Am I Still Sticking To Goals?

One of my goals for this year is Goal 6. Stay On Top Of Upcoming Known Events. And an objective for that goal is to heck in with goals at the end of each month. The point being to make sure that I'm actually working on goals and not...doing something else. Particularly nonwork related things.

So, have I done anything I wanted to do? I checked last week.

Goal 1. Concentrate on submitting completed book-length projects as well as completed short-form work.  I made five submissions last month, all of them in the last two weeks. Three were book-length projects to agents, one was a short humor piece to an on-line publication, and one was to a regional anthology. That was quite good for me.

Goal 2. Work on short-form writing, essays and short stories.

Objectives: 

• Start some eating essays  I think I tinkered with something
• Choose an essay or short story from the files or journal to do a little work on every week I have done a little bit
  
• Plan to focus short-form reading on different genres each month I focused on flash fiction this month, with some work/thinking on whether or not picture book texts are flash fiction. More to come on that.
  
• Spend the last week of every month completing something. Anything. Ah...no

I did spend two days working on a totally new picture book project that I think I'm going to turn into an early chapter book. So I was doing something on the short-form side, it just wasn't one of my objectives for the year.

Goal 3. Work on the 365 story project The flash fiction reading (above) was a multi-tasker for this goal. I did do some organizing of files. But, no, no real progress on this.

Goal 4. Work on YA thriller that could become an adult thriller. I've been doing research on historical methodology for this one. No real work on the manuscript. But, you know, thinking.

Goal 5. Community Building/General Marketing/Branding. I've done quite a bit with this one, with support for other writers through the Connecticut Children's Literature Calendar, support of Multicultural Children's Day, covering Connecticut writer events. I hope to attend one day of the NESCBWI Conference in April.

I did lots of little things last month, but no work on big projects. I'm not sure how I feel about that. Are these little things I'm doing the ground work for something big later in the year? Or am I just messing around?

Perhaps I'll find out this month.