With school back in session I’m having a harder time keeping up with two weekly blogs, so I’m going to cut back to updating my process blog only once a month. That’s all that’s really necessary; I can check in with what I’ve done for the past month and lay out my goals for the next month at the same time.
Well, for the first time in a while I have to admit that I didn’t keep one of my goals for last month. I came up close to 3,000 words short on the new novel. I can come up with all kinds of excuses for why, but it doesn’t change the fact that I made a very modest goal for myself and I did not keep it, and that feels lousy. But I will say that I’ve decided for sure to put the new novel aside for now. The point of that first draft, for me, is to freewrite and find out what the heck the story is and who these characters are. I feel like I’ve figured out the answers to those questions and am at a point where I feel ready to begin working on a new draft of it whenever I’m done with my thesis.
For September I ended up at:
- 12,007 out of 15,000 words written on new novel (48,506 total)
- 10 out of 10 submissions
For October, I’d like to switch my focus back to my thesis, which, lets be honest, is really what I should be focusing on. I think I’m going to set a low goal for it, though, because I’m not yet completely sure how long this newest revision is going to take (my goal is to have a new draft of it by winter break) so I’m going to shoot for having four chapters revised by the end of the month (one chapter a week).
I’m not going to set a goal for stories, again, because I’ll have to get something together for my next workshop submission and I’d rather have my goals focused on my thesis right now. I will, though, set my regular 10 submissions by the end of the month goal, and I need it now more than ever since I’ve been feeling kind of dejected by the constant rejections and may need to force myself to get past this slump and keep submitting. I think I’ve given up on the agent search for now. I do believe that the book is ready but I don’t think I’ve built up the credentials to snag an agent yet. It was a valuable learning experience, though, and I still have a handful of agents to hear back from, but I’m not going to query any more agents right now.
October Goals:
- Revise 4 Chapters of thesis
- Send 10 submissions to journals
