Category Archives: Goals

A Birthday Present and a Door

09 Monday May 2011

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So I got a Kindle for my birthday, which is awesome because a. with the life and career I’m trying to make for myself, I can’t justify not having one and b. I was genuinely more excited about this present than my family expected. Most of my life, you see, I’ve been the old-fashioned one by far when it comes to the technological. My mom sometimes spins it kindly and calls me an “old soul.” My sisters just shake their heads at the fact that even now I send a text maybe once a week. When Kindle first came out, I was one of those people who started talking about the magic of holding a book, smelling the paper, etc.

So what happened? I was on the Metro one day, people-watching for a moment, and realized that all these people on the car with me with their heads bent over a screen were reading. And it didn’t matter at all whether they turned a page or swiped the screen with one finger, because it was the same story. Lizzie rolled her eyes when I told her that (“You mean you changed your mind about Kindle because you were pleased that society was reading? I thought it would have been the weight, how many books you have access to…”), but it’s true. What matters to me is people reading, is stories making it to people who might be entertained or educated or changed by them. That matters to me more than any feature, although I’m sure as I play with my Kindle I’ll start to pick up some excitement about those, too.

My mom and I ended up getting into a whole conversation about the publishing process and what e-publishing means. How I could get involved in it. Sometimes I focus so narrowly on my day-to-day to keep from getting overwhelmed by my schedule that I forget to remind myself that I’m not in this to be a clerk at a law firm forever. I need to keep looking at the bigger world of what I want to do, and let myself get excited, and maybe even take a leap. Maybe I do need to consider putting together something to publish myself, in addition to sending manuscripts and queries the traditional way. Maybe I use the design knowledge I’ve picked up in classes and internships to help other people make their work stand out. Who knows? In any case, I’m excited about what I want to do again, which is just what I needed to start another year in my life.

Is This a Step Forward or Back?

11 Monday Apr 2011

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I submitted my first three things of this month today. According to the goal I laid out for myself, these should be Submissions 11-13, instead of 1-3. I had a wonderful, wonderfully busy week, but procrastination creeps into the picture as well. On the other hand, I did get three things out, which compared to most days is a success. I guess what I am wondering right now is if I’m doing better than usual, but not as well as I want to be doing, is that a step forward or back? Do I mark this day up as a (small) success, or a mad scramble to cover last week’s slacking?

I’ve historically struggled with how to judge my own achievements. I tend to have much higher standards for myself than for other people around me, so that the fact that I think a fellow student or co-worker is doing a good job is not enough to translate for me into thinking I am doing well, too, even if I am doing as well or better. One of my best friends got used to me having a crisis whenever a new story was due.

“Of course it won’t be a train wreck,” she’d say. “How do I know? Nothing else has been a train wreck so far, and you are working really hard on this.”

And when I do work hard, it’s true, I tend to do very well on the projects I take on. But is this working hard? If I do three or four submissions every day this week, I can catch up, so maybe today is good, but that still leaves all the other days to consider. What I think I would really like to do is join one of those writer’s groups I hear people talking about from time to time. Kind of like my MFA classes, except instead of pushing us to read new, good stories and try to write new, good stories ourselves, this group could just kick all of us in the pants to send things places. I’d probably still get paranoid about whether I was making any progress, but it would be nice to ask some more people if they feel the same way I do.

 

Quick One

06 Wednesday Apr 2011

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Hey–the realization is dawning that if I’m going to keep that sending-things-out promise, I need to get cracking. It’s been a busy weekend (and a happy one), but for various reasons (including simple procrastination), writing’s fallen to the side a bit. In lieu of doing a chipper, dutiful job of writing a post here, I think I owe it to Writing Me to let to licking some envelopes. I’ll be back with a proper post as soon as I have some mailing to tell you about!

Quarterly Report

30 Wednesday Mar 2011

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All right.  So I know the blog has technically been up since October of last year, but this January is the more fair mark of when I got started with this whole ‘develop a web presence for yourself’ thing. I’ve been trying to take my writing life more seriously this year, so I think it’s a good idea to make myself more accountable. We’re at the 25% mark in the year, and I hear businesses like to do things in quarters, so let’s give that a shot here, shall we?

Okay, for serious this time.

What I’ve Done So Far:

Blogging has gone spectacularly well, I think. I’m posting regularly, sometimes even more frequently than the once a week I planned in January. I’m updating several areas of my site–my What I’m Reading page has seen a few updates, and I even posted a mini-essay to my Stories & Things cache. Making the leap to post blogs to Facebook gave me a wild jump in traffic for a little bit, and then it fell off again. I’m reading other blogs here and there to learn about what it is that’s working there to keep people’s attention. Maybe there are elements that translate to other kinds of writing, as well.

Speaking of, writing ‘serious’ things (read, creative work that I intend to send out for publication) is a mixed bag. In January I was high on resolution-fuel, pumping out words every day like a machine. Toward the end of the month, though, I realized I was starting to get lost in the novel, and not in the good way. I had so many gaps between scenes that I was losing the thread of what I was trying to do in the story, and felt like I was just meandering. It stood at about 15,000 words then, and hasn’t grown since.

I did write the Story in a Day, but didn’t revise it, and a few pieces for my Experimental Forms class, as well as the aforementioned mini-essay, so I’m turning out some product here. I’m also keeping lists of potential article ideas to submit, and I’d estimate I sent out around 10 pitches and manuscripts this last quarter. Low as that is, it’s a step up from what it’s been in the past, so I’m smiling, albeit with slightly gritted teeth.

Where Do I Need to Improve?

The perfectionist side of me wants to say “across the board.” I’m nowhere near the ideal of getting published regularly, earning enough to make a noticeable contribution to my budget (or, um, anything), and living that daydream writer’s life. Trying to make that happen in one swoop, however, is utterly unrealistic and a bit stupid.

I want to be more intentional about my writing. I feel like I’m heading there with some of the things I’ve done so far this year, but other times even successes have felt like happy accidents. I want to be more deliberate about growing in this area, so I propose that in the next quarter of the year, I try to meet the following goals:

1. Submit 10 queries or mss/week, total: 120 pieces. This is really scary, because as you can see I normally take something like three or four months to steel myself to send out that much. I have a good list to start me off, though, and if I want to make this happen, I need to get serious. Just try for 3 months to keep that level going, and see what happens.

2. Write and revise 4 new pieces. My problem is that I like starting things, but my enthusiasm dims toward the middle, and really fizzles out when it comes to reworking a first draft into a polished product. I need to force myself to finish what I start, and take the time and effort to make it something I’d (gasp) let someone else read.

And I’m going to end the list there for now. Both of those goals are ambitious enough to keep my attention for a while, so let’s get on top of those and see what happens from now til June. Business meeting adjourned, and back to writing!