My wife’s in Arkansas for the next few weeks, visiting her mother for her annual pay-off-the-guilt-from-moving-to-California visit.
Normally, this is a time I tell myself I’m going to get a lot of writing done, hermit-in-the-woods style, but instead end up staring at the keyboard, trying to dig up inspiration.
So this time, I’m setting goals. Daily, weekly, and monthly goals:
- Final-pass edit one chapter in the first novel every day.
- Write a draft of a new short story every week.
- Critique two stories submitted to litreactor (the online writer’s workshop) every week.
- Find a new agent to query every week.
- Polish and submit a new story to a new market every month.
I’ve decided to go with submitting the first novel to agents. However, I’ve also joined Publisher’s Marketplace, so I can be selective about which agents I query. Less of a shotgun approach, and more of a laser.
I’m hoping the explicit, bite-sized goals will keep me focused. Who knows? They might become new habits.
