May was a good month for me as a writer. I’m definitely getting my stride back as far as productivity goes, and I also feel like I’ve made some big steps in my overall career as a writer recently. For one thing, I found out a few weeks ago that I was nominated for a Pushcart this year. I’m extremely excited about the nomination, even though I didn’t win (I actually didn’t find out about the nomination until after the winners had already been selected, so I got to enjoy just being nominated without dealing with any disappointment over not winning). In addition, I was named a semi-finalist in a book publication contest for a short story collection that I entered. Like with the Pushcart nomination, it’s extremely encouraging regardless of the fact that I didn’t win overall. Hundreds of manuscripts were entered into the contest, and the judges named mine as one of the top ten!
These small victories are extremely motivating. They make me feel like I am on the right track as a writer, but the fact that I didn’t actually win either a Pushcart or the grand prize (a book deal) in the contest lets me know that I’m not quite there yet. I need to keep working at it. However, I really do believe that if I keep pushing ahead, a published book probably lies in my future (and maybe the not too distant future, either).
I’m working on the second draft of a novel right now, and I intend to have this draft finished by the end of the summer. Considering that it usually takes only a month or two to bang out a complete draft of a novel, this seems like more than enough time to finish this current draft. I’m switching back to a word count goal, which I think is the most effective goal when working on a new draft of a lengthy project. For June I’m only going to ask myself to write an average of 500 words a day on the novel. If I work on stories on the side, that’s great, but I want to get this novel finished, so I’m only going to count the work I do on the novel for the word count. I’ll probably bump the goal up to 1,000 words starting in July, but I’ve got a lot of grading ahead of me for the next two weeks, so I figured I better go easy on myself this month.
June Goals:
- 15,000 words or more on current novel
- Submit to 10 journals
- Query 5 agents
2 comments:
Your book was in the top eight, not the top ten. Give yourself full credit!
I like your new book background. Cheery!
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