2nd Quarter 2011 Goals Assessment

Well, another three months have passed, and now the year’s half over.  It’s time to assess how I did in the last quarter, and how I’m doing for the year as a whole.  So let’s get to it, shall we?

The Goals

1) Finish Masters by the end of April

• I finished it on 6 May.  I’m going to call that close enough for government work, and chalk this goal up as met

2) Finish book #2 by the end of September

• Well, I’ve started it.  I put the deadline as 30 August in Scrivener, so I guess I’ll say I’m on track for this one.

3) Win NaNoWriMo

• I’m still not getting near the word count per month necessary to achieve this.  So I’ll still call this one in doubt.

4) Write 25 short stories

• So far, I’ve got six, including Passing in the Night, which is really a novelette.  But again, close enough for government work.  I didn’t do the full month of shorts that I intended to.  The surgery put a damper on that plan, but for some odd reason I don’t feel guilty about that.  Regardless, I’m behind.  19 to go, and 6 months to write them: I need to do 3 in five of those months and 4 in the last.  Totally doable.

5) Set up my company and figure out epublishing

• Still done.  🙂

6) Go to a writing conference

• Haven’t done this.  And frankly, looking at my schedule and projected finances for the rest of the year, I don’t think I’m going to.

7) Stop Rushing

• Yeah I’m definitely succeeding at that.  Almost two months since I typed the last words of Masters, and I haven’t put it up for sale yet.  Of course, part of that was decided for me by the surgery, and others by Jeroen’s and the editor’s schedules.  But still, I’m going to give myself credit for doing well on this.

So not too bad.  Now, the statistics.

What I’ve written this quarter

• Masters of the Sun – 22,386 words (complete)
• Delphinus – 9,283 words (complete)
• Making Camp – 4,492 words (complete)
• Heist Story (untitled) – 3,156 words (in progress)
• SciFi Thriller (untitled) – 3,768 words (in progress)
• The Penitant – 217 words (in progress)

Total for the quarter: 43,302 words

Average/month: 14,434 words

Average/day: 475.85 words

So, my output was about a third less than last quarter.  Which is to be expected, considering I did essentially no writing in the month of May, because of the surgery and all.  Still, not too bad.

Let’s look at the year as a whole:

Words written: 109,756 words

Average/month: 18,292.67 words

Average/day: 606.39 words

So yeah, not bad at all.  I’m on track to go over 200,000 words of fiction this year.  Which means I’ll need 5 years to get through the mythical 1,000,000 words of crap before I become a good, professional storyteller.  Assuming other writing I’ve done in the past doesn’t count for that.  And that’s good too, since I’m on a 6 year plan here, not a 5 year.  Navy retirement’s in 6 years.  It would be very nice to not need to get another job once I’m done with my Navy gig.  Guess we’ll see.

Thinking about it, I’m going to modify my goals slightly.

First, I’m dropping the writing conference goal, since I’m pretty sure finances won’t support.  Besides, I need to conserve leave, since we’re scheduled to transfer next February.

Second, I’m adding a goal to reflect what I’m doing: submit a story to Writers of the Future every quarter until I win.

So there you have it.  Things are looking pretty good, I’d say.  Until next time!