August 2022 Goals

July was a good writing/publishing month for me: I had two stories published, one original and one reprint; I won a literary award; and I was solicited to submit a short story to a magazine. I also became eligible to apply for full SFWA (Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association) membership which has been a goal of mine for several years now. These were all exciting things that happened to me over the month, but let’s take a look at what I did in July.

I surpassed my five submissions goal by submitting six times. Of those six submissions, I received three form rejections, one acceptance, and two are still pending response. I’m glad that I pushed myself to get back into the habit of submitting regularly. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have had my reprint publication this month. It’s a good reminder that despite all the rejections, I’m never going to succeed in my goals if I don’t try to begin with.

My novel revisions did not go as well. I simply haven’t carved out the time to work on them. That being the case, I’ve decided to set a final revision goal and a reward that I can only get once I’ve achieved that goal. I want to finish revising my novel before the end of the year. If I achieve that goal, I can buy myself this beautiful vegan leather tote from an independent Aussie designer:

As far as finding a submission call and writing a new short story, I started doing so. I’d found a call I liked, started brainstorming, wrote an outline, and then I was solicited to submit a story for an up-and-coming magazine, so I had to redirect my efforts from the story I was originally going to write to polishing an existing story. Still, I’m not going to beat myself up for not finishing a new story since I did get a new story started that I fully intend to finish. I also got an old story finished and completely rewritten and revised, so I got good work done.

As for my Jane Austen reread that I started in June, I finished it by reading Emma, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion. I’d never read Northanger Abbey before and it certainly does not make my list of favorite Austen novels, but I liked the subversion/satirization of gothic tropes. Meanwhile Persuasion is my favorite Austen novel and Emma is my second favorite. I love how different Emma Woodhouse and Anne Elliot are as heroines, and I also enjoy the idea of finding a happy relationship over the longer term. For Emma, it’s in the form of someone she’s known all her life, someone she’s loved all her life without even realizing the depth or direction of her own feelings. I love that lifting of the veil, so to speak.

Meanwhile, Anne’s story, I think, is even more interesting. It’s a story about embracing the mistakes of the past and learning from them, taking past pain to forge future happiness. It’s a story that’s always resonated with me since I was a little girl. And before anyone asks, no I haven’t watched the new Persuasion adaptation, nor do I intend to. For me, the perfect adaption has already been made in the form of the 1995 movie starring Amanda Root as Anne Elliot and Ciarán Hinds as Captain Frederick Wentworth, so I don’t particularly feel the need to watch an adaption which, based on the trailer and friends’ reactions, seems to have utterly disregarded who Anne is as a character which is so central to the overall theme of the story. Anyway, before I go off on a rant, let’s leave Persuasion be.

My Jane Austen reread has really stirred up my reading juices once more. In addition to the three Austen novels, I finished reading three additional books (two non-fiction and a novel) and started reading two others (a non-fiction and a novel). With the return to what is more like my regular reading habits, I’m finding that the mental dullness brought about by the burnout I was experiencing earlier in the year is almost completely gone. I feel creative again and it feels good.

All-in-all, a successful July.

Forward To August

The month is off to an interesting start. On the one hand, I’ve already made my first submission and started revising the story I intend to submit next, on the other I’ve been absorbed in some family matters so haven’t had much time this week to consider my personal writing endeavours. Those family matters have now resolved, however, so I think I’ll be able to get back on track.

Something that I’m hoping to use as a motivational springboard is the fact that my story “My Song too Fierce” got a mention from Charles Payseur in a Locus Magazine review, which is beyond my wildest dreams. Seeing a writer I admire say nice things about one of my stories in a publication I esteem really helps to balance out the sting of rejection. Not that I write solely to recieve external validation, but it certainly doesn’t hurt.

Submissions

Since it’s been working well for me the last couple months, I see no need to reinvent the wheel, so for August my goal is to submit one short story each week for a total of five submissions.

I also want to start planning for my September Submission Challenge wherein I challenge myself to submit 30 times in 30 days. I began this Challenge in September 2019 and have successfully completed it three years in a row. This year, however, is different. I now have a full time job for the first time since I started doing this Challenge so I’ll need to be more strategic with balancing the time I spend actually writing new stories versus revising back-burnered stories versus resubmitting stories I feel are polished to the best of my abilities. I will also be travelling during the later half of September. This is both an advantage in that I’ll gain a day when I arrive in the US due to the magic of the International Date Line, and a disadvantage in that I’ll be jetlagged. However, I’m confident in my abilities to balance work, travel, and writing goals. After all, I’ve succeeded in completing NaNoWriMo while traveling and working full time in the past. I simply need to be discplined. That said, if I don’t complete the challenge, I won’t beat myself up too much.

Revisions

Okay, it’s time to come up with a new revision strategy, since clearly the two-chapters-a-month-thing isn’t working for me at the moment. Like I said above, I’ve set an overall goal for completing the revisions on this novel by the end of the year and if I do so I can reward myself. However, in order to achieve that goal, I need to break it down into smaller pieces, preferably a weekly or daily goal so I don’t get to the end of each month and rush to try to get my revisions done. So let’s set some daily goals (this means doing what I like to call Writer’s Math).

I’m currently on Chapter Fourteen out of a planned Twenty-Seven, so I have fourteen chapters to revise. I have one chapter I need to write from scratch, two to delete entirely while distributing any important plot/world developments into other chapters, and two chapters that need a change of Point of View Character. The remaining nine chapters need some revision but are mostly going to be hitting the same plot, character, and world beats.

Once I finish revising from Chapter Fourteen I want to go back to the beginning to make sure everything flows properly and I’ve seeded the beginning with enough information that the payoff makes sense. So that means I have a total of forty-one chapters to get through before the end of the year. As of today there are one hundred forty-seven days remaining in the year. If I do a consistent amount of work each day from today until the end of the year, I’ll need to get through revising just over one quarter of a chapter each day. On average, my chapters are about eleven pages long. So I’ll want to get through just under three pages of revision each day.

That’s managable.

Now, I’m going to make a spread sheet to track my revision progress so I can update it each day and keep track of how many pages I’ve edited each day. At the end of the month, I’ll check in and see how much progress I’ve made and whether or not revising three pages a day for the rest of the year is actually a sustainable goal given my current life circumstances and the amount of personal writing time I have each day.

As for short story revisions, I’m currently midway through revising a short story that I’d like to have in a shape to submit by August 15th. There’s another short story I’m in the midst of rewriting that I’d like to be able to submit by the end of this month as well. If I have the bandwidth, I’d like to get a third story polished up, but we’ll see if I’ve got the time for that.

Short Stories

As for writing a new short story, I’d like to finish the draft of a story I started in July. I’ve got a couple other ideas floating around that might be good for drafting to submit during my September Submission Challenge, so I might do some brainstorming and outlining for those so that I’m not starting from total scratch in September.

Anyway, I think the pace at which I’ve been working has been good for me lately. I’ll try to up it a little bit in coming months, but I don’t want to stretch myself too thin otherwise I’ll not be able to function.

Thanks for reading!