Below I go over the objectives I'm still working on. In the first quarter post, I discussed the ones I'd completed.
Goal 1. Finish a draft of a YA, possibly adult, thriller, now called 143 Canterbury Road
Objectives worked on this quarter:
- Assign writing tasks to time frames each week. By the second quarter I'd pretty much abandoned this. I do have little pieces of paper all over my desk that I was going to use for that that I now use for other things.
- Just work on scenes. Don't worry about connecting things. I may go back to this at some point.
- Read YA thrillers. I'm always looking for, and reading these.
- Read history, since that's a significant factor for a character and maybe in other ways. As planned, I've started Jill Lepore's These Truths and Susan Strasser's Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash.
- As planned last quarter, I did commit my May Days project to this goal. I nearly reached the point I wanted to reach when I realized I needed to start a new draft. I seem to have slowed down again this month.
Plan for next quarter:
I really want to get this draft done, so I can spend the rest of the year on short-form work. That probably won't happen next quarter.
Goal 2. Concentrate on submissions and increasing the number of submissions I make. I've
made 35 submissions so far this year, up from 17 at the end of March. The second quarter submissions did result in a publication, Relieve Your Anxiety NOW! at The Haven, which I will be discussing here at some point. I also submitted the first chapter and a half or so of an adult book-length manuscript to a contest. That is totally new for me. Though I know that there are writers who submit to contests regularly, I usually stay away from them. They almost always have submission fees, which makes them a lot like gambling to me. I have no moral objection to gambling, but I tend to do it with my life rather than with money. However, last summer I spent a few hundred dollars on a terrific on-line writers' workshop, and since I haven't been able to find one for this year, I feel I can use a little of the cash I would have spent on that on a contest or two.
Objectives worked on this quarter:
- Spend more time with essay Facebook group and flash Facebook group. Those people are
publishing and share their work, exposing me to new markets. Which is
not stalking them. I have not done enough stalki--spending time with this group. I hope to do more after I finish the 143 Canterbury Road draft.
- Use that agent Twitter list I made a while back. I have made an attempt at this.
- Use that publications Twitter list I made a while back. I run my eyes over this occasionally.
- Do a lot more reading of markets for short-form writing. I do this, but in a chaotic way.
Plan for next quarter:
Focus more on submitting short-form work.
Goal 3. Work on short-form writing, essays and short stories. I haven't done a lot with this, though I am becoming more and more eager to.
Objectives:
- Commit a month or two to flash writing. I was happy with how that worked this past year. That hasn't happened...yet.
- Look for more on-line writing classes/workshops. I haven't found anything, but I'm hoping an organization that was running virtual workshops this spring will be back at it this fall.
- Commit more time to reading essays and short stories. Have not done much of this. But I'm reading more poetry than I have in the past, for what that's worth.
- Tinker with the 365 Story Project. Yeah, that's probably over for this year, if not forever.
Plan for next quarter:
Get 143 Canterbury Road done so I can move on to other things!!! Also, I want to do some reading about women's humor.
Goal 4. Community Building/General Marketing/Branding
Objectives:
- Provide social media support for writers/bloggers generating diversity material. They are part of the monthly new book posts I do.
- Pay more attention to community events like Multi-Cultural Children's Book Day; plan ahead for reading to support these events. In April I took part in a month-long #AuthorLifeMonth event on Twitter. It gave me an opportunity to tweet about Saving the Planet & Stuff in a socially acceptable way.
- Continue the monthly childlit book release posts Doing that.
- Attend virtual book launches and promote here. I have done that.
- Continue with Original Content. You're seeing that.
- Continue with promoting Original Content at Facebook communities, Goodreads' blog, and Twitter. Doing that, but not as much as I should.
- Get into the habit of checking my monthly plans in my bullet journal. I am still continuing to do that, and it is helping a bit.
- Check-in with goals and objectives quarterly. I'd say "monthly" but that was an objective for last year that I didn't touch. I've done it twice!
Plans for next quarter:
Keep struggling along.
I must admit that I'm experiencing some difficulty transitioning back to a nonpandemic world of visiting family members and catching up on doctors' appointments. I keep thinking, Why didn't I do more in 2020 while I was home a lot and had a chance? In reality, I wasn't home all the time, and I did do a lot with short-form classes and starting short-form writing. That short form work just hasn't been completed yet, but it's available to me, so I should be happy about that.
And if I should be happy about something, I will be happy about it.
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