Calendaring for the Win

This has been an off summer for me. Some of that was beyond my control, but enough of it is my own fault that I’ve become too disgusted with myself to continue like this.

As long time readers know, I do best when I’m organized. Check boxes are my friend. To do lists are my friend. Calendars are my friend. And yet, I realized just a few days ago that I’d let all those things slide. I wasn’t making a morning list. I hadn’t drawn an empty box in months. My desktop calendar was still on May.

With growing horror, I looked up at my submissions goal list, taped like an accusation on the wall over my desk. I was behind. Crazy behind. Where-I-should-have-been-in-March behind.

I have attention problems. If I don’t follow a routine, I’m led about by whatever shiny fun-o-matic catches my eye. And I haven’t been following my own tried-and-true writing routines for months. This is why coming up with blog posts has been such a slog. This is why last month’s NaNo was such a painful agony. This is why I have been spending well less than half my daily writing time actually writing. This is why I haven’t edited a single short story, let alone a novel, since last spring. I know what I have to do to keep on my writing goals. But I haven’t been doing those things.

Clearly, it’s time for some better housekeeping. I need quantifiable goals, and I need a finite deadline, and I need a plan for how those two meet. So this week, I sat down and carved out what needs to happen in the following months.

Reassess Goals I still have the goal of forty-eight rejections for the year; I now have less than half the time in which to do it, because if I want the rejections back by the end of the year, I should send them out a good twelve weeks before the end. So instead of a steady rate of six-ish submissions a month, I need to get out the remaining thirty-five submissions for the rest of the year by the end of September, assuming every single one of them is a rejection. I honestly don’t think that’s attainable, but if I can get out twenty-five submissions by the end of September, I’ll be pretty pleased with myself and hustle the last few out (maybe) before NaNoWriMo.

I also have the goals of two new first drafts and two second drafts. I did manage a first draft of Copper, and I started editing Seasong/Sacrifice/Whatever the Heck I’m Calling This Mermaid Thing, but that’s as far as I’ve gotten. I think sticking with the original goal is a little untenable at this point, especially given how much work I’ll have to put into submissions, so I’ll drop one of the editing goals and shoot for finishing a second draft of the mermaid story and drafting one more new story during NaNo. Maybe I’ll surprise myself and squeeze in that second second draft, but I’ll owe myself a box of cookies or something if I pull that off.

Set Exciting New Goals I have my annual AWG writing conference coming up in mid-September. Even though I’m preeeetty sure I’m not going to find an agent who wants to sit down with me for an hour and go over a five-page document, I would like to prepare a list of blurbs for all my novels with at least a complete first draft- bonus points for the nearly-done partial first drafts as well. I’ll need to finish by the time I leave for the conference, giving me not quite four weeks to come up with five more blurbs and to clean up the eight I already have. Totally do-able.

I also want to work up a blog schedule for the remainder of the year within the next two weeks, with titles and themes for each post- extra points for notes or first/partial drafts. The blog just feels less crazy and stressful (and stupid) when I’m prepared well in advance. Future Jill will thank me.

Streamline Writing Time I have gotten incredibly lazy about this, and this is probably the root of all my writing evils. Writing time is not the time to be playing games, and trawling the bowels of Twitter, and catching up on blogs and articles, and conducting ‘research’ because, gosh, a story with singularity bombs and human augmentation and ticklish lab rats would be really cool. Reading about writing is not writing. Writing is writing. So starting now, writing time is nine to ten-thirty. From nine to ten-thirty, I will only write, even if it means spewing stream of consciousness into the void for an hour and a half. If I have made good progress for the first hour, I can choose to spend the last half hour working on submissions or blog stuff, but for no more than two hours total in a single week. Any more than that will have to happen outside of writing time. In three weeks, I will reassess the situation.

Summon the Kraken Accountabuddies Along with calendaring and, oh I don’t know, goals, another thing I’ve let slide is frequent check ins with my accountability buddies. Summer is a busy time and it’s become hard for all of us to get together for our weekly internet write-ins. (And one of them decided to go and get married this weekend. Geez, so selfish.) But that doesn’t mean I can’t check in with them every now and then on my progress. I mean, we’re friends. It’s not like they’d see my name on their phone screens and roll their eyes to Heaven. (Right, guys? Right?) So I will drop a line or two in Google Chat or text or whatever at least once a week about writing. That is all. It’s easy so, like cleaning my writing time, I shall start this immediately.

*dusts hands together* Voila! A plan! I don’t know how achievable it is. I think the submissions thing is going to kick my butt, if nothing else. But this at least makes it possible, instead of just a looming nightmare cloud hanging over my head. And whether I hit my goals or not, I’m going to keep up with my calendaring, my listing, my check-boxing. They’re my best shot for getting anywhere in all this so I’m only cheating myself if I give them up. (Sorry, Future Jill. [Past Jill, you suck.])

I hope you guys are keeping up with your writing goals for the year so far! Until next time, keep your heads in the clouds and your feet on the ground! Happy writing!

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Submissions Pump Soundtrack

Submissions. *sighs* Submissions are hard. And while I feel like I’ve gotten way better at it over the last year, it can still take a bit to get myself worked up enough to actually hit that send button.

So after I have all my research done, I’ve got my customized query or cover letters, and I’m done with the thinking, I start playing my jams and sending out those submissions.

Believer by Imagine Dragons 

Bodak Yellow by Cardi B (Radio version, haha) 

Me Too by Meghan Trainer 

Whatever It Takes by Imagine Dragons 

Lose Yourself by Eminem (This was my first pump song and the nearest to my heart. Sometimes I just listen to this one on repeat until I have done all the things.) 

(All I Do Is Win by DJ Khaled almost made the list, but I don’t actually own a copy of it, nor do I listen to it as much as the others. We’ll call it an honorable mention.) 

You may recall my rejections goal for this year. (Link here!) So far, I’m about 3/4 of the way to hitting my goal. I know that doesn’t sound that impressive, given that we’re 11/12 of the way through the year, but it’s actually quite a bit better than I thought I’d be doing. But in addition to a swanky check list that is slowly filling up, I’ve also had a few acceptances to soften the blows! Wahoo! I don’t think I’d have as many acceptances if I hadn’t been so stubborn about submissions this year.

Submissions can be difficult, especially given their high proclivity for turning into rejections. But only a submission can result in an acceptance, and only acceptances can propel your writing career forward.

So plug in those headphones and crank those tunes. The year’s not quite over yet and I’ve got a few more rejections to rack up. I’ll let you know the final tally in another month. Until then, happy writing- and submitting!

UPDATE: Discovered after publishing this post-

Motivated by NF 

Reblog: The Bulletproof Writer

Hello! It’s another NaNo months! Wahoo! *flings confetti* And with that comes stick figures and reblogs, huzzah!

I know we’re only three days in, but I’m feeling good about this month so far. I spent the first day working on a thriller project that I quickly sacked (probably in large part because I am apparently majorly uncomfortable writing about affairs), and then switched over to a Little Mermaid retelling. I’m really enjoying the switch, and it’s great to be drafting again after so long editing. This being a NaNo month, though, let the blogging laziness begin.

Our first reblog of the month is about dealing with rejection, something that I’ve been working hard to get better at. (As you may recall, I have a rejections goal for the year, which sounds a little insane, but is actually kind of working for me.)  If you haven’t come across Joanna Penn’s blog, The Creative Penn, before, it’s definitely worth checking out.

Here’s a piece from her archive by Michael Alvear, called:

The Bulletproof Writer: How To Deal With Rejection

Rejection is part of the writer’s life, whether that’s from an agent or publisher, a one-star review, or lack of sales. But that doesn’t mean that rejection has to destroy you.

Here are some tips from Michael Alvear on how to handle it in a more positive way. 

What danger is to a cop, rejection is to a writer–always hanging in the air dripping with possibility. And drip it does, onto the talented and untalented in almost equal measure.

Actually it doesn’t just drip; it pours.

Rejection has a 360-degree aim — from literary agents who don’t want you as a client, editors who don’t want your manuscript, publishers who give you an insulting advance, bad reviews from literary critics, hate speeches on Amazon, and of course the ultimate rejection—poor sales. Somebody, somewhere at just about every stage of your writing life gives you the finger, a hand and sometimes the whole arm.

Success makes it worse because now you have more to lose. Who do you think suffers more—the newbie who can’t get her first manuscript accepted or the best seller who can’t get his last published because his prior two books tanked? Success, as any best-selling author knows, doesn’t protect you from rejection.

Want to read more? Go check out the full post here! And until next week, happy writing!

New Years, New Goals

Whew! We made it through another year, folks! Yay, us!

Man, last year’s calendar idea was spot on for me.  I did a waaaaay better job of keeping up on my resolutions this last year.  Apparently, my secret to success is a zillion tiny aspirations and check boxes.  So as successful as that was, I’m sticking with the calendar format.  But now, what to put behind all those little check boxes?

Each year, I try to focus on at least one goal for each of four categories: physical, mental, spiritual, and professional.  Physical usually involves exercise (*shudders*).  Mental often gets kidnapped by my literary passions by giving me an excuse to burn through a zillion “educational” books.  (My two favorites from last year were Sobel’s The Planets, which filled me with awe and science, and Larson’s Dead Wake: the Last Crossing of the Lusitania, which made me cry over and over.)  And professional really just means ‘writing’, but writing doesn’t end with ‘-al’, so it had to be done.

But writing goals are hard for me; specifically, submissions are hard for me.  I do pretty well at drafting, decent enough at editing, but any steps beyond that are super painful, and for one main reason: REJECTIONS.  Rejections send me into clawing, leg-kicking death rattles every time.  I stuck to my stated submission goals in the calendar one hundred percent, excruciating as it was, but the goals themselves were weenie, anticipating the inevitable rejections I just knew I would receive from each submission.  (They weren’t all rejected, but it sure feels that way sometimes.)  I spent the year telling myself that next year I’d make some real goals, that this year was only an experiment, etc ad nauseam, and now that that new year is here, I’m a little terrified.

But I have a plan!

As demonstrated by last year’s mini-resolutions success, I do better when big goals are broken into little bits.  And as demonstrated by the check box calendar success, I will do anything for the right to scribble in a tiny box. (Gotta check ‘em all!)  I knew I needed quantifiable, attainable goals that built on themselves toward a larger total goal.  I had all the information for success, I just hadn’t put it together yet.  Then, I stumbled across Kim Liao’s Why You Should Aim for a Hundred Rejections a Year a few months ago and read it with a budding sense of excitement.  This!  This was exactly what I needed!

I needed to defeat my fear of rejections by making rejections my box-check-y goal!  *Wonder Woman stance*

So here’s the plan.  This year, I will seek out 48 rejections, averaging out to four per month; I had thought to do 52, one per week, but the monthly calendar thing made it awkward.  (Either way, it’s a wee bit smaller than Liao’s suggestion, but I’m still peeing myself a little, so we’ll start there.)  Rejections count as queries that don’t result in an agent contract or a book deal, short stories submitted that don’t get accepted, story contests I enter that I don’t place in, anything like that.  If I submit something and it is published, it doesn’t count.  With the rejections as the goal, I hope to a) trick myself into submitting more, b) encourage myself to stretch toward more competitive venues that I’m too cowardly to so much as research now, and c) overcome my crippling phobia of rejections and stop viewing them as personal hate mail and invitations to go shoot myself alone in the cold dark woods.  Whee!

On that note, this may be a copout, but since this is such a wild departure from my usual submission goals, and given my propensity toward self-loathing, I’m only forcing myself to try it for four months.  If I’m getting nothing but the weepies out of it by then, I’ll reassess.  But I have high hopes for this.  Check-boxes make everything fun.

It’s a little unorthodox as far as goals go, but I’m excited to give it a try.  After all, it’s really just an inverted publication goal; if I’m sending out that many submissions, something’s going to stick, right?  *coughs*  Right.

So how about you?  What are your goals for the year?  What are you trying to do differently?  Let me know in the comments!  I’d love to chat about it with you!

Happy writing, and happy new year!  Here’s to new beginnings! *clink!*

 

PS- Want more details about my personal life? You can find my overarching goals for the year, as well as a copy of January’s calendar, by clicking on this elegant link! –> marcotte-2017-resolutions Enjoy!