Oops Goals

[rowyn]

Recently, I’ve been thinking about my 2022 goal list. It did not seem particularly ambitious when I created it in January. But the year is almost 5/6ths over, and, well, here’s the progress report:

• Continue caregiving for Lut: On track
• Publish two books: 0 of 2
• Finish drafting two books: 1 of 2 (drafted Alien Peacelords)
• Finish outlining two books: 1 of 2 (outlined A Dragonling’s Family)
• Track food & exercise, on most days: On track
• Post monthly updates: On track
• Put month & year goal list in my bullet journal so I'll remember to look at it. Also, look at it.: On track

The “publish two books” looks worse than it is because the Demon’s Alliance epub is complete. All I have to do is upload it to KDP and Draft2Digital. The only reason I’m not doing that right now is that I’ve been futzing with the epub to get it ready all weekend and I want a break from dealing with it. (The print edition is also ready to go except for the cover layout, which Alinsa is working on. ♥)

So realistically, I’m 1 of 2 on all three of the writing/publishing goals. Which is great, except for the part where I’m 50% done on goals at 83% done with year. o_o;;;

So where am I on the other 50% of those goals?

Publish Angel’s Grace

• Still need to finish the second round of revisions. Mostly minor stuff, but there are a few things that will require actual effort.
• Need to paint the book cover
• Need cover layout done once the cover is painted.
• Need to do layout and final read-through

Estimated time to complete: 5-9 weeks.

Draft A Dragonling’s Family

It’s at 9% done, with an estimated 76,000 words to go.

Estimated time to complete: 9-13 weeks.

Outline another book

??? Since I only started writing Dragonling at the end of September, I haven’t even thought about what I want to write after it.

Estimated time to complete: 1-4 weeks.

I am pretty confident that I can finish any one of these items in two months. Finishing A Dragonling’s Family in the next two months would be a little ambitious, but I was planning to write 50k on it for Nanowrimo anyway. It’d be fine -- as long as I wasn’t trying to get anything else done at the same time.

But the goal isn’t to finish just one of these. It’s to finish all three. This is 14-26 weeks’ worth of work to finish in the 10 weeks remaining in 2022.

The likelihood of all three coming in below my time estimate is, let’s face it, not great. It’s not zero! I could experience a burst of unexpected productivity! In Nano 2016, I wrote 70,400 words and outlined a new book. Granted, Lut had not yet been diagnosed with cancer back then, but I was also still working full-time at my day job. This was also my record high for Nanowrimo. The Moon Etherium is the book I wrote fastest -- I can’t readily find the speed for the whole book, but I know I wrote 80k+ in 30 days.

Anyway, theoretically possible. However, I am expecting at this point to fall down on at least one and probably two of these goals.

From the “finish as many goals as possible” perspective, it would make sense to prioritize the two quicker ones: write another outline and publish Angel’s Grace

HOWEVER, November is NaNoWriMo. I’m not a fan of the NaNoWriMo website; last year I only “used” it in the sense that I updated my word count total on the last day of the month. (Really, the graph shows that I wrote nothing 11/1 through 11/29 and then 53k on 11/30.) But I enjoy the writing challenge, and especially writing alongside friends and strangers who are also challenging themselves to write more that month. I also love it when folks set their own writing-related goals for Nano. So abstaining from writing during November would (a) feel like self-punishment and (b) sabotage my overall productivity, because November is always one of my most productive months.

So from a “maximize both my productivity and my enjoyment thereof” perspective, I should focus on writing during November.

Since I’d rather maximize productivity than hit arbitrary date targets, I still plan to write 50k during November. And in my usual fashion, by taking the first three days of November off from my day job and writing as much as I can on them. (I’m especially excited because I don’t usually work on Wednesday or Friday, so I’ll have Nov 1-6 to focus on writing. Ooooh.)

I will count any new writing I do for revisions to Angel’s Grace towards my NaNoWriMo goal, though.

The NaNoWriMo constraint aside, I want to publish Angel’s Grace with a minimum of further delay. It’s so close to complete, and I don’t want readers of Demon’s Alliance to have to wait long before the next book. So I’ll work on the final pieces of that during what’s left of October and December, rather than, say, pushing to finish the first draft of A Dragonling's Family in 2022. Maybe I can get Angel’s Grace out before the end of December? But January is more likely.

That means I might end up missing all three of these goals: A Dragonling’s Family might be 70% done, and Angel’s Grace a few weeks shy of publication, and no new outline started. If that happens: so be it.

But I’ll see if I can do better than that. c_c

Comments

[tuftears]

Remember to put 'take care of yourself' on the goals list! If you'd have to burn out to make a goal, it's better to push it off and consider what you've got a head start on next year's goal. I don't think I'm going to commit to NaNoWriMeow goals, but I do want to get to the end of the first school day in Alien Tastes.

[rowyn]

I've been taking it easy all year, to be honest, which is why I will probably miss some goals. XD