Wednesday, June 1, 2016

new month, new goals

Yeah! Here it is June already. Time to roll out a new monthly goal, but I suppose first I should report on my May progress.

Last night, around 10:15, I finished my third edit of my novel. It came in at 72,697 words in 39 chapters. I started it on January 17, 2011, after having a dream about a lost African boy. By March 1, 2012, I had written 16,024 words and started attacking the manuscript more seriously. It took me until November 23, 2014, to finish that first draft, coming in at 71,295 words.

How do authors ever make money doing this??? Somehow I need to pick up the pace, don’t you think? At this rate, it took me almost five and a half years to write this novel, so if I sold it tomorrow, I would have to get like $162,000 for it to say I could make a living just by writing books. Yeah, coz I am sure I will ever make that much money with my writing.

Anyway, on the upside, I finished this my third draft. Probably not my last draft of it, but it is closer to be presentable. I just read somewhere that 93% of the people who start writing a novel never finish it. So I am at least in the winning 3%.

But enough of that. What have I got on the agenda for June?

I am going to try to be more disciplined this month, as I already mentioned, I think I need more goals.

Here they are in order of priority (or maybe just whatever order strikes me)
1)      First and foremost, finish writing my second memoir, the one that tells the adventures of my two most recent trips to Africa.
2)      Research finding an agent or publisher for the first novel.
3)      Decide on a title for the novel. I have a list of prospects which I may share in the near future to get some opinions.
4)      I have totally neglected my first three books, so will promote them somewhere once a week.
5)      Speaking of promotion, I need to redo my author website. I think it needs to be totally revamped. It is pretty bad right now.
6)      Work on the nonprofit organization once a week. When my kids got home from Kenya the second week of April, it was easy to be all fired up about it, but that fire has died down to embers and needs to fanned.
7)      Continue with my ROW80 blog sponsor duties. 

There is certainly more I want to get done this month, but I better not scare myself off right off the bat. 
Also need to finish editing the 900 pictures I took on vacation in April. 

1 comment:

  1. Really like this idea of setting up goals by the month . . . right in line with assessing, restating, and making progress. Especially for those goals that seem to slip down to the bottom with no progress at all. That monthly check keeps them more visible. Well, maybe. Congratulations on finishing that draft. Does it seem possible to make some kind of a living from writing? I'm never sure. But we persevere. Make it a good week.

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