Time Management Tuesday: The Third Quarter

It's the end of the third quarter, people. Time to check in on those goals and objectives you created at the beginning of the year. You did do that, right? Right?

At the end of the first and second quarters, I discussed what I'd done for these goals and objectives and what I planned to do. The same thing's going to happen with this post.

Goal 1. Finish a draft of a YA, possibly adult, thriller, now called  143 Canterbury Road   

 Objectives worked on this quarter: 

1. 
   Read YA thrillers. I've done some of that, and will be posting about one of the books soon. 
2. Read history, since that's a significant factor for a character and maybe in other ways. I am still working on Jill Lepore's These Truths and Susan Strasser's Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash. These are excellent books. I just get distracted by fiction reading. 
3. At the end of the second quarter, my plan for the third quarter was to get this draft done, so I could spend the rest of the year on short-form work. Though I didn't think that was going to happen. I was right! I got distracted by a Goal 3, see below, and a couple of minor surgeries in the family. (Not me.)

 Plan for next quarter:

• My May Days group is getting together in October, and I'm committing to working on 143 Canterbury Road. Then I'm going to continue in November, as if I were working on a National Novel Writing Month project.
  

Goal 2. Concentrate on submissions and increasing the number of submissions I make.  I've made 56  submissions so far this year, up from 35 at the end of June. August submissions resulted in publication on two Medium publications, which I will be discussing below. Also, I received an excellent rejection from a publication with an invitation to submit more work.

Plans for next quarter:

• I won't be pushing for submissions until December, because I'm focusing on Goal 1.
  

Goal 3. Work on short-form writing, essays and short stories. I ended up throwing aside my YA thriller work in August in order to meet a deadline for submitting two essays to a Medium challenge. I also took a humor writing workshop at the end of this quarter through the Thurber House, which I plan to write about later. 

Plan for next quarter:

• Make this a focus during the month of December/
  

Goal 4. Community Building/General Marketing/Branding

My plan for this goal for the third quarter was "Keep struggling along." Ah...what? What was I thinking with that?

 

Plans for next quarter for Original Content: 

• Here at Original Content shift my focus from monthly book releases to other types of blogging: More regular TMTs, more book posts, more variety. Continue with the virtual author appearance posts. Focus on supporting new releases through.

While I am psyched for the next three months, I wish I'd been able to do more these last few weeks to get ready for them. I have little things piling up around me. But, hey, I am chaos, right? I can manage that.