1)      Finish MM – Still behind. This is my MAJOR focus this month! I’ve planned some write-ins and accountability times with friends and it’s already helped make slow, yet steady, progress. (I think that might be my mantra for the year. “Slow and steady progress is perfectly fine.”)


2)      NNWM Plotting – I’ve been doing online research. I have a couple more books that I should read soon. Ideally I’ll be doubling down on this once the first draft of MM is done.

3)      Short Stories – Been a bit distracted. I’ll be back at it this month!


4)      Critique Group – I’m caught up, though people haven’t been submitting often. I think we’ll need a discussion about everyone’s vested interest levels again soon. Until then I have a friends novel that’s ready for a full beta read, so I’m working on that currently. (In turn she said that she would be happy to beta read MM when it’s ready. A worthwhile trade.)


5)      Author Visibility – Totally dropped the ball on this. Gotta post more cat photos!

How are your goals going?

1. Finish Moon Murder – The last of the pre-written work is with the crit group right now. I’m going to wait for their feedback, then write an outline, then start writing fresh words. My goal is 4K words a week. It sounds ambitious, but it should be doable, only 572 words a day every week. Alternatively that’s a little more than 1000 words for every day I’m not working. Considering I have written 1667 words every single day of November this should be a cake walk.
   1. If I keep up that pace a number of goals should happily converge. First I’ll be able to submit 4k words to my crit group every week. Second I should have a total of 80,000words by the end of June (including a week for writing the outline and a week off for vacation). This means that I can take a month and a half to edit before sending the novel to beta readers at the end of August, right before I go to London. I’ll get back and have almost a solid month to apply those edits before sending the novel to an agent.
2. NNWM – Still doing research for the novel and fleshing out the plot a bit. Character sketches soon!
3. Write and submit 12 short stories – I wrote, edited, and submitted a new short story in January. For February I did a *major* revision of and old short story that had been lost in the weeds. I think it’s doing a lot better now. I have a couple people looking at it, and after another round of, hopefully, light revisions I’ll be sending it out as my February submission.
4. Critique Group – I submitted twice this month on purpose. One because I took a week of vacation and two because the whole group needed some time to catch up and otherwise recover from life happening. The first week of this month is the majorly revised short story mentioned above. After that is a week off for the outline. Then there should be consistent submissions of fresh words from now until June.
5. Author Visibility – Going reasonably. I posted three times on Instagram and have generally been good about FB and Twitter. I’d like to post more original blog posts, not just 8 Sentence Sunday posts.

How have your writing goals been going?

I started 2016 with seven writing goals:

1. Finish the three novels I started in 2015.
2. Write and submit a short story each month. (These can be separate stories.)
3. Edit a novel and send it out.
4. Listen to all of the currently posted Youtube video’s of Brandon Sanderson classes.
5. All of the NaNoWriMo’s.
6. Join and continuously participate in a critique group.
7. Author visibility.

      (Space left intentionally due to otherwise
      unsightly formatting issues.)


Progress since last month:

1. On hold until 2017. 
2. I wrote, edited, and submitted a piece of flash fiction! It was a lot of fun getting a piece from start to finish over the course of a week. The piece itself was an experiment in present tense and portraying a rapid character arc. I think that it went well and I would be interested in doing a quick experimental piece like this again in the future. 
3. I've been fleshing out the wiki articles and working a lot on side character back story and motivations. 
4. I just finished listening to the last class.
5. I finished writing all of the pep talks for this NNWM, sent them to my beta reader, got them back, and finished edits. The first major library event was yesterday, while the attendance was small everyone got a lot out of the event. Many new events have been scheduled.
6. Totally behind. I didn't submit anything and I haven't reviewed the pieces that were submitted. I need to get on this soon!
7. Going well. Posting on Instagram at least once a week and posting a blog post at least once a week. 

Quantifying goals for the upcoming month:

1. Rescheduled.
2. Finish a major edit on Selfie and submit.
   1. Stretch goal: work on three other short stories that have been rattling around in my head.
3. Continue fleshing out the side characters. Around the 24th start working on an outline. 
4. Make writers toolbox piece by the end of the month.
5. Attend scheduled events. Check the NNWM site daily. 
6. Submit one new piece and catch up on all submitted pieces before Nov starts. 
7. Post on Instagram at least once a week. Post a blog post once a week.
   1. Stretch goal: write and schedule four blog posts for November so that I have more time to focus on my NNWM novel.

I started 2016 with seven writing goals:

1. Finish the three novels I started in 2015.
2. Write and submit a short story each month. (These can be separate stories.)
3. Edit a novel and send it out.
4. Do all the “homeworks” from season 10 of Writing Excuses.
   
5. All of the NaNoWriMo’s.
   
6. Join and continuously participate in a critique group.
   
7. Author visibility.

I have decided to add one new goal since then:

1. Listen to all of the currently getting posted Youtube video’s of Brandon Sanderson classes.

 
Progress so far this year:

1. I finished a rough draft of my novel Conwomen. I still need to finish Animal Companions and Mind Magic.
2. I have written three new short stories and have submitted two of them to different markets. One came back with a rejection. I suspect that the one that came back will need a radical rewrite, but it’s not going to get done this month.
3. It’s going. I’m progressing so quickly as a writer every time I look at a novel I see new things that need to change. As long as I don’t forget about the overall goal of publishing novels it’s ok. When I get something published I want it to be the best work that I can create at the time.
4. I have a handful of these done. I have not been keeping to my original goal of one a week. I should probably aim for two a week from this point forward to catch up.
5. I finished the first Camp NaNo with many new words written. This month is the second Camp and my goal was 50k new words. This has been waylaid by Pokemon Go coming out this month. Not only am I a huge fan, but it’s been a great game for the SO and I to play together.
6. The critique group was started in Jan and the group is phenomenal. We balance each other well and all give excellent critiques. We are going to be taking breaks for each Camp, official NaNo, and less official JuNoWriMo. (I did not participate in JuNoWriMo, but the other three members of the group did.) During other months of the year we’re each submitting 5k words for critique, and then critiquing everyone else’s submissions.
7. I finished this website!
8. I’m half way through the first class. They started to get posted two or three weeks ago, so I’m not too behind, yet.

 
Quantifying goals for the month:

1. Read both Animal Companions and Mind Magic, and then write an outline for the rest of each novel.
2. First I want to finish a second draft of my story about self driving cars. After that I’d like to put together a first draft of a story I’ve been brewing about medical pies. Stretch goal of a first draft of an undecided second short story.
3. I’m going to let all of my novels sit for the month. Brewing and growing needs to happen.
4. I aim to do two Writing Excuses Season 10 homeworks per week for the rest of the month.
5. Working on it. (I’m writing this at a Write-In actually!) My goal was originally 50k new words with a focus on finishing Animal Companions. Now I’m thinking about 35k new words with a focus on some new short stories and the Writing Excuses homework.
6. Break month. I posted one short story last month which will cover the first month of August when we’ll really be getting back into gear. (I thought I’d be nice and give it to everyone ahead of time so that they could fit it in when they can, but I don’t think that anyone will be getting to it early.)
7. I want to make a FB Author Page and Google+ Author page, and then add links onto this website. I should also add new pictures to each page on this website, and add at least one excerpt.
8. I want to catch up on all posted classes, and take notes on each of these classes.

 
What are your writing goals for the month?