Wow. For the first time since I started tracking my monthly goals, I’ve actually made them—not all of them, but 15 out of 20, which was the minimum I was shooting for. And I did the same with my various personal goals too (x amount of cleaning, practice massage, keep up my personal blog (separate from this one) and so on.
Feels good.
Looking back at my 101 in 1,001 list, not so good. The first time I tried it, I think I completed about two-thirds of my goal list. The second list, which expires at the end of September, it’ll be around 50 percent at best (a couple of goals, like short-stories sold, will come in just a little short, I suspect). The time I spent with Mum last year threw me off a lot. One reason I’ve put more flexibility into the list I started this year.
One reason my monthly goals are doing better is that I’m getting a better sense of how much time my fiction is going to take, and calculating how many stories I can work on in a month. Not as many as I’d like, of course, but I don’t feel like I’m taking it easy on myself, so I’m okay with that.
For next month, I intend to replot Brain From Outer Space before the next draft (based on last week’s review), finish the current draft of Southern Discomfort and get the final draft of Affairs of Honor. And resubmit all my short stories now out: In the past month, in addition to the usual crop of “no’s” I took one story back for lack of response (when they don’t respond to a polite query, it’s never a good sign, trust me) and another market folded while it had Number of the Beast under review.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
March 31, 2013 · 10:42 am
