August 2008 Goals

August should be something of an easy month for me because I’m done with the third draft of my thesis and I’m at a point now where I don’t want to do any more to it until I can get some feedback from other people. It’s coming along well and I’m super excited about how it’s coming together but I think I need to step away from it and get some new perspectives to make the most out of my next revision.

While I’m letting my thesis sit, I’m going to add working on the first draft of my new novel into my goals. I got a little over 10,000 words of the new novel written in July and so I’m ready to set the modest goal of 500 words a day (15,500 for the month). This is a very low goal and at that rate it’ll take me until the end of the year (and possibly into the beginning of 2009, depending on how long this one decides to be) to finish the first draft, but that’s fine because I need to keep my thesis as my top priority, since it has an actual deadline, and working on short stories in a close second place, since that’ll help build a strong query letter for an agent hunt (and since I’m taking Workshop next semester . . .). And anyway, my real goal here is to have a complete draft of it done by the time I’m finished with my thesis next spring so that when I embark down that long (and likely disappointing) road to try to find an agent, I’ll be distracted by rewriting my next major project.

I’m going to set a low goal for stories, too, just 31 hours for the month, an hour a day. I’ll probably exceed both of these goals but I don’t want to put too much pressure on myself with either, right now, since I’m going to be really busy at work for the next two weeks and after that I’ve got to get my syllabus and everything ready for next semester.

My goal as far as the children’s book agent hunt is going to be low, too, for this month. I’ve got one more query all packaged and ready to send, which will put me at an even 20 from day 1. I think I’m going to hold off on sending any more after that until I’ve heard back from more of the 20 I’ve already sent to (and at least from the one who requested a manuscript). It’s not that I’m being super optimistic and feel like there’s a good chance one of those 20 will want me (after all, 5 of the 20 have already said no), but I tend to get stressed out if I have too many balls in the air and with all the stories I have out to journals added in, it’s just too much right now. I’m sure I’ll do more by the end of the month but I’m not going to set a goal because it’s going to just depend. And as usual, I want to submit to 10 journals this month.

So, my goals are:

1. 15,500 words on my new novel
2. 31 hours spent on short stories
3. 10 short story submissions sent to journals