Month-end wrap-up and August goals
Just spent two hours trying to something that should have taken a few minutes: find and print two pictures of my kids to put in a frame in the hall. It's now 10:55, about an hour and a half later than I intended to start working. Ah well.
The DSL was down for a week. It's back, and therefore so am I. FM folks: I missed you guys.
At the end of every month I review what I've accomplished in my writing, and set goals for the next month (which are often revised as needed.) This helps me to feel like I've actually done something, because most of the time I feel like a complete slacker. I read Zette and Holly's blogs – Holly writes 6000 words a day come hell or high water, and Zette produces something like a novel a month, plus short stories, plus edits Vision and has her own imprint to run, and I think my god, I am *such* a loser, I am *never* going to make it in this business. The monthly assessments help to counter that. I didn't do what they did, but at least I did *something.*
Today is the last day of the month, so here goes.
In July, I:
- Finished an incredibly painful edit of Sweetwater Kill
- Received the rejection of an earlier draft of SWK from Black Gate
- Gave SWK to a trusted friend for a last pass, and reviewed her critique over lunch (she was dead on, and I am SO glad that I gave it to her)
- Critiqued part of Camilla's novel (not as much as I intended but I'll catch up this week)
- Withdrew my submission of The Welcome Dark from Publisher Who Shall Not Be Named
- Figured out what was wrong with Devotions and started over – AGAIN
- Wrote twenty-two pages (longhand) of prewriting for 2005 NaNovel
- Read 200 pages of 2004 NaNovel, in preparation for August
- Attended the SBWC post-conference debriefing meeting (yesterday)
- Started working on my vocabulary again (The Scar really stretched me – I became reaquainted with the dictionary while reading it)
Not bad. Not great – note the lack of word count produced in July. But I'm going to let that go, because June was *such* a rough month (that was Conference month, the Confidence Crusher) that I needed the down time to recover. But it is forward motion.
August goals:
- Complete 2004 NaNovel – 40-50k words to go
- Final – I mean it this time! – draft of SWK
- Critique a minimum of 100 pages for Camilla
- Submit SWK to Scifiction
- Submit TWD to Wicked Hollow
- Study up on POV for 2005 NaNovel (this includes rereading things like Character and Viewpoint and also taking apart favorite novels that have a flavor similar to what I'm aiming for in November.)
- Continue prewriting for 2005 NaNovel
- Begin research for proposed panel for SBWC 2006 (I *had* to open my big, fat mouth, didn't I?)
I'm insane. There is absolutely no way that I'll get all of that done. Not a chance.
*sigh*
Well, maybe.
The worst that can happen is that some of it gets rolled into September. I have a very convenient business trip this week that will give me lots of alone time – I plan to use it to work on the critique and the 2004 NaNovel.
How about you? What did you accomplish in July, and what are your goals for August?