in my DAC 2013 goal post are contemporaries, so I have high hopes that this is an attainable resolution.

7. Move to New York. I love my home. I love my family. I'm super-proud of my state. But I've got to get out of here. To quote one of my role models, "I want adventure in the great wide somewhere! I want it more than I can tell." I may move to New York and hate it (though I strongly doubt that), but I'm beyond ready to go, especially because of my next resolution.

6. Land an internship with a literary agency or publishing company. I don't have the words to express how badly I want to land an internship this year. I've been a good girl. I waited patiently after graduating so that I could save money. I know New York is expensive, and I know most internships are unpaid. I don't care. I want to spend the rest of my life working with books, and everything I've learned over the past through years from Twitter, articles, blog posts, and the like have only deepened my hunger. I have my money. I have experience. I have knowledge. Let's do this.

5. Attend BEA 2013. I spent BEA 2012 at home. Not so this year. I'm very cautious when it comes to my finances (see resolution #6), but I will either be living in New York by May (combo of resolution #6 and #7) or I will book my flight and go as a tourist. Either way, I'm going. 

4. Find some baby bloggers to help. I don't know if you guys know this, but my one-year blogoversary is this month. Crazy, I know. I still feel like a baby blogger, but I've learned so much in the past year, and I never could have gotten this far without the help of older, more experienced bloggers. Now that I'm more established, I'd like to help up-and-coming baby bloggers find their footing. I've already managed to push my sister Sunny to start blogging, so I help her some, but I'm willing to take a few more chickadees under my wing. If there is anyone else out there who would like to pick my brain in any way, send me an email or ask me a question through my contact form.

3. Garner more feedback. This blog is for me, but it's also for you all. I want to know what you like, what you don't, what you'd like to see more of or less of. I want you all to feel like you can speak your mind any time. I promise I'll listen.

2. Continue to remind myself not to play the numbers game or compare myself with other bloggers. I'll be talking more about this later in the week, but I want to make sure blogging never becomes a competition for me. Stats are only useful to show me what I'm doing right or wrong. They shouldn't be used as a trophy to be waved. I'm grateful for each view, RT, and new follower that I receive, but I'm also grateful when other bloggers receive the same. Another's success does not equal my failure. Blogging is not a competition. It is not a zero-sum game.

1. Continue to learn, grow, and try new things. There are so many things I don't know! I want to continue to grow this blog and refine it. I want to learn new things and try things I never thought I would. 2013 is going to be exciting in ways I can't even imagine.

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What are YOUR bookish goals for the new year?