Half the Year’s Over – How Are Those Resolutions?

I have an ambitious list of resolutions for 2011, if you recall.

So how am I doing? As usual, I’m happy with my progress on some goals and not so happy with my progress on others.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading about epublishing and the state of ‘the writing business’ in general, and some of the goals I had in January don’t line up with where my current thinking is. I’m beginning to steer myself toward longer works, rather than shorter, and doggedly pursuing some of these items will take me further away from where I currently want to be.

With that in mind, I’ll probably strike a few of these goals off the list.

Here’s the nitty gritty:

• Write 302 out of 365 days in 2011.
  Fail! Even if I write every single day for the rest of the year, I won’t hit this mark. Something tells me I should have aimed a little lower with this one. I haven’t updated my spreadsheet for the last week or so, so my numbers are a bit off. However, it looks like I might make about 80% if I write nearly every day for the rest of the year.
   
• Triple last year’s fiction output.
On target. Even with not hitting the daily writing mark I’ve set, I’ve managed to double last year’s fiction goal. This irritates me a bit because if I were writing nearly every day like I want to, I’d really see the numbers climbing.
 
• Finish the two short stories that have plagued me since the beginning of 2010….or trunk them.
  Fail! Or maybe, Complete!! I wrote this goal poorly. Can you tell? I haven’t even looked at these two stories, so I will probably trunk them. That means Complete! Right? (This is the first goal I’m going to discard.)
   
• Finish the first draft of my current work-in-progress novel.
  • On Target. I’ve written 25,000 additional words since January.
     
• Write and submit 6 non-fiction articles.
  • Fail! I’ve written 0 articles this year, although three I wrote last year were finally published. (I could probably still meet this goal, but it doesn’t line up with my “longer works” goals. So, I’ll probably abandon this goal, too, before the year is out.)
     
• Write at least three blog posts per week for a total of 156 blog posts for 2011.
  • On target.
     
• Fifty-two of the above mentioned blog posts must be writing prompts.
  On Target: I’ve created a Writing Prompt every Friday since the beginning of the year.
   
• Make 30 fiction submissions this year, only 1/3 (or less!) of which can be flash or micro-fiction.
  Fail! (But not by much.) I’ve only submitted 10 stories this year. I can probably make this up by the end of the year, provided I have some additional short fiction finished…and, well, we know where my goals lie, so I’m not sure I can do this.
   
• Finish reading Sol Stein’s ‘How to Grow a Novel.’
  • COMPLETE!! Finally! Excellent book, though a tad dated for today’s market. Expect a full review sometime “soon.”
     
• Send 25 query letters to agents.
  • I’m not hopeful about this. Early on I decided that the anticipated novel I was going to shop needed one more ‘read through’ and I found a section I want to completely re-write, so I haven’t moved on this. It’s late in the novel, so there’s an opportunity for me to send out the queries and fix the section before some agent (or editor) asks for a full, but I really want it “all done” before I send anything out.

So…that’s it for me. How about you? If you’re over-exceeding your goals, will you be raising them? Are you abandoning any ill-made resolutions, like I am? Inquiring minds want to know!