Category: goal setting

Goal Setting for July

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The last couple months have flown by, and there have been several days when it felt like I had no time to breathe. The end is in sight, at least in terms of school – only nine days left until summer vacation, and we’re all feeling it.

Looking ahead to the end of the school year brings to mind what, exactly, I hope to accomplish writing-wise in July. The past two summers, I’ve utilized JulNoWriMo, which resulted in the birth of the chick lit romance and the growth of the historical romance. But this July, I have a bit of a laundry list of threads in need of tying, and time is rather of the essence.

So here’s the list of things I hope to complete before the end of July:

  1. Finish the historical romance. Right now, it’s standing at about 95k, more than I anticipated or intended, but I’m very close to the end. Once it’s done, I can let it sit for a while before I start trimming and revising.
  2. I hired a copy editor in April to give the chick lit romance the once-over, but other than a cursory glance, I haven’t had any time to sit with the MS and work through her suggestions. So that’s on the list.
  3. Catch up on critiques I owe to critique partners.
  4. Work through some of the preliminary planning of a new historical romance idea I came up with a couple months back and sort of brainstormed a bit last weekend at the CNYRW mini conference with Susan Meier.

Beyond those four items, I would like to send the chick lit romance out to a few agents and editors, start testing the waters with it. If it happens, bonus, but if not, I’m not going to beat myself up over it. I also plan to catch up on some reading, watch some movies, and generally just relax as much as possible.

Especially since there are Big Important Things happening in August that will take up most of my time and energy, and rightly so.

Defining Success

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On Saturday, Rhonda Penders, editor-in-chief at The Wild Rose Press, gave a presentation at this month’s CNYRW meeting that, among other things, provided some perspective on what’s happening in the publishing industry. Her presentation, from which I garnered tons of information and ideas, spawned a discussion among the CNYRW members about what constitutes success as a writer.

I think we can all be in agreement that the publishing industry has undergone huge changes over the past few years, for better and for worse. There are options available today – viable ones, even – that just didn’t exist five to ten years ago. Between the incredible uptick in indie publishing, the turn toward small presses that often seem way more author friendly, and the traditional agent-to-Big-6-publisher route, it can be a little mind-boggling to even decide what avenue to pursue, let alone determine what will define your success as an author.

Therein lies the key, I think, to determining the path an author needs to take. What is success? Is it landing a 6-figure publishing deal with Random House? Is it making enough in sales each year to let you quit your day job? Are you just looking to make some extra money doing what you love? Is it some combination of the two?

We can’t all be Dan Brown or Nora Roberts or J.K. Rowling. The law of odds, and the way traditional publishing seems to work, does seem to make it difficult to break out into New York Times Bestselling Author-tude. But maybe securing a publishing contract with a smaller press is what will equal success in your life. Or maybe perfecting your self-publishing process through professional editing and cover art services and a solid marketing plan, thus gaining a small but solid following, is enough for you.

You have to define what your goals are before you can determine the steps that will bring you success. You do have to do your homework, whether it means researching agents and how to properly query them, putting your manuscript in front of an editor who can help you fine tune (and fix up, if necessary) your work, or identifying how to run what amounts to your business if you decide indie publishing is the way to go.

For me, what is success as an author? I admit it – I would love to land a contract with a major publishing house. That’s always been the brass ring. But given all the options and combinations of possible avenues for publication, it’s also very tempting to pursue a path that would give me quite a bit more control over my writing career. From what I’ve read and been told, authors today are responsible with the vast majority of their marketing and managing their careers, so whether I go indie, work with a small press, or get that Big 6 contract, I’ll have to have a plan.

I don’t see myself leaving teaching anytime soon. But if the world was perfect and the right pieces fell into place, it would be pretty cool to be able to write full time at some point. So for now, my goal is to pursue a publishing career that lets me earn a little extra money doing something I love.

Ultimately, though it’s easy to get caught up in the quagmire of submissions, marketing, building your platform, and so on, you do have to write. Write what you love. Write what you want to read. Edit. Read good books. Write more. Stay passionate and ignore the naysayers who point out all the things that are “hard” about being a writer (as if there was every really a time when being a writer was easy).

Define success, and then work for it.

Look Back, Looking Ahead

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December flew by, and it’s a little hard to believe we’re already a few days into 2014. I don’t really do New Year’s Resolutions anymore, other than a bit of goal setting. But I wanted to look back first and how I did in 2013 with some of my writing hopes.

I had a pretty ambitious list of things I hoped to accomplish last year, and while I crosses several things off that list, live managed, as it often does, to shorten the amount of time I had to devote to writing. Looking back, the first half of 2013 seemed to go pretty much on track with what I’d planned, but once the end of the summer rolled around, everything pretty much was dead in the water.

September is often a rough month anyway, because I always end up staying late at school trying to get beginning of the year things squared away. This year was particularly brutal in that regard. While I wasn’t technically getting home any later than usual, the change to middle school really shifted my daily routine. I mean, I’m not a morning person to start with, and having to start an hour earlier than I’m used to completely threw me for a loop. I’d say I didn’t get in to the swing of the new schedule until maybe mid-October. Beyond that, while I often have papers to grade in the evenings and on weekends, I generally can leave work at work. Not this year. With the adoption of the Common Core modules (and I’m teaching both Math and ELA), there’s a ton of prep work that needs to go into every lesson. So rather than stay at school until 6 or 7 at night, which was not out of the realm of possibility, I packed it up and brought it home to make my worksheets and SmartBoard lessons at home.

Instead of writing, unfortunately.

Thank God for the monthly Book In A Week challenges that CNYRW puts on. Otherwise I’d have nothing done.

So my writing goals sort of tanked through the end of 2013. Where does that put me now?

Currently, I have the historical fiction “magnum opus” part 1 undergoing a beta read with an online critique buddy I connected with through an RWA University class in October. I’m hoping it will be ship-shape enough to start submitting again by the end of February or March. I have a pretty good handle on where to go with it, in the event I decide to self-publish, but I still want to give it a few rounds with some small presses and agents first. I finished the chick lit romance and have that pretty well squared away. Opening chapters are currently being beta read by my good friend and fellow author Shelly Hickman. I’m hoping to sent that out for submission by the end of February. And the historical romance is about 10k words from the end of the first draft. I would love to get it wrapped up, edited, revised, and polished in time to submit it to RWA’s Golden Heart Award this year. And if the world is nice to me, I want to start revising and editing the historical fiction “magnum opus” part 2 this summer and get it out for critique.

On the personal front, there are a couple major things in the works for me and my husband. If everything falls into place, as we hope it will, 2014 will definitely turn out to be a pretty big, life changing year for us!

My November Goal

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Once again, I’ve opted out of participating in NaNoWriMo. Not that I won’t be chipping away at a writing goal this month. It just won’t be the creation of a 50k manuscript in 30 days.  I’m hoping to finish the historical romance by Thanksgiving. I have about 15k to go.

I’m going to set a fitness goal for myself. I was doing pretty good with working out this summer, but once school started I got out of my routine. Initially I thought the new, earlier school schedule would be particularly conducive to staying on the work-out-wagon, because I would be home an hour earlier (thus working out an hour earlier, which would allow me to cook dinner an hour earlier, which in turn would allow me another whole hour before bed, even given the need to go to bed an hour earlier, with which to snuggle with the hubs or write or watch The Big Bang Theory or my new favorite show ever, Sleepy Hollow). But alas, thanks to a slew of things, Common Core ELA and math modules notwithstanding, I have yet to find that balance in my schedule.

But we’ve rounded the corner of Halloween, and now I’m faced with holiday eating time. Thanksgiving is a month away. Christmas isn’t far behind. There will be pies and cookies and other yummy things, and I admit that I have been naughty in the nutrition department.

My hope is that I’ll really be in a workable routine by the end of December, if not sooner, because it is starting to come together. In the meantime, I decided I’m going to use November to do Raw Rebecca’s 30 Day Plank and Squat Challenge.  I’m already pretty good at squats since the workout programs I’ve been doing for the past three years utilize them heavily in the strength training videos. Planks I’m not so good at. But the point of the challenge is that you start small and build up. I also figure these are exercises I can do in relatively short amounts of time. As far as cardio – well, I’d like to be able to get TurboFire playing again, or start another round of Les Mills Combat. But in the meantime, I’m on my feet pretty much nonstop from 7:45 to 1:45, and that’s not counting and average of three trips up and down the halls to the main office and faculty room. (Seriously, the main office on the complete opposite end of the building from my classroom. It’s a haul to get my mail.)

So that’s my November goal. What’s yours?

Revamping My JulNoWriMo Goal

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I set the bar rather high for myself this year when it came to planning for JulNoWriMo. Last summer’s attempt spawned about a third of my chick lit romance, and that was without any prior thought or outlining. Not so this year. Not only did I already have about 15k words on the historical romance (HR) I wanted to tackle, but I sat down and wrote a whopping 15 page extended synopsis so I knew (in a general way) precisely what would happen in the story.

My goal was to complete the HR in around 80,000 words, give or take 5k or so. I felt very ready to begin. I had the kernels of the story ready to go, I had about three chapters already done – though they needed some heavy editing before moving on. I even had the confidence that I’d be able to finish early.

Joke’s on me.

I’ve been plugging along pretty steadily, but as often happens, life keeps encroaching on my writing time. I had started to panic, but decided instead to just modify my goals. After all, it’s not like the world will end if I don’t finish the whole MS by July 31st. The whole point of JulNoWriMo and other such writing challenges is to make you sit your butt in the chair and write.

Right now I’m sitting on about 34k words. Not too shabby, really. Not as impressive considering that I started with a little less than half of that. But I’ve written almost 20k in three weeks. Mostly during the week and not utilizing the weekends much at all (I do still want to have a life). I’m not going to magically pull another 46,000 words out of thin air by the end of the month unless something rather drastic happens. Which could, but I’m not counting on it.

So here’s my new plan. I’m going to do my best to get to 50k. If I surpass it, great. If not, at least I have about 2/3 of the MS done. Shabbily in places, in desperate need of revision. But on paper. Or silicon or whatever my hard drive is made of. I had originally planned to finish the HR by the end of August, so I think modifying what I do for JulNoWriMo will put me in a more than adequate position to finish by then.

I can hear some of you right now, see you shaking your fingers at me. “But you set a goal for July! You should be pulling all nighters to meet it!”

Well, I’m not in college anymore, and my energy tanks by about 9:30 at night. Nobody’s keeping score.  I’m still keeping my inner editor locked in a box. And honestly, easing up on the pressure is probably better for me and the MS in the end anyway.