End of June 2010; July 2010 Goals

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.

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.

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).

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.

My goals for July:

1. 30,000 words or more on current novel
2. 10 submissions

End of September; October 2009 Goals

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.

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.

I don’t make quite enough money to feel comfortable – it is 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.

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 . . .

For October:

1. Minimum of 31 hours spent writing
2. Query 5 agents
3. Submit to 10 journals

End of August; September 2009 Goals

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.

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!

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.
So, my goals for September are:

1. Average of 30 hours spent writing
2. Query 5 agents
3. Submit to 10 journals

Starting Back Up; August 2009 Goals

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.

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.

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.

So, for August, it’s just:

1. Send out 5 queries to agents

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

Rejected, But Still Trudging On . . .

Well, I just got a response from the agent who requested the manuscript. She said that she liked it and gave me some specific complements on it but she said that she just didn't fall in love with it enough to offer representation. It was a very nice rejection, though, and she did say that she's sure I'll get it accepted somewhere. But it's always hard when someone just doesn't like what you're doing quite enough to want to work with you. But I'll keep at it. I've still got 14 agents I'm waiting to hear back from, and there's plenty more I could submit to. And you know, there's always small presses that accept unsolicited manuscripts . . .

Agent Update

Well, the very day after posting my thoughts on how it's pretty much impossible to get anywhere by querying agents and I'm assuming this will just be a good learning experience for me, I recieved a manuscript request from one of the agents I queried. Now, this doesn't mean she'll offer representation; it just means that she's willing to read the full book and decide from there. But I feel really excited, anyway. Even if she ultimately decides it's not for her, I feel good about having gotten to that next step with someone. And who knows . . . maybe she'll love it and want to represent me. I feel much better about my chances of finding an agent, now, and feel refreshed at the knowledge that it is possible, after all, to get someone interested just from a query. Of course now if she rejects it I can't blame it on anything but the work itself . . . but that's a chance I'm willing to take.

The trick now is going to be to try to push this to the back of my mind and not think about it until I hear back from her. Like that's possible.