Six months into 2019, and I’m average 52 percent of my monthly goals. My performance for June was 54 percent, which is a notable uptick from the previous two months.
Unfortunately that doesn’t mean I’ll accomplish 52 percent of my year goals. Some of them I’ve already blown (my commitment to consistent cleaning took a dive during various chaotic periods). A lot of the writing ones I don’t see happening. I was overly optimistic about how much fiction I could write, though I don’t regret shooting for the moon. If it was nearer, I’d try to push myself, but there’s no way.
With that in mind, I’m revising my goals for the remainder of the year. I’m still hoping to finish several more short stories, and I’m always optimistic about selling them. And finishing Undead Sexist Cliches is probably top priority of my larger projects. I don’t know that it’ll sell, but as that’s true with anything I write, I lose nothing except time. And it’s reached the point where I really want to see it to completion.
I’m still going to submit my Space Invaders proposal to McFarland, though I’m somewhat divided about the time commitment. And I’m working on finding new nonfiction markets, along with Leaf.
Once again that skews very heavily toward nonfiction, which is not what I’d planned. But money is good (admittedly my film books don’t pay a lot, but even so). Novel-wise, I intend to have one of the various ones I planned to work on this year rewritten and replotted, but I’m not sure which. Working on multiples doesn’t seem to cut it, so I’ll have to pick.
Away from work, our crazy schedule has interfered with a lot of what I’d hoped to do this year — take some classes, get to the North Carolina Zoo (we’re members now, but I doubt we’ll try it until the weather cools). I doubt it’ll be any easier the rest of the year, but I’ll see about making it happen anyway.
And on the plus side, a lot of the good habits I wanted to instill seem to be shaping up. I’m meditating regularly and occasionally getting a small feeling of calm and no-mind, and I’m practicing breathing techniques and Alexander posture techniques regularly. I’m baking bread more frequently, having fallen out of the habit somewhat last year. And my short story work and Undead Sexist Cliches are making progress.
I’ll take the wins, even when they’re modest.
#SFWApro. Sandglass image taken from wikimedia under Creative Commons license.
Fraser Sherman's Blog 