September is a #writemotivation month so with it being Monday, that makes it time for goal-check! This is also about the time I usually do a check at how I'm proceeding towards my goals for the month, with it being mid-month.
I'll put the gory details below, but I'll cut right to the chase. My progress stinks. Stinks, stinks, stinks.
There are a variety of reasons for this but mostly it boils down to having underestimated the amount of work I needed to do for several writing-related tasks which weren't on my list below combined with worse-than-usual time management on my part. There are other factors, too, but those are the two biggies.
So, what I need to do is make better choices going forward. I've made a bit of progress there. As much as I enjoy the weekly Liberty Hall flash fiction contest I skipped it this past weekend and I think I'll probably skip it again this coming weekend unless I've made miraculous progress on the goals which aren't going well for the month.
1) Keep my Daily Writing Chain going. - No issues so far. A lot of my writing time in the past week has been critique work for various groups I'm a part of. This is all good work to be doing, but between not using my time efficiently and having that work, it means my own productivity hasn't been what I would have liked it to be.
2) Decide on and publish revisions to my blogging schedule once my hiatus is complete. - Done.
3) Submit at least six of my previously-completed stories for the first time. - I haven't made any progress on this at all. In a way, this is one I'm really frustrated about because it means I don't have new stories going out the door. On the other hand, this is one where there's no time element except what I choose to impose upon myself. Which brings me to...
4) Write a story and submit it to Criminal Element. - As I mentioned last week, I had one idea, started developing it and decided it didn't feel like a good fit. And I haven't gotten back off square one. I really want to make this my top writing priority for the next week. (I do still have other writing-related things to work on which I can't just set aside, specifically reading the submissions for Kazka Press and critiquing the rest of the stories from this month's Shock Totem flash fiction contest.)
5) Write the first draft of my story for the Codex Halloween contest. - I still have an idea for this story which I think will work but which I haven't fully fleshed out yet. I'd like to get the first draft done by 9/30 since the story is due in by 10/6, but if I had to push it all into those first six days of October, I probably could stand to do so.
6) Get a revised version of my novelette out to beta readers. - This is done and I'm just waiting on feedback from one version before I call this done and get it put online. One thing that I spent a LOT of time on this past week was going through iteration after iteration of possible cover designs with some people online. On the one hand, I seem to have a much better cover plan than I originally had and I did get some good new resources for fonts. On the other hand, I'll be spending a bit of money on the art and I spent multiple hours working through various versions of the cover in the last five to seven days. Ultimately, this is probably time I could have spent better or, at the very least, I could have prioritized this effort further down my list. But, that's why I do these write-ups. To see where I've made poor choices and try to learn from them and not repeat them!
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