Goals Assessment – 3rd Quarter 2011

Another calendar quarter has gone by.  It’s time once again to assess my progress toward my writing goals for the year.  So without further ado, let’s get to it.

The Goals

1.  Finish Masters by the end of April

– Done, although it bears pointing out that I made some changes to the book in late August/early September.

2.  Finish book #2 by the end of September

– Fail.  The scifi thriller (no it still doesn’t have a name) is currently at about 26,000 words out of probably 80,000 needed to finish it.  So yeah, no dice on that one.  Oh well.

3.  Win NaNoWriMo

– I know from my 30,000 word challenge back in July that I can easily do 50,000 words in a month if I’m not distracted.  The problem is I’m almost never not distracted.  I’m more confident in my ability to be successful in this goal than I was before setting that challenge for myself back in July, but it’s still far from certain.

4.  Write 25 Short Stories

– I’m counting Novelettes in this tally, even though they’re not short stories by the strict definition.  Anyway, I’ve got 9 written.  That’s not so hot.  But then again, I’ve got three months (twelve weeks) to write sixteen stories.  I know from experience that I can knock out shorter stories (3,000 – 4,000 words or less) in an evening if the muse catches me right.  But still, I’ll have to write five stories in October and November, and six in December, to meet the goal.  Doable.  But, like I mentioned in my sales assessment post yesterday, I want to finish and publish the SciFi thriller and 30 Hours before the end of the year too.  If 30 Hours ends up being novella length like I think it will, it’ll take a fair amount of time to finish them both.  We’ll see how this goal works out.  It’s still doable, but it’s looking doubtful.

5.  Set up my company and figure out epblushing.

– Goal met.  Still.

6.  Stop rushing.

– I think I’m still doing well at this.  The sheer amount of time I took to get Masters published is testimony to that, no?

7.  Submit to Writers of the Future each quarter.

– I’m batting a thousand on submissions so far.

Statistics

Ok, here’s what I’ve written this quarter:

• Masters of the Sun (completed) – 6,649 words
• In Your Sleep (completed) – 2,885 words
• Lords of the Remnant (completed) – 3,788 words
• So You Want To Be A Dragon Slayer? (completed) – 10,729 words
• SciFi Thriller (in progress) – 22,121 words
• 30 Hours (in progress) – 907 words
• The Penitent (in progress) – 8,395 words
• Cop story (not titled yet, in progress) – 1,647 words

Total word count – 57,121 words

Average/month – 19,040.33 words

Average/day – 620.88 words

I definitely did better than last quarter, but I still haven’t equalled my output from the first quarter of this year.  Considering the 30,000 word challenge in July, I had ample opportunity to crush my previous record.  But to be frank, I didn’t write much in August at all.  It is what it is.

For the year as a whole, the stats look like this:

Total word count – 166,877 words

Average/month – 18,541.89 words

Average/day – 611.27 words

Assuming I maintain that pace, I’ll end the year with 223,124 words.  Of course, that will mean I failed NaNoWriMo, which I’m not planning to do.  So add 30,000 to 40,000 words to that total to account for November’s impending success.  Knock on wood.

Summary

So there you have it.  I dropped the ball on my self-imposed deadline for novel #2 (the SciFi thriller).  That’s bad.  But the deadline was self-imposed, so it’s not like I’ve really harmed anything.  Looking ahead, the short story goal, though still attainable, is in doubt.  And NaNoWriMo remains a toss-up.  Overall, it’s been a pretty good first year, I think.  I’ve finished a lot of stories and have a bunch more in the pipeline.  Now I just need to finish out the year strong so I can end it on a high note.