tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-89914606004056207452024-02-20T03:29:52.857-08:00The Process IS the ProductIn my process blog, I'm going to keep you up to date on what I've been doing and let you see how my writing process works. For me, writing is all about the process. The final product, when it turns out well, is just the icing on the cake. Check out the "My Process" posting to get a general overview of how I work. I'll update regularly with my monthly goals and what I've been doing to meet them.Ashley Cowgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362214167891115633noreply@blogger.comBlogger42125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8991460600405620745.post-26488835662111967702010-08-01T06:00:00.000-07:002010-08-01T06:00:02.470-07:00End of July 2010; August 2010 Goals<p>I was pretty well on track for my July goals until about halfway through the month, when I got word that I had won the Autumn House Press Fiction Prize and that my first book, a short story collection called Peter Never Came, will be published by Autumn House next April. For the first few days after I found out, I entertained notions that I could work under editorial deadline to get the book ready <em>and</em> keep working on my new novel at the same time, but it turns out that goal was a bit unrealistic. So I made the executive decision to put the new novel aside for now (which was really kind of painful since I’ve been on quite a roll with it, and I know it will be hard to get back into it after a break, but ah well).<br /><br />The book contract also puts a damper on my usual 10 submissions a month goal, since all of the stories that I’ve been submitting were part of this collection. About half of those stories have already been published, but the other half were the ones I’ve been sending around. I no longer have <em>anything</em> to submit, and that’s kind of scary (although, as Damien keeps reminding me, kind of exciting, too, as blank slates invariably are).<br /><br />So, while my main goal—the one that I have no choice but to keep—for August is to keep working with my editor to get my book ready for publication (and do all the other odd jobs involved with publishing a book, like getting my bio and author’s photo together, tracking down blurbs, etc.), I’m also hoping to scrape a bit of time together to work on some new stories. I have a pretty long list of ideas I’ve been waiting to work on, but for the past several months it seemed like every time I sat down to write, I ended up revising. Revision is important, don’t get me wrong, but I think it will be good for me to simply have to write some new stuff.<br /><br />For August:</p><ol><li>Continue revising/polishing my book to have it ready by the September 15th editorial deadline</li><li>Try to work on some new stories</li></ol>Ashley Cowgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362214167891115633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8991460600405620745.post-88248148492053824122010-07-01T08:00:00.000-07:002010-07-01T08:00:05.193-07:00End of June 2010; July 2010 Goals<p>I fell slightly short of my 15,000-words-on-the-new-novel goal for last month, but only because I became sort of consumed by yet another thorough revision of the novel that was my graduate thesis for the first two or three weeks of the month. I got back to work on the new novel only after I was able to consider the older one finished (once again). However, I have decided that I absolutely MUST set the old novel aside so that I can actually get this current draft of the new one finished. I know I’ve said that before, but this time I really, really, honestly mean it. I CANNOT continue to rework old pieces forever, or else I will never get anything new completed.<br /><br />All that said, I did still get a fair amount done on the new novel, and I fully expect to be able to meet my overall goal of having this new draft finished by the end of the summer. I’m going to shoot for around 1,000 words a day for this month, which should put me at around 60,000 words by the end of the month, with 30,000 more (give or take) to go. I’d like to have a really solid working draft done by the beginning of the next school year so that I can just focus on revision when I start to get really busy with teaching again.<br /><br />As far as agent hunting goes, I think I’m going to give it a rest for now. I’ve read some articles lately that reminded me how difficult it is to find an agent through querying alone. While there are some agents who take the slush pile seriously, most agent interviews I’ve read (and I’ve read quite a few over the years) suggest that agents only very rarely offer representation to writers that come to them through the slush pile. The best way to get an agent is to network your little pants off and get referred by someone the agent already does business with, but short of that, you can meet agents at conferences (if you can afford to go) or wait for agents to find you (and yes, agents really do read lit journals looking for fresh blood, so a perfectly good plan of action is to just get published in as many journals as you can and hope that somebody who can help you will read it and like what he or she sees).<br /><br />My current plan of attack is to try to get more of my work online, so instead of hunting for an agent, I’m going to try to submit to some online journals this month and see if I can build up more of a web presence for myself.<br /><br />My goals for July:</p><ol><li>30,000 words or more on current novel</li><li>10 submissions</li></ol>Ashley Cowgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362214167891115633noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8991460600405620745.post-47421439454202872502010-06-01T06:00:00.000-07:002010-06-01T06:00:12.150-07:00End of May; June 2010 Goals<p>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!<br /><br />These small victories are extremely motivating. They make me feel like I <em>am</em> on the right track as a writer, but the fact that I didn’t actually <em>win</em> 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).<br /><br />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.<br /><br />June Goals:</p><ol><li>15,000 words or more on current novel</li><li>Submit to 10 journals</li><li>Query 5 agents</li></ol>Ashley Cowgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362214167891115633noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8991460600405620745.post-58241240413824718102010-05-01T06:00:00.000-07:002010-05-01T06:00:04.662-07:00End of April; May 2010 Goals<p>I met all of my goals for the month of April, although in all fairness, my goals were pretty easy to reach. I finished my children’s book, and I feel very good about this current draft, which I realize is always how we feel when we finish a new draft of something we’ve spent a lot of time on. I’ve also been working on the second draft of a new novel and some new stories, too. <br /><br />I’ve decided that I’ve been using revision as something of a crutch lately. I think revision is extremely important, and I believe that many new writers don’t take revision seriously enough, but I do think there’s a point where you have to accept that a piece is finished and move onto something new. For some reason I came down with a mean case of writer’s block, and I was using revision as a way to avoid facing the blank page. So I made up my mind to put this to an end: I began forcing myself to work on something new every time I sat down to write.<br /><br />It has been largely effective, although I am considering taking more serious actions in the near future, just to make sure I’ve officially beaten that block into submission. I’m toying with ideas for a strict writing regiment, a sort of writerly boot camp, if you will. Once I decide exactly what I’m going to do I’ll post it to my Process Blog, to keep myself honest, if for no other reason. In the meantime, it’s business as usual at my place. I’m very, very, <em>very</em> busy with my classes right now, so my goals for the month of May will remain . . . well, let’s say realistic.<br /><br />May Goals:</p><ol><li>Continue working on new novel</li><li>Submit to 10 journals</li><li>Query 5 agents</li></ol>Ashley Cowgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362214167891115633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8991460600405620745.post-88850534943288158032010-04-01T14:51:00.000-07:002010-04-01T14:52:36.041-07:00End of March; April 2010 Goals<p>Well I ended up getting a fair amount of writing done in March but the majority of the work I did wasn’t on my children’s book. I ended up doing about the ten thousandth revision of the novel that was my MFA thesis. I changed the ending, added a whole new chapter, and even did some serious restructuring of the chapters, and I also read through and did sentence level revisions of the entire novel. So even though I didn’t finish the current draft of my children’s book (although I’m very close and do expect to finish it in the next week or so), I do feel pretty good about the work I got done last month.<br /><br />I had a sort of a tragedy occur last week and it definitely slowed down my writing for a few days, but I’m back on track now and expect to get some good work done before the new quarter starts getting crazy (I should have about two fairly easy weeks before my grading starts piling up and I have less and less time to write).<br /><br />My goals for April:</p><ol><li>Finish children’s book</li><li>Submit to 10 journals</li><li>Query 5 agents</li></ol>Ashley Cowgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362214167891115633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8991460600405620745.post-57254422037165842252010-03-01T06:00:00.000-08:002010-03-01T06:00:04.037-08:00End of February 2010; March 2010 Goals<p>I fell short on almost all of my goals for the month of February, but oddly, I don’t feel that upset about it. I’ve sort of realized that this past several months have been hard because, really, I’m in a transitional period in my life: the transition from being an MFA student, who is allowed – hell, even expected – to care more about her creative writing than, say, her teaching, to being a person <em>with</em> an MFA, who teaches adjunct for a pittance, who has to wallow at the bottom for a few years before she might actually be able to land a decent full time job, and who has to be the best goddamned teacher she can in the hopes of one day procuring said decent full time job.<br /><br />But I can’t let the transition period get the better of me. See, this is what I’d heard so much about when I was in grad school – recent grads who just stopped writing altogether after they finished – and I always swore that it would never be me. Switching my goals (for the meantime) from time based to project based has helped a little, but I think I also need to make a go at the fabled get-up-early-and-write-before-work idea.<br /><br />Right now on the days that I actually have to go to campus, I get up half an hour early so I can sip my coffee and read and let myself slowly enter into the day. I don’t really want to give that up because I think it sets a good tone for my day, but I could certainly add another half hour so that I can read for half an hour, then write for half an hour, then get ready for work. It may be difficult to adjust to at first, but I really would rather spend that time writing than sleeping. I love sleep, make no mistake, but I love writing more.<br /><br />So part of my goal for the month of March is just to see if I can always get up a half hour earlier on the days that I teach so I can get some writing done before I go in. Now I don’t really think that half an hour of writing time will be the most productive writing time – I do my best work when I have a stretch of two or three hours to really have at it – but I think that writing for a little bit in the morning will encourage me to write later in the day, too, and it will encourage me to write on the days when I don’t have to go in, when I can shift my schedule around and write for a few hours straight without interruption. I also think, just on a psychological level, it will set a good tone for my day, remind me what life is all about, let me feel like I’m still able to do the things that matter to me even though teaching takes up so much of my time.<br /><br />In addition, I think that I need to stop spreading myself thin between different projects. I’ve been working on a new novel, revisions of a children’s book, and revisions of short stories for a short story collection (though that last one I haven’t been as interested in of late). Usually I like having several projects to choose from, but lately I’ve found that when I sit down to write, I sit and ponder which of the many options I should work on and end up feeling detached from all of them. I’ve heard it argued that writer’s block is just a fancy way of saying you have too many ideas and can’t decide which one to work on, and I think, at least in my case, that it’s definitely true. Since I’m almost done with the current draft of my children’s book, and since I’ve actually been working on this book for about ten years now and feel that this current draft may actually be, if not the final draft, at least <em>damn</em> close, I’m going to first try to get this draft finished. Then, and only then, I’ll return to the second draft of my current novel.<br /><br />March goals:</p><ol><li>Finish children’s book</li><li>Submit to 10 journals</li><li>Query 5 agents</li></ol>Ashley Cowgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362214167891115633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8991460600405620745.post-20637165367515559202010-02-01T06:00:00.000-08:002010-02-02T16:22:57.639-08:00End of January 2010; February 2010 Goals<p>Well it’s been a very productive month for me as a writer, and I say that in spite of the fact that I fell short of my writing goal for this month. I did, however, manage to squeeze out ten submissions and five queries, although I have to admit I did every single one of those on the afternoon of January the 31st. But I figure a goal met is a goal met, whether I had put it off to the last minute or not.<br /><br />As I said, I didn’t meet my time goal, and I actually didn’t finish a complete draft of my children’s book either. I consider it a productive month anyway, though, because I feel pretty confident that I pinpointed why I’ve been having so much trouble meeting my goals for the past few months and, more importantly, I figured out how to solve the problem. The problem isn’t that I can’t possibly find an hour out of every day in which to write; the problem is that the time goal had grown sort of stale for me. It just wasn’t successfully motivating me anymore.<br /><br />So I’m switching goal formats starting this month. Instead of time, I’m going to make my goals in terms of projects. I’m going to continue logging the time I spend writing, but that’s just because I like to keep track of these things.<br /><br />Now I didn’t finish the current draft of my children’s book last month, but I did come very close. So for the month of February, I would like to finish that draft off, and I would also like to get come solid work done on my current novel, which I’ve become increasingly excited about this past couple weeks. I don’t know why, but at the moment short stories just have not been engaging me, so for now I’m going to just accept that and let myself just work on the book length projects.<br /><br />My goals for February:</p><ol><li>Finish the current draft of my children’s book</li><li>Reach 50 pages in the current draft of my new novel (an addition of 31 pages)</li><li>Submit to 10 journals</li><li>Query 5 agents</li></ol>Ashley Cowgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362214167891115633noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8991460600405620745.post-46249837407964604692010-01-01T06:00:00.000-08:002010-01-01T06:00:03.814-08:00End of December and 2009; January and overall 2o1o Goals<p>So at the beginning of December I had made a big deal out of how I didn’t see any reason why I should not be able to reach my writing goals for the month. Well about a week ago I learned two things: that my cat has fleas, and that I am apparently close to a Howard Hughes level of insane when it comes to fleas. I also got the worst migraine I’ve had in I don’t even know how long the other day, which knocked me out for the entire day. So while I had been pretty well on track up to that point, I’m finishing the month a few hours short of my writing goal.<br /><br />Looking back on the year 2009, I feel underwhelmed by my output. Comparing this past year with the year 2008, the difference in the amount of quantifiable stuff I produced is nothing short of shocking. In 2008 I worked on several revisions of my graduate thesis, I wrote the first draft of my next novel, and I polished up and sent around to agents a children’s book. And this was all, of course, in addition to the several short stories I wrote and revised throughout the year. In 2009, though I had a lot of publication success – largely due to the amount of work I had put into short stories in 2008 – I actually accomplished very little in comparison to the year before. I finished my thesis and started sending it around to agents. I got about halfway through a new draft of that same children’s book (which had received a lot of personal rejections and encouragement from agents, but was not yet, I see now, publishable) and about halfway through a first draft of a new children’s book, which I’ve set aside for now. I got about twenty pages into a new draft of the next novel (twenty pages – hardly even worth mentioning). And I wrote and worked on revisions of a very small number of short stories and a novella for my short story collection.<br /><br />I am, though, excited to start over with a new year. In spite of having had fair warning from my fellow MFA graduates, I somehow was still not prepared for the bumpy transition from MFA student/TA to adjunct English instructor, and the move from Alaska all the way to Ohio took a lot out of me, too. Now I have a firmer understanding of what real life is going to be like and what sort of time I can reasonably expect myself to spend on writing.<br /><br />I’d like to write for an average of an hour a day for the year 2010. By the end of 2010, I would like to have: gotten back to work on short story writing (I’ve really been slacking in that arena), finished and polished up my short story collection, finished and polished up my children’s book, and finished at least one more complete draft of my next novel.<br /><br />My goals for January:</p><ol><li>Spend an average of 31 hours writing</li><li>Send out 10 submissions</li><li>Query 5 agents</li><li>Complete current draft of children’s book</li></ol>Ashley Cowgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362214167891115633noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8991460600405620745.post-29392842532776765782009-12-01T12:37:00.000-08:002009-12-01T12:38:33.244-08:00End of November; December 2009 Goals<p>Well I didn’t meet my writing goal for the month of November, although I can at least say that I didn’t fall short by much. I was actually right on schedule for the month when two key things occurred: I went on a weekend vacation to visit family and got no writing done while I was there, and then I collected about a hundred pounds worth of papers that I needed to grade right away in order to get them back to the students before finals week.<br /><br />Excuses excuses. You’re right, but you know what? For once I actually don’t feel ashamed of not having met my goal. I know full well that it isn’t that I didn’t want to write, or that I was claiming I was just not “inspired,” or that I was choosing to do other things instead. In fact, I stole time here and there that I really should have been using to grade papers because I had this or that great idea and I had to get it down now. The truth is there were other things that were more urgent and I think that’s okay. It’s okay to just live your life sometimes, too.<br /><br />But even so, I’m going to set that hour a day goal for December and I expect I’ll be able to meet it. Finals week is next week and once I get final grades posted I’ll have nothing to do but hang out with my husband and friends, and write. Next month there will be no excuses. There will be nothing standing in my way.<br /><br />Which means my goals are. . .</p><ol><li>Spend a minimum of 31 hours writing</li><li>Submit to 10 journals</li><li>Query 5 agents</li></ol>Ashley Cowgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362214167891115633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8991460600405620745.post-70300245942947653642009-11-01T07:00:00.000-08:002009-11-01T18:31:19.556-08:00End of October; November 2009 Goals<p>I had another bumpy month as a writer in October. I took a second job working as a sales girl at a department store last month because I thought it was the responsible, mature thing to do. The result? I made a little extra money and lost all my spare time. Not worth it. I put in my two weeks notice and my last day will be the 13th of November. Counting down the days . . . In addition to that I came down with a nasty bug a few weeks ago and I was pretty much completely out of commission for a whole week – lost my voice and everything.<br /><br />Which means that not only did I not meet ANY of my goals for the month of October, but I didn’t even come close on any of them. I feel frustrated about missing my goal yet again and about the fact that I haven’t really been hitting it hard as a writer ever since I left Alaska. But I guess this is what people talk about when they talk about not having time to write.<br /><br />So I’m setting the same goals as I did last month – spend an average of an hour a day writing, query five agents, and submit to ten journals – and this month I’m hoping not to have too much trouble meeting them since I’m almost done with that second job. Being so busy has given me a new appreciation for my writing time and I feel really excited and ready to get back into it.<br /><br />November’s goals:</p><ol><li>Minimum of 30 hours spent writing</li><li>Query 5 agents</li><li>Submit to 10 journals</li></ol>Ashley Cowgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362214167891115633noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8991460600405620745.post-79242629575184866112009-10-01T08:55:00.000-07:002009-10-01T10:16:39.511-07:00End of September; October 2009 Goals<p>Well I’m sad to say that I didn’t meet my writing goal for the month of September. I did meet my agent and journal goals. But that writing goal, man . . . The frustrating thing is that it was an easy goal – just one hour a day. I will say, though, that I only fell short by one hour – it came down to one day. I spent the entire day Tuesday of this week planning lessons for my classes (and I mean it – the entire day! I had a lot to do!) and by the time I finished I was exhausted and couldn’t force my mind to do anything creative. And I REALLY needed to squeeze in some writing that day. Even though I almost made the goal, this is a blow because I had intentionally set a very low goal figuring there was no way I wouldn’t at least meet it, and I was sure I would in fact exceed it by a fair amount.<br /><br />For once I would say it isn’t mostly a result of momentum or lack thereof. I got a pretty decent momentum going by the end of August and into early September, and though I feel my momentum beginning to wane now I know that the real reason I didn’t write as much as I would have liked is because I was stressed and overwhelmed. I was offered several jobs teaching adjunct over the past two months that I turned down because I was hoping I might get something better. The first batch because I was being considered for a full time teaching job, and then because I was being considered for a local teaching job. The “better” positions fell through in both cases, and by the time school started I only had one part time job teaching two classes a week at a school where I have to commute an hour and a half each way.<br /><br />I don’t make quite enough money to feel comfortable – it <em>is</em> only part time – so I’ve got to find another part time job on top, which is stressful and depressing because I’m busy enough teaching these two classes and even if I wasn’t it’s frustrating to have an advanced degree and then have to just take what you can get for jobs – which in my case is going to mean working retail because my teaching schedule precludes office work. So I’ve been having a hard time of it the past month and I haven’t been writing as much as I should.<br /><br />For next month I’m going to try the hour a day thing again. I still think this is a tiny goal, but I’m worried that if I set the goal too high I won’t even make an effort to reach it because I’ll feel like it’s just impossible. If I start working another job this month (which is very likely) I’ll be even busier, and probably sort of depressed as I adjust to my new non-graduate student life. I definitely miss grad school. It was so easy to find time to write and to center my life around writing. I know I’ll be able to find a way to work this out – after all, before grad school I wrote quite a lot and I remember feeling at first that as a grad student I hardly had any time to write – but for now I feel like I’m drowning in the real world. I’m starting to think again about PhD programs . . .<br /><br />For October:</p><ol><li>Minimum of 31 hours spent writing</li><li>Query 5 agents</li><li>Submit to 10 journals</li></ol>Ashley Cowgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362214167891115633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8991460600405620745.post-87016485222421165222009-09-01T08:42:00.000-07:002009-09-01T08:44:21.655-07:00End of August; September 2009 Goals<p>Well it’s been a difficult transition, getting used to a new town and hunting for a new job, but I definitely feel ready to get back into setting regular monthly writing goals for myself. I’ve really been more aware than ever lately that writing is extremely important to maintaining my sanity. As I’ve been waiting to hear back on jobs I’ve found that the only way I can take my mind off of the things in life that I can’t control is to immerse myself in some writing project or other.<br /><br />In August I got some writing done – worked on some revisions of a few short stories– and I crafted a working query letter and synopsis of my novel to send out to agents. I also started putting together a list of agents that might be a fit for my novel and I submitted to my first batch of five agents. I also got another story acceptance, which makes three acceptances in the past month. That does a lot to get you motivated, let me tell you!<br /><br />Even so, August certainly wasn’t the most productive month ever – after everything is tallied up I spent a little less than an average of half an hour a day actually writing, which is pretty shameful when you consider that I haven’t been working or anything. But like I always say, momentum makes a huge difference with these things, and so starting this month I’d like to start getting that momentum back up again. For September I’m going to keep my agent hunt going, sending out to another batch of five, and I’m also going to ease my way back into regular writing goals with a goal of an hour a day spent writing. I also will restart my old 1o submissions a month goal. This is more important than ever since I haven’t submitted a thing since I left Alaska and with those three recent acceptances (and all the withdrawals I had to make as a result of them) I only have a handful of submissions out right now.<br /> So, my goals for September are:</p><ol><li>Average of 30 hours spent writing</li><li>Query 5 agents</li><li>Submit to 10 journals</li></ol>Ashley Cowgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362214167891115633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8991460600405620745.post-81362144953137598722009-08-15T14:43:00.000-07:002009-08-15T14:45:13.187-07:00Starting Back Up; August 2009 Goals<p>Well after an even longer hiatus than planned, Damien and I are officially settled in Athens, Ohio and I’m ready to get back in the game. It’s been a fun trip but I’m glad it’s over because a month and a half is a looooooooong time to go without writing. I was working on a scholarly essay for the first half of the month of July, so you could argue that I was writing, but it felt like I wasn’t because I wasn’t able to do any creative writing on the road and as much as I enjoyed working on this scholarly essay is absolutely no substitute for working on a story or novel. The only thing really that kept me feeling like “a writer” (whatever that means) was that I did receive two acceptances while on the road – one from an Australian journal (yay! I’m soon to be international!) and one from an online journal that pays professional rates and is on Duotrope’s list of the 25 Most Challenging Fiction Markets.<br /><br />This month I have one last non-creative project to work on – a book review that I’ve agreed to write for a magazine about Australian literature. It’s a fun and (I expect) easy project so my goal is to have at least a solid working draft of it done by the end of the month of August, which would open me up in September to start getting my momentum going again with my creative writing. I’ve already started doing a little creative writing since we’ve gotten here, and I’m sure I’ll continue (I had a few revision ideas for some of my stories while we were in transit and I’m anxious to get cracking on them). But since the month is already half over and I’m under deadline for the book review (and we’re still unpacking and I’m still looking for a job . . .), I’m not going to set a writing goal for this month.<br /><br />What I will do, though, is set an agent hunting goal. That’s right, I’ve decided that it’s time to start looking for an agent for my thesis. I think the best option for me is to divide my hunt up into small chunks of about five queries at a time. If I send out 5 queries a month, it’ll be a slow enough moving process that if I come to see some major flaw in the novel that needs to be revised, there will still be plenty more agents I haven’t sent to yet. Five is also a small enough number that it won’t get to feel overwhelming and shouldn’t prevent me from setting and sticking to regular writing and journal submission goals. So I’m setting a goal for myself of sending out five queries by the end of the month. I plan to keep setting that same goal for future months and starting next month I’ll add to it regular writing and submission goals.<br /><br />So, for August, it’s just:</p><ol><li>Send out 5 queries to agents</li></ol>Ashley Cowgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362214167891115633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8991460600405620745.post-89717831170175649422009-07-01T06:00:00.000-07:002009-07-08T22:42:20.931-07:00End of JuneThis has been a particularly busy summer for me, in spite of not working and not being in school, and I have to admit yet again that I did not meet my writing goal for the month. I’ve been working on a scholarly essay that I hope to get published through a children’s lit journal and I have a deadline for that. This comes at the same time as packing up and cleaning the house to move, and trying to soak up our Fairbanks friends and Fairbanks itself before we leave – possibly forever. I did force myself to get my 10 submissions in, and I spent the average of a little over half an hour a day on creative writing (but all of that time was spent at the beginning of the month – the past two weeks I’ve only been working on my essay).<br /><br />Considering that my essay must be in the editor’s email inbox by July 17th, and we’ll be on the road making our way through Canada and across the US during the entire month of July, I’ve made the difficult but I think only reasonable decision not to set any creative writing goals for myself for next month. This is the first time I haven’t set any goals for a month for, oh, I don’t even know how long, and it’s a strange feeling, like not really being a writer. But I don’t see any way around it. I have to focus on this essay right now – this is a great opportunity and it would be foolish to let it pass. On top of that, I’ll be visiting family that I haven’t seen in years and going on this amazing road trip . . . I think it would be a real mistake to hamper myself with self-imposed creative writing goals.<br /><br />Once we get settled in Ohio in August I plan to buckle down and get that momentum back up again. I had dinner with the professor who was my thesis advisor last night and she encouraged me to start sending my thesis around to agents soon. She reminded me that you keep working on it after you get an agent and after that agent gets you a publisher. It doesn’t have to be perfect to start trying. So I’ve decided that I’m going to do one more revision after we arrive in Ohio and then I’m going to start submitting it. I have to just draw the line somewhere or else I’ll keep picking at it forever and never send it out. So a lot of great things on the horizon, and maybe it’s just as well to take a bit of a break and come at it refreshed after the move.Ashley Cowgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362214167891115633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8991460600405620745.post-86976624370795023752009-06-01T11:43:00.000-07:002009-06-01T11:44:49.205-07:00End of May; June 2009 Goals<p>I’m embarrassed to admit that, in spite of being out of school and not having to work over the summer, I did not meet my writing goal for the month of May. I do have an excuse that I think more than explains it: I was working on a scholarly essay that I hope to get published (or at least use as a good writing sample in the future). I spent so much time doing research and writing this essay that I let my creative writing fall to the side. Now I did get some writing done during May; I worked on creative writing for an average of about an hour and a half a day. But it’s a little disheartening because, looking at my logsheet for 2009, I realized that I’ve only met my writing goals for one month – January – out of the entire year so far.<br /><br />On top of that I recently realized that, since I’ll be on the road for the entire month of July (in transit between Alaska and Ohio, with many lengthy stops along the way), I may not have time to get as much work done over the summer as I’d like. Even so, with the essay done (for now) I plan to plow ahead and get some serious writing done at least during the month of June. That said, I’m not sure that I want to set hourly goals for either this month or next month.<br /><br />It isn’t exactly that I’m trying to give myself an excuse to push myself a little less hard – well, maybe it sort of is. Here’s the thing: I’m moving from the far north of Alaska to Ohio this summer, and leaving behind some really great friends. So I don’t want to force myself to not spend time with people because of my own self-imposed goals (not to mention the incredible amount of time and energy I’ll be spending getting packed up and ready for the move). Likewise, during the move we’re going to be stopping by and visiting family and friends in the lower 48 – many of whom I haven’t seen in years. So, even though I plan to keep at it and get some things done, I don’t feel it’s right for me to set hourly goals for the next couple of months.<br /><br />So my goal for June, instead of the regular 2 hours a day, is to get some serious work done on a children’s book I’ve been writing. I’m about 50 pages into the first draft and what I would like to do is have a complete draft finished by the time we leave at the end of the month so that I can print it out and have it with me on the road to begin revising.<br /><br /><span style="color:#000000;">June’s Goals, then, are to:</span></p><ol><li><span style="color:#000000;">Finish a complete draft of my current children’s book</span></li><li><span style="color:#000000;">Submit to 10 journals</span></li></ol>Ashley Cowgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362214167891115633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8991460600405620745.post-92034497133252698732009-05-01T07:00:00.000-07:002009-05-01T07:00:01.300-07:00End of April; May 2009 Goals<p>Well I got off track with my goals in March, and remained off track throughout the entire month of April. When I totally derailed in March it was a result of some rejections and fear of what my future holds. By April I was already starting to feel better so I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that I had already lost my momentum (but certainly some of it was because I’ve been finishing up my last semester of my MFA program – to be honest I just had a lot of work to do).<br /><br />Early on in April I made the decision (which might sound reminiscent of last month) that I wasn’t going to bother trying to meet my writing goal. I decided I would submit my 10 submissions – and I did – but I wasn’t going to stress myself out about writing for two hours a day when I had plenty of other stuff to do as the semester drew to a close. And even though I didn’t come anywhere near my goal (I only wrote for a bit over an hour a day) I think this was a good decision because this was my last semester and I needed it to be a good one.<br /><br />But now no more excuses! By the end of the first week in May I’ll be done done done with school and I’m not working over the summer, so there will be no way to justify not meeting my goals. And I feel that I really need to get my momentum back up before we move and I have to start working again – quite possibly in the real (that is: non-academic) world. It’s going to be really hard, I’m sure, to get my momentum going in that new environment so it’s essential that I’m already going full speed when we get there.<br /><br />Plus, I have a lot of projects that I’m really excited about. I started a new story the other day and I’m anxious to finish a draft of it, and then there are some stories that I had set aside a while ago that I’d like to get back to and revise. And then I’ve got a new children’s book I started working on last summer and I’d like to get a complete draft of that. So I expect to keep my goals this month.<br /><br /><span style="color:#000000;">They are:</span></p><ol><li><span style="color:#000000;">Spend 62 hours on writing (average of 2 hours a day)</span></li><li><span style="color:#000000;"> Submit to 10 journals</span></li></ol>Ashley Cowgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362214167891115633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8991460600405620745.post-59920381648937380002009-04-01T10:23:00.000-07:002009-04-06T17:41:03.213-07:00End of March; April 2009 Goals<p>I have to admit I didn’t meet my goals for the month of March. Didn’t even come close on the writing goal (about 15 hours short – 15!), although I did submit to 9 journals, so that’s almost there. And the truth is, I hit sort of a slump when I pooled together my responses from the graduate schools I applied to for next year. Ultimately, I got in to one school. One. Without being offered a TA. And as much as I try to remind myself that there are numerous factors involved, and it all comes down to personal taste, and this year it’s been highly competitive because of the economy . . . I can’t really get that feeling of failure out of my head. Can’t break the sense that this means something about my skills as writer. I only actually even applied to two creative writing programs, so if you really think about it, it was fifty-fifty as far as my skills as a fiction writer goes, but still, this rejection has really knocked me down, for some reason.<br /><br />And honestly what happened was, I got my final rejection and I realized that next year I was going to have to get a job and not be a student (my husband got accepted with a TA into the poetry creative writing program at one of the schools I was rejected from so we’ll be going there), and then I just sort of gave up. I got super depressed – didn’t believe in myself anymore – and asked myself, what’s the point? I made the conscious decision I wasn’t even going to try to meet my goal. It was an actual choice – a strange feeling since my goals have always been so important for me. They help life feel more structured in this strange, obsessive compulsive way, and without them I feel lost.<br /><br />But either way, I stopped writing for a few days and then when I got back to it I didn’t write much in any given day and always with the open awareness that I would not even try to meet my goal. Just didn’t feel like it, couldn’t focus. Every time I told myself I should work on this story or that another voice in my head would say, “Why bother? You’re not any good. And you’ve been doing this long enough – putting enough practice in – that you would be good by now if you were ever going to be.”<br /><br />But, as you can probably imagine, just throwing in the towel made the depression even worse. For one thing, I need those goals – I have problems with anxiety and whether it’s writing or something else, I need some sort of structured, organized thing to be working on or I begin to feel like I’m drowning in the chaos. But also, not being in the middle of working out a story in my head at any given moment suddenly makes life in general just seem meaningless. I get up in the morning, do my stuff for work (which feels pointless because I’m not sure whether I’ll ever be able to teach for real), do my stuff for school (which seems pointless because school teaches me to be a better writer . . .) – it’s all just empty if I’m not writing.<br /><br />So I’ve realized that I have to get back into it. If not because I want to be a better writer, then because this is all my life has ever been about – making up stories – and without it I don’t think life would be worth living. What I have to remind myself is that it’s the stories themselves, and the fun of writing and revising them, that led me into this to begin with. Whether or not I’m good enough to get into grad school, then, is irrelevant. I need to keep doing it because, if I stop, what’s the point of my life at all?<br /><br />My goals for April:</p><ol><li>Write for 60 hours (Average of 2 hours a day)</li><br /><li>Submit to 10 places</li></ol>Ashley Cowgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362214167891115633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8991460600405620745.post-20118056718493898192009-03-01T06:00:00.000-08:002009-03-01T06:00:01.078-08:00End of February; March 2009 Goals<p>Well I had a rough week – I won’t get in to a list of excuses but ultimately I finished the month of February 4 hours short on my writing goal for the month. I was right on schedule until the very last week of February but several stressful things that happened back to back just sort of knocked me down and I didn’t make it. Although I did manage to get my 10 submissions in (woo-hoo for that small victory).<br /><br />Now I’m a little behind where I wanted to be with my thesis and <em>drastically</em> behind where I should be with the novella I’m writing for workshop this semester. But I’ve decided that rather than getting all stressed out about it – which is only going to make it even harder to get back on track – I’m going to consider that having spent 52 hours this month on my writing is still more than a lot of people and all is most certainly not lost.<br /><br />I still have about 50 pages of my thesis to revise – and it’s the ending that is changing the most so some of these last few chapters I’m going to have to completely rewrite from the ground up – and I need to get it done by this Friday. Why? Because my mom is coming to town (what fun!) for the first half of spring break, I have to actually hand in the ready-to-defend thesis immediately after spring break, and I don’t want it hanging over my head - the thought that the second she leaves I’ve got X number of chapters to rewrite – while my mom is here. This way I can have a nice, relaxing visit while she’s here and then after she leaves I’ll alternately work on my novella (which needs a lot of work, let me tell you) and go through smaller, sentence level edits of my thesis.<br /><br />So. Keeping on keeping on in spite of February’s failure. For March I’ll be fervently working on my thesis for the first half of the month and then my novella in the second half. Hopefully I won’t have any trouble meeting my goals . . .<br /><br />Which are:</p><ol><li>Spend at least 62 hours on writing (an average of 2 hours a day)</li><li>Submit to 10 places</li></ol>Ashley Cowgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362214167891115633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8991460600405620745.post-18421099014854074552009-02-01T12:51:00.000-08:002009-02-01T12:53:02.848-08:00End of January; February 2009 Goals<p>I feel pretty good about this past month and I’m pleased to say that 2009 is getting off to a great start. I met all of my January goals, I wrote an average of a little over two hours a day, and I got a lot done on individual projects that I’m working on. I think this semester will be an extremely fruitful one. My thesis should be due immediately after spring break so my committee has time to read it before my defense. This means that no matter what I’ll be getting a lot done on that in the next month and I feel really good about what needs to be done – I know exactly what I want to change and smooth over and I’m starting to think (or is it wishful thinking?) that it might actually be done, ready to decide what to do with, after I defend it.<br /><br />So that I have time to work on my thesis this semester I’m taking only thesis credits and one workshop class. The workshop that I’m taking is shaping up to be the best class I’ve taken in my entire MFA career. It focuses entirely on the novella and it’s taught by award winning writer David Crouse, whose writing I admire a lot and he’s a pretty cool guy, on top of that. I’ve never taken a class with David but I’ve heard from multiple sources that his classes are absolutely amazing and after starting this class I have no doubt that it’s true. We’re going to have a lot of time to workshop each others novellas and even David will be submitting a novella to be workshopped right along with us.<br /><br />The novella I’m working on is part of the short story collection I’m working on, so theoretically this semester I’ll get a lot of work done on my thesis and my collection. I’m not dividing up my goals between projects because the semester should be such that I’ll have to work on both my novel and my collection and I don’t know whether they’ll need equal time, or if one will need more, or what.<br /><br />I expect to have no trouble meeting my goals for February. They are:</p><ol><li>Spend at least 56 hours on writing (an average of 2 hours a day)</li><li>Submit to 10 places</li></ol>Ashley Cowgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362214167891115633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8991460600405620745.post-20552484509546587592009-01-02T11:38:00.000-08:002009-01-02T11:42:26.497-08:00End of December and 2008; January Goals<p>While for me as a writer, 2008 had its ups and downs, overall I feel pretty good about all the things I got done. I got A LOT of revisions done on my thesis and while I still have plenty more to do, I no longer have any concerns that I won’t at least pass my thesis defense this spring, and that I won’t be able to make it publishable. I also got a lot of drafting done on my next novel; I revised an old children’s book and began sending it out, I began drafting a new children’s book, and I got a ton of new stories written and old stories revised. Oh yeah, and I got my first story accepted for a paying journal (cha-ching!).<br /><br />Looking back on the year as a whole, I’m pretty satisfied. Looking back on the month of December, not so much. I got STRESSED in that last few weeks of the semester and while I kept writing as I finished up my school related work (as student and teacher), immediately after the semester ended I just totally crashed. Damien and I got a new Wii game that we’ve been playing the heck out of, I got some new comic books, and I started to sleep in until 9 or 10 (as opposed to the regular 5:30ish that I get up most weekdays). At the end of the semester my writing train derailed and I didn’t meet all of my goals for the month.<br /><br />I did finish that draft of my thesis, and I’ve already gotten some excellent feedback on it from one of my readers, and I’m waiting on some feedback from Damien before I get back into it for the next draft. I also sent out 11 submissions. But . . . I didn’t spend as much time on stories as I had wanted to.<br /><br />Now I’ve got not only a clean slate with a new month, but a new year, even, and I intend to make the most of it. I’m setting a goal for myself to spend an average of two hours a day writing this year. I also would hope to have my novel completely finished and ready to try to get published by the end of the year, as well as, ideally, the collection of short stories I’m working on. But these things take however much time they need, and so the more important goal, and the one that is actually in my control, is the two hours a day average.<br /><br />For January, I’m not going to set a goal for my thesis because I don’t know when I’ll get the feedback I need and I also don’t know yet exactly what sort of goal would be appropriate, since I haven’t gotten all my feedback yet. So instead, I’m setting my usual goal of ten submissions, and I’d like to spend at least 30 hours on non-thesis writing (probably much of which will be working on my novella for the novella workshop I’m taking next semester). And in keeping with my annual goal, I’d like to spend in total at least 62 hours writing for the entire month.<br /><br />So . . .</p><br /><ol><br /><li>30 hours working on stories</li><br /><li>10 submissions</li><br /><li>62 hours writing</li></ol>Ashley Cowgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362214167891115633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8991460600405620745.post-89130858452197210132008-11-30T18:03:00.000-08:002008-11-30T18:05:46.443-08:00End of November; December Goals<p>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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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).<br /><br />So … for November I hit:</p><ol><li>12 out of 12 chapters revised on thesis</li><li>22.75 out of 15 hours spent on short stories</li><li>10 out of 10 submissions</li></ol><p>For December I’m shooting for:</p><ol><li>7 chapters of thesis revised (which would finish this draft off)</li><li>30 hours spent on short stories</li><li>10 submissions </li></ol>Ashley Cowgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362214167891115633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8991460600405620745.post-11636730304088126582008-11-01T20:12:00.000-07:002008-11-01T20:21:27.601-07:00End of October; November Goals<p>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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />That said, I do want to spend <em>most</em> 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.<br /><br />November Goals:</p><ol><li>Rewrite 12 Chapters of thesis</li><li>Spend 15 hours working on short stories</li><li>Send 10 Submissions</li></ol>Ashley Cowgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362214167891115633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8991460600405620745.post-32052994265879997442008-10-01T13:43:00.000-07:002008-10-01T13:47:36.934-07:00End of September and October Goals<p>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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />For September I ended up at:</p><ol><li>12,007 out of 15,000 words written on new novel (48,506 total)</li><li>10 out of 10 submissions</li></ol><p>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).<br /><br />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.</p><p>October Goals:</p><ol><li>Revise 4 Chapters of thesis</li><li>Send 10 submissions to journals</li></ol>Ashley Cowgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362214167891115633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8991460600405620745.post-69502906622059364772008-09-28T13:46:00.000-07:002008-09-28T13:49:11.183-07:00The Week of September 21st<p>I was extremely sick all week and now this weekend I’ve got a stack of student papers to go over and all of my own homework to catch up on (since I was barely able to concentrate and didn’t get much done all week) so I probably don’t even have to say that I didn’t get much writing done, either, and I don’t think I’m going to end up meeting my first goal for the month; we’ll see.<br /><br />This week I only got a little bit of writing done in the new novel and I spent a couple of hours working on short stories. I did get 7 submissions sent out, though, and I’ve got 2 more all ready to go out on Monday or Tuesday, whenever I have a chance to run over to the post office.<br /><br />For the month:</p><ol><li>12,007 out of 15,000 words written on new novel (48,506 total)</li><li>8 out of 10 submissions</li></ol>Ashley Cowgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362214167891115633noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8991460600405620745.post-8446412967361766002008-09-21T12:10:00.000-07:002008-09-21T12:14:15.573-07:00The Week of September 14th<p>I’ve been working on a new story this week and I’ve been revising the story I had workshopped a week ago. I also had my first meeting with my thesis advisor to talk about my novel, and so I’ve been making notes and organizing my thoughts on where I’m going to go for the next revision of that. As a result of all these other quite fruitful writing activities, I hardly got anything done on the new novel this past week and I didn’t send out any submissions, either.<br /><br />I’m meeting again with my thesis advisor this next week and then I’ve got another member of my thesis committee reading the draft and once he’s done he’ll give me feedback, so I’m getting really excited again about working on my thesis and of course that’s really what I should be working on, instead of the new novel. So I’m going to have to decide, as this month draws to a close, how much work I want to keep putting into the new novel and whether I might just go ahead and stop setting goals for it so I can focus completely on getting my thesis together by its due date next semester.<br /><br />I haven’t been doing a very good job, recently, of choosing what projects to work on right now and which ones to jot down in a notebook for the future. Right now I’m going back and forth between my thesis, my new novel, a collection of short stories I’m trying to put together, and two different children’s chapter books. It’s important to be writing, and for me, it’s useful to have a few different burners going so if I just don’t feel like working on one thing, there’s still something for me to do. But I think you do have to limit yourself because if you just sort of dabble in too many different projects, you’re not giving enough attention to any one of them and they all end up suffering.<br /><br />Damien mentioned to me recently that he feels a little nervous that, as I’m working on the new novel, I’ll just stop working altogether on the old one and never actually finish (that is, revise, revise, revise until you just can’t revise any more) any book length work. And I think it’s a valid concern. So I’m going to be doing some serious thinking the next several days about what goals I want to set for next month, which projects I should really be focusing on right now and which ones I should wait and work on when I finish with something now.</p><p>For the month:</p><ol><li>9096 out 15,000 words on the new novel (45,591 total)</li><li>1 out of 10 submissions</li></ol>Ashley Cowgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362214167891115633noreply@blogger.com0