{"id":7686,"date":"2012-08-27T00:06:56","date_gmt":"2012-08-27T05:06:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=7686"},"modified":"2012-08-27T00:06:56","modified_gmt":"2012-08-27T05:06:56","slug":"summer-recap-and-new-goals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/summer-recap-and-new-goals\/","title":{"rendered":"Summer recap and new goals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So back in June I made <a href=\"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=7408\">a to do list<\/a> of things I wanted to accomplish this summer. \u00a0I&#8217;ve only got a week left before I go overseas again, and I&#8217;m happy to say I&#8217;m on track to finish most of them. \u00a0A couple of them (such as doing a blog tour and submitting aggressively to book bloggers) I decided weren&#8217;t worth my time, and dropped them, but these are the major things I&#8217;ve accomplished:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Release print-on-demand editions of <strong>Genesis Earth, Bringing Stella Home,<\/strong> and\u00a0<strong>Desert Stars<\/strong> through CreateSpace.<\/li>\n<li>Redo cover art for\u00a0<strong>Bringing Stella Home.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Redo blurb\/description for all titles.<\/li>\n<li>Put proper copyright page in all titles.<\/li>\n<li>Publish all titles on Kobo Writing Life.<\/li>\n<li>Find a better way to build an ebook and reformat all titles.<\/li>\n<li>Finish the second draft of\u00a0<strong>Stars of Blood and Glory.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Finish and publish parts I and II of\u00a0<strong>Star Wanderers.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The only major thing I haven&#8217;t accomplished is figuring out how to sell ebooks directly from my website. \u00a0I figure I can set that up later, though, when I&#8217;ve got a large enough readership to justify it. \u00a0If it&#8217;s all online, I can probably do it from anywhere.<\/p>\n<p>While I was vacationing with my family on Cape Cod, I had a chance to step back and take a long look at what I&#8217;m doing with my life, which helped me to set some new goals and get a renewed sense of direction. \u00a0I stopped tracking my daily writing word counts in July, which threw off my productivity a lot more than I thought it would. \u00a0After setting some long-term goals, though, I think I can find a better way to structure my writing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>In ten years (2022), I want to&#8230;<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>have 25+ published novels.<\/li>\n<li>earn a solid middle-class income through my writing.<\/li>\n<li>be married and have kids.<\/li>\n<li>own a house.<\/li>\n<li>live in the United States.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>My lifetime goal is to publish 100+ novels, which is actually a lot more doable than it sounds. \u00a0It means writing a minimum of two novels a year, though, so I&#8217;m going to have to follow <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sfwriter.com\/ow05.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Heinlein&#8217;s rules<\/a> a lot closer than I have been in the past. \u00a0That&#8217;s the trouble with keeping a daily word count: it made me look a lot more productive when I was in revisions, so I spent more time doing that than writing new work.<\/p>\n<p>In three years (2015), I want to&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>have at least 10 published novels.<\/li>\n<li>make enough with my writing not to need another job.<\/li>\n<li>be married or engaged.<\/li>\n<li>have lived for at least three months in 3+ countries (not including USA).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I want to settle back down in the States eventually, but before that I want to get around and see the world a bit. \u00a0The absolute coolest thing would be to marry another world traveler and make enough on the writing to have a bunch of adventures together. \u00a0I&#8217;m not sure if I&#8217;ll find her in Georgia, but I&#8217;ll be sure to keep my eyes open.<\/p>\n<p>As for short-term goals, I&#8217;m still trying to work them out. \u00a0Here&#8217;s what I have so far:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Quarterly Goals:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Start at least 2 new projects.<\/li>\n<li>Finish at least 2 first drafts.<\/li>\n<li>Publish at least 2 titles (print and ebook counts as two).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I think this is enough to stretch me while still being doable. \u00a0By my count, in the first quarter of this year I did 2-2-1, in the second quarter I did 2-2-0, and in the current quarter, I&#8217;m at 2-0-5 so far. \u00a0Of course, this includes all the\u00a0<strong>Star Wanderers<\/strong> novelettes and novellas, which I hope to expand in the future.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not going to count revisions as progress, except as part of the publishing stage. \u00a0Some stuff needs a lot of revision, other stuff, not so much. \u00a0What I <em>really<\/em> want to do is train myself to produce high quality work on the first or second write-through. \u00a0Of course, I&#8217;ll still use test readers to gauge my work before publishing anything.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Monthly Goals:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Finish at least 2 projects (first draft or revision).<\/li>\n<li>Write at least 15k words of new material.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I can write a lot more than 15k words in a month, of course, but I figure this is a good starting point. \u00a0The key is that this is for new material. \u00a0When I looked back at my word counts, I found that months of revision would go by before I actually worked on something new. \u00a0I want to change that, but I still need to allow for longer projects that might require several weeks of revision (while emphasizing the need to produce new material, of course).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Weekly\/Daily Goals:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Keep all project deadlines.<\/li>\n<li>Start each day with writing.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;ve found that if I don&#8217;t start off each day with writing, I keep putting it off until I&#8217;ve spent more time and energy angsting about it than actually doing it. \u00a0For a short period of time this summer, I put my butt in the chair and my hands on the keyboard first thing after waking up (even before getting dressed). \u00a0It was amazing how much of a difference that made.<\/p>\n<p>Beyond that, I&#8217;m not really sure what other goals to set. \u00a0I want to plan things out on a project to project basis, but beyond that I haven&#8217;t yet figured out what kind of a daily structure I need to build.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s probably a good idea to keep things flexible at this point, though, since I have no idea what my schedule is going to be like once I&#8217;m in Georgia. \u00a0I do know a little bit about my next placement&#8211;more on that later&#8211;but for the first half of September, I&#8217;m going to be all over the place. \u00a0Ani, Tusheti, Kars, Akhaltsikhe, Tbilisi, Baghdati, and Istanbul&#8211;it&#8217;s going to be crazy!<\/p>\n<p>For this next week, my goal is to finish the revisions for\u00a0<strong>Star Wanderers: Sacrifice (Part III)<\/strong> and send that out to my beta readers. \u00a0I&#8217;ve been struggling with it all month, but I think I&#8217;ve got a pretty good idea of where I need to go with it. \u00a0I&#8217;m going to finish chapter 3 tomorrow, then rewrite chapters 4 and 5 from scratch.<\/p>\n<p>After that&#8230;another Caucasian adventure! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So back in June I made a to do list of things I wanted to accomplish this summer. \u00a0I&#8217;ve only got a week left before I go overseas again, and I&#8217;m happy to say I&#8217;m on track to finish most of them. \u00a0A couple of them (such as doing a blog tour and submitting aggressively&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/summer-recap-and-new-goals\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Summer recap and new goals<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[857],"tags":[120,102,223,33,46,529,156,155,723,142,495,148],"class_list":["post-7686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sw","tag-daily-routine","tag-deadlines","tag-finishing","tag-girls-and-dating","tag-goals-and-plans","tag-indie-publishing","tag-revising","tag-rough-drafts","tag-summer-2012","tag-summer-plans","tag-teaching-english-abroad","tag-travel","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-1ZY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7686"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7688,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7686\/revisions\/7688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}