Blogging Plans for 2016!

I have come to a point in my life where I readily admit that I have no clue what the future might bring. However, that doesn’t mean that I can’t step forward with plans and expectations — I just need to be prepared for life to throw curves and be flexible enough to throw those plans out the window if needed.

It’s with this mindset that I’ve been setting out to plan my 2016 blogging (and reading!)  I’ve decided to undertake a few reading challenges, and set up a structure for the blog that I am hoping will help me be more on top of things (we’ll see what ends up ACTUALLY happening with that….)

Here’s what I’m hoping 2016 will have in store:

Reading Challenges:

I’m participating in Book Riot’s “Read Harder” challenge! For some of the books I’ll be reading along with a handful of fellow bloggers – including Corina, Sabina, Hannah, Robin, and Diana.

I’m also doing the “Back to The Classics” Challenge, hosted by Books and Chocolate. The hope is that this will help me to knock more books off the reading list I’m working on as part of the Classics Club.

I’m aiming to read at least 20 Diverse Books (and really hoping I can manage more than that) as part of the 2016 Diverse Reads Book Challenge hosted by Chasing FaeryTales and Read.Sleep.Repeat.

Overall I’m trying to read a minimum of 80 books (for the Goodreads challenge), with a big push to read books that I already own. I’ve realized that there are a fair number of books I own that I haven’t read yet, so buying new (to me) books is going to be largely limited to a handful of new releases I’m anxious to read and a few that I may need to get my hands on to meet the challenges (though I will also try to make use of the library for those).

Writing:

I’m going to talk a bit more about my writing goals this year in my Insecure Writers Support Group post on Wednesday, but I definitely have some thoughts and plans for my writing this year, with a clear focus in mind. More on that Wednesday.

Eclectic Alli:

I’m excited about this year on Eclectic Alli!  I’ll continue putting the First Wednesday of the month towards Insecure Writers Support Group posts, and the Second Wednesday of the month will be Passionate Geeks.

Some weeks I’ll do Three Things Thursday, and some I’ll do Celebrate the Small Things — since the two of these can be quite similar I may not be doing them both every week. I also might be occasionally revisiting the Broke and Bookish’s Top Ten Tuesdays, if the topic particularly calls to me.  I’ll continue participating in Weekend Coffee Share, of course!

This year I am also adding a super-awesome regular guest post (starting January 14th) from Rose B Fischer.

I’m also partnering up with Nerd In The Brain to help host the Go Play; Go Learn Challenges – about once a month I’ll be hosting the challenges here on Eclectic Alli!

Outside of those features and series I have a few other plans and goals. I hope to participate in the A to Z challenge again in April, and want to start doing some more writing about my reading – reviews or short write-ups about what I’ve read (and what I get out of it). I may also write some about some of what I’ve been watching, since there have been a few episodes of a few shows that have stood out to me lately.  Additionally, at least once a month, I’m going to do a writing check-in (on a Wednesday towards the end of each month); with my writing focus this year I think a monthly check-in will be very useful.

I’m also hoping to do a few more guest posts in the coming year — they’re all just rough sketches in my head at the moment, with the offer of a place to post them if I want. So some more time and energy needs to be put towards that all first.

Happy 2016 to you all – what are some of your goals and plans this year?