January and February Goals

Oof.

I think January is going to have been one of my least successful goal-meeting months since I got back into writing. On the one hand, I've had an impressive amount of first/second draft productivity having gotten initial versions of seven short stories written this month. On the other hand, I haven't directed nearly as much energy toward my stated goals for the month as I should have. I could give explanations and make excuses, but the bottom line is this: I've gotten some good work done but I haven't gone in the direction I intended to go.

January Results

1. Submit four stories for the first time. - A complete whiff. This isn't good since my goal for the year is to get 36 stories out for the first time. On the bright side, I've still got 11 months in which to do that work. But I can't afford many more months like this one if I'm going to meet that goal.
2. Read fifty short stories. - I'm sitting at 26 right now with a few days left in the month. If I can manage it, I'd like to get that up to 30 before January is out. We'll see.
3. Submit programming interest form for Marcon. - Completed.
4. Publish a revised blog strategy. - Completed.
5. Reply to all Kazka Press flash fiction submissions by the 25th. - I was on good track for this but then ended up not getting the last of the responses out until the 28th. I basically am okay with this, since the pattern of stories coming in this month seemed to be very different from when I guest-edited -- in brief, about 2/3 of the stories which came in arrived within a day or two of the deadline on 1/20. Still, next month is a short month. So this was my month to learn and next month will be my month to meet the goal.
6. Have some point during the month where all of my stories which I consider to be on submission are out the door to a market. - Not even close.

February Goals

For a variety of reasons, I'm going to take it a bit easy in February. Some of the things which ate up time in January will continue to eat up time in the beginning of February, it's a short month, etc.

1. Submit three stories for the first time.
2. Read twenty-five short stories.
3. Develop a convention schedule for the year.
4. Reply to all Kazka Press flash fiction submissions by the 24th.
5. Make twenty submissions of non-reprint stories. - I still want, some month, to do the "get everything out the door" goal. But having a purely numeric count might be easier for February. We'll see.