Our monthly writers’ group meeting was last night. As you can imagine, I was still pretty stoked about my book being up on Amazon. Turns out it is also already up on Lybrary as well. So we had a little bubbly and some really yummy sea salted dark chocolate caramels and talked writing. And goal-setting.
I always work best if I have a deadline, whether it’s one I’ve set myself or, now, one that someone else has given me. All those years of setting my own deadlines has evidently paid off. At least so far. When I was home writing and running my husband’s office while the boys were smaller, I gave myself annual goals, broken down into monthly goals, then broke those down into weekly goals. Eventually, I got to the point where I exceeded those goals regularly, which was nice. Then I went back to working an outside-the-house dayjob and that kind of fell by the wayside.
One of my critique partners has a short story due soon, and she’s still playing with the first draft. I’m still dawdling on revising the second Medusa manuscript. So we set ourselves some goals last night for completing those tasks. I’m aiming to be finished with these rewrites before Thanksgiving. Unless I win the lottery in the meantime and get to stay home to write instead of having to go to the dayjob every day. So, Thanksgiving. That gives me seven weeks to get this right and off to my agent. Seven weeks. Seems like plenty of time. Until I think about working five days in each of those seven weeks. Which means 14 days off between now and then. On at least one of those days off, I’m going to be away, out of state. On most of the rest of those days, there will be household chores and errands to run. So I’ll be cramming as much writing time in those 13 days as I possibly can, plus evenings after work, mornings before I go to work on the days I’m scheduled for a closing shift, and on every lunch break for seven weeks.
And you know what? I’m going to make this goal. Because I know I can. And because I want to.
How do you figure out your own goals, writing or otherwise? Or don’t you?
We had an absolutely amazing sunset earlier this evening, though a project belonging to someone else in my house sidetracked me from grabbing my camera to snap any pictures. Good thing I got a few of last night’s equally gorgeous sunset before writers’ group started.
It seems autumn has finally arrived, and I love it! I hope you’re enjoying some nice fall weather where you are, too.
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