End of March; April 2009 Goals

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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?

My goals for April:

1. Write for 60 hours (Average of 2 hours a day)


2. Submit to 10 places

End of February; March 2009 Goals

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).

Now I’m a little behind where I wanted to be with my thesis and drastically 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.

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.

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 . . .

Which are:

1. Spend at least 62 hours on writing (an average of 2 hours a day)
2. Submit to 10 places

End of January; February 2009 Goals

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.

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.

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.

I expect to have no trouble meeting my goals for February. They are:

1. Spend at least 56 hours on writing (an average of 2 hours a day)
2. Submit to 10 places

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

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

End of October; November Goals

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.

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.

That said, I do want to spend most 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.

November Goals:

1. Rewrite 12 Chapters of thesis
2. Spend 15 hours working on short stories
3. Send 10 Submissions

End of September and October Goals

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.

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.

For September I ended up at:

1. 12,007 out of 15,000 words written on new novel (48,506 total)
2. 10 out of 10 submissions

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).

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.

October Goals:

1. Revise 4 Chapters of thesis
2. Send 10 submissions to journals