End of December and 2009; January and overall 2o1o Goals

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.

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.

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.

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.

My goals for January:

1. Spend an average of 31 hours writing
2. Send out 10 submissions
3. Query 5 agents
4. Complete current draft of children’s book

End of December and 2008; January Goals

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!).

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.

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.

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.

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.

So . . .

1. 30 hours working on stories


2. 10 submissions


3. 62 hours writing