End of November; December Goals

I met my goals for November, and am nearing the finishing point of this current draft of my thesis, so while I’ve had a busy month, it’s been a productive (and enjoyable) one. I’m at a point right now where I’ve got some people willing to have a look at this draft over the winter break, so my plan is to have it finished by the end of the semester so I can then step away from it until I can get some more feedback. As much as I’m enjoying watching it come together and get closer and closer to what I want it to be, I think it will be good for me to step away from the novel for a while.

In the meantime during the break I’m hoping to get some hardcore work done on a short story collection I’ve been putting together. I’m taking a novella workshop next semester (awesome!) and so I need to write the first draft of that, and hopefully write a few first drafts of some stories as well as revise many others – all of these are for the short story collection.

I also want to get a solid draft going of a new children’s book that I started over the summer but haven’t done much work on this semester. I got what I’m assuming to be my final agent rejection for my previous children’s book just a few days ago (there are a few agents who I just never heard back from but it’s been long enough that I assume I can just take those as rejections). This last rejection was very encouraging; she told me that she doesn’t think the book is right for her agency but she thinks I’m a good writer and that she would be interested in me submitting something else in the future.

Ultimately, I think it’s safe to say that this book is not what agents are looking for, so I’m going to start sending it around to small presses and see if I can get it published that way. In the meantime, though, I feel extremely encouraged by the response I got, especially considering I embarked on this agent quest with the assumption that I wouldn’t even get any nibbles at all but would have a useful learning experience. So I would like to put together another children’s book so that I have something else to send around, especially to the agent who specifically said she would like to see more from me. I recognize that my thesis and my short story collection will probably not be marketable to agents (that’s not cynicism, I’m just realistically accepting that general literary fiction, and ESPECIALLY literary short story collections, just aren’t very marketable to larger presses and agents).

So … for November I hit:

1. 12 out of 12 chapters revised on thesis
2. 22.75 out of 15 hours spent on short stories
3. 10 out of 10 submissions

For December I’m shooting for:

1. 7 chapters of thesis revised (which would finish this draft off)
2. 30 hours spent on short stories
3. 10 submissions

End of October; November Goals

I did meet all my goals for October. I revised 9 chapters of my thesis, and I really feel like it’s coming together well. This is finally beginning to look like the novel I set out to write. I also sent out 10 submissions, as usual, and I spent some time working on some revisions of a couple of different stories.

For November, I’m going to add into the mix a goal of 15 hours spent on short stories (although I’d like to push myself to spend more like 20 or 30). I need to get something new done for workshop, and I’ll be submitting for workshop next week as well so I should get some good thoughts for revision on that story, but I want to make sure I’m spending time on stories and not just my thesis. I’m putting together a collection of short stories that I’d like to have as another manuscript I can try to get published while I’m trying to get my novel and my children’s book out there.

That said, I do want to spend most of my efforts on my thesis. My plan is to have this newest draft done by the end of this semester so I can get some new feedback from some people. Based on my current outline for the new draft, it should be 28chapters long. I’m 9 chapters into it, so I need to budget my time out to make sure I have all 28 done by the third week in December. So I’m setting the goal of (at least) 3 chapters rewritten per week.

November Goals:

1. Rewrite 12 Chapters of thesis
2. Spend 15 hours working on short stories
3. Send 10 Submissions