End of November; December 2009 Goals

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.

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.

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.

Which means my goals are. . .

1. Spend a minimum of 31 hours writing
2. Submit to 10 journals
3. Query 5 agents

End of October; November 2009 Goals

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.

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.

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.

November’s goals:

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

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 June

This 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).

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.

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.

End of May; June 2009 Goals

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.

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.

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.

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.

June’s Goals, then, are to:

1. Finish a complete draft of my current children’s book
2. Submit to 10 journals