Time Management Tuesday: Second Quarter Check-in For Goals And Objectives.

Once again, creating goals and objectives for the year won't do you any good, if you forget about them. One of my objectives this year for my Community Building/General Marketing/Branding Goal is to check in with my goals and objectives quarterly to make sure I'm spending my time the way I'd planned to. 

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.

Time Management Tuesday: When To Take Advantage Of New Opportunities

I'm a big believer in staying on goal, particularly writing goals. Flitting from one random new task to another rarely results in completed projects. Dropping everything to create some new work for a publication we've just heard about that has requirements that don't quite fit what we have on hand or to develop a new workshop so we can respond to a conference's request for proposals rarely, in my experience, brings results.

But we've probably all heard that we should be open to, and take advantage of, new opportunities. And we've also heard stories about writers who did commit three days to conferences where they did meet  agents who did sell their first books and they did become wildly successful. My impression is that the number of writers that happens for is very low compared to the number of writers spending time at conferences instead of writing, hoping that the conference will be an opportunity for them.

How do we balance staying on writing goals with recognizing a new opportunity that really might benefit us and taking advantage of it? I'm going to suggest that we should recognize and take advantage of opportunities that support our goals.

Some Examples From The Life o' Gail

• A year or two ago, I was offered the opportunity to expand the Connecticut Children's Literature Calendar to all of New England. This would have brought me some more name recognition from the members of the organization that would sponsor the new calendar, and I think I would have received free access to a regional conference. It doesn't take much to stroke my ego, so I was interested. But a little research on my part indicated that this would have been an extremely time consuming task, and I'd be doing it every month. The time it would take from my own writing (goals) wouldn't have been worth it. I passed on this opportunity.
• Last summer I heard about a virtual six-week flash fiction writing workshop. I jumped on it. As it turns out, last year one of my goals was "work on short-form writing, essays and short stories." An objective for another goal was "be open to attending events for writers of adult literature." So this workshop supported two goals. As it turned out, I came away from it with a short piece that was published by a humor publication and more work I'll be able to submit elsewhere. I wasn't thinking in terms of taking that course because it supported my goals, but the reality that it did may have been a factor in coming away from it with usable material. 

The Inspiration For This Subject

This past Saturday, April 3, Michelle Cusolito posted on Facebook about #authorlifemonth, a social media challenge that authors can take part in on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook (maybe other ways) to promote themselves and/or or a book. There are daily prompts/topics, this year's being:

Now, if you look at those topics, you'll see that some of them can relate to a specific book "intro an MC," for instance, "meme your book," "swag/stationery," etc. As it turned out, just two days before, I had pinned a tweet to my Twitter profile:

April is #EarthDay month. Time for an eco-comedy in an ebook edition. #environmentalism #YA #adult https:/www.amazon.com/dp/B00BAFA0NQ/A

 

That pin was about all I was planning to do for new Saving the Planet & Stuff ebook promotion. But then the #authorlifemonth  opportunity came up. I could continue to tweet about STPS, off and on, without being hard sell. In addition, I already have promotional material for this book. This was an opportunity that wouldn't require a lot of work from me.

 

And, finally, I have a "community building/general marketing/branding" goal this year. What is happening here is that #authorlifemonth has become a new objective to support that goal.

 

Our Takeaway

 

Be open to new opportunities that support your goals and could even become objectives to help you meet them.

 

 

 

Time Management Tuesday: Checking In With Goals And Objectives

Creating goals and objectives for the year won't do you any good, if you forget about them. One of my objectives this year for my Community Building/General Marketing/Branding Goal is to check in with my goals and objectives quarterly. I want to make sure I'm spending my time the way I'd planned to and not on drifting around beginning and abandoning random projects. 

It's the end of the first quarter, and here I am, checking away. Additionally, I'm thinking about what I can do for these goals and objectives during the next quarter of the year.

Goal 1. Finish a draft of YA thriller that could become an adult thriller. It has a name this year, 143 Canterbury Road  I have been working on this, but it's going slowly. I wish I could remember how far along I was on this at the beginning of the year. I think I've done 3+ new chapters in 2021.

Objectives:

• I haven't work on this for a few months, so I'll need to reread what I've done to bring myself back up to speed. Did that.
  
• Go over the outline/blueprint. Did that, though it is an ongoing process. I'm always tinkering with the outline/blueprint.
  
• Assign writing tasks to time frames each week. That's gone by the wayside
  
• Just work on scenes. Don't worry about connecting things.Hmm. Perhaps things would go faster if I remembered to do this.
  
• Read YA thrillers. I did read one, and I'm reading an adult thrillerish book now.
  
• Read history, since that's a significant factor for a character and maybe in other ways. I finished two history books this winter that I started last year.

 Plan for next quarter:

I'm going to commit my May Days project to this goal. Additionally, I have a brand new copy of Jill Lepore's These Truths that I got for Christmas that I'll start dipping into. (It's a huge book.) In the meantime, I'll keep slugging away at this.

Goal 2. Concentrate on submissions and concentrate on increasing the number of submissions I make.  I've made 17 submissions so far this year, which is fantastic for me. I only did 50 all last year. I've had a humor piece accepted and published, and this weekend I got a fantastic rejection from a journal.

Objectives:

• Submit book length projects to the agents I researched last month. Done
  
• 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.
  
• 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 need to do a lot more of this.
  
• Not to brag, but I got my first rejection of the year yesterday.Yeah, there's been a lot more of that. But as Gina Barreca says, "Finding your audience means being promiscuous with your work." So I view rejection as a good thing.
  

Plan for next quarter:

I dedicated January and February to submitting one project, March to another. April will go to a third one. The summer is going to be dedicated to submitting short-form work.

Goal 3. Work on short-form writing, essays and short stories. I think that humor piece I published was written this year. I've also stepped up coming up with daily ideas for writing projects, many of them short form. Otherwise, this first quarter has been spent primarily on Goals 1 and 2.

Objectives:

• Commit a month or two to flash writing. I was happy with how that worked this past year. That has happened...yet.
  
• Look for more on-line writing classes/workshops. I've taken two very good workshops.
  
• Commit more time to reading essays and short stories. Have not done much of this.
  
• Tinker with the 365 Story Project. Haven't touched it.
  

Plan for next quarter:

I'm planning to commit the summer, which starts in June, the third month of the next quarter, to short-form writing and submitting. The workshops I took were very generative, and during them I started revising old projects that I can continue in the summer.

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. I started strong with this, but fell down on Women's History Month.
  
• 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.
  
• Get into the habit of checking my monthly plans in my bullet journal. I actually am doing this. I'm surprised, too.
  
• Check-in with goals and objectives quarterly. I'd say "monthly" but that was an objective for last year that I didn't touch. You're looking at it.
  

Okay, so now I know what I've done, and I know what I'm going to do. How about you?

Time Management Tuesday: Let's Get Those 2021 Goals And Objectives Planned

For years I've been droning on about planning work goals and objectives for the year. Goals being what people want to do, objectives being how they plan to do it. I cannot say enough about how they helped me in 2020. Having something in mind I could work on was a huge...upper...so to speak and helped me maintain normality and interest in my life.

So here's your model for planning your own writing goals and objectives. 

Goal 1. Finish a draft of YA thriller that could become an adult thriller. It has a name this year, 143 Canterbury Road

Objectives:

• I haven't work on this for a few months, so I'll need to reread what I've done to bring myself back up to speed.
• Go over the outline/blueprint.
  
• Assign writing tasks to time frames each week.
  
• Just work on scenes. Don't worry about connecting things. 
• Read YA thrillers.
• Read history, since that's a significant factor for a character and maybe in other ways.
  

Goal 2. Concentrate on submissions and concentrate on increasing the number of submissions I make.

Objectives:

• Submit book length projects to the agents I researched last month.
  
• 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.
• Use that agent Twitter list I made a while back.
  
• Use that publications Twitter list I made a while back.
  
• Do a lot more reading of markets for short-form writing.
• Not to brag, but I got my first rejection yesterday.
  

Goal 3. Work on short-form writing, essays and short stories.

Objectives:

• Commit a month or two to flash writing. I was happy with how that worked this past year.
  
• Look for more on-line writing classes/workshops.
  
• Commit more time to reading essays and short stories
  
• Tinker with the 365 Story Project.

Goal 4. Community Building/General Marketing/Branding

Objectives: 

• Provide social media support for writers/bloggers generating diversity material.
• Pay more attention to community events like Multi-Cultural Children's Book Day; plan ahead for reading to support these events
• Continue the monthly childlit book release posts
• Attend virtual book launches and promote here.
  
• Continue with Original Content.
• Continue with promoting Original Content at Facebook communities, Goodreads' blog, and Twitter.
• Get into the habit of checking my monthly plans in my bullet journal.
• 
  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 have so much to do!