I took October off in order to recover from the stress of my September submission challenge and travels. I also caught a cold in mid-October, and I decided it was best to rest and relax so that I don’t burn myself out before the end of the year.
I’m happy to report that I succeeded in taking October off from writing, and I feel ready to get back into the swing of things. So often, I struggle with not doing things, so I’m proud of myself for actually following through with my goal of doing nothing. I used to get super anxious and intense when I took time off from writing, and I don’t feel that way now. I feel content and centered, and I’m glad to see that I’ve grown in this regard. I wonder if maybe because I’ve been able to publish some short stories and my writing career feels real to me that I no longer feel insecure in my identity as a writer and no longer feel the need to push myself to write nonstop in order to prove that I am, in fact, a writer. I am a writer and will remain a writer even if I take some time off here and there.
I also had a poem published in October, which I’m super pleased about. It’s only a little poem, but it’s my little poem, and it’s the first time in years that I’ve pushed myself to write poetry, and I had fun with it. Maybe I’ll challenge myself to write a poem a day during poetry month in 2023. Who knows? I certainly don’t. Anyway, you can read my little poem here.
Well, now that I’ve taken a paragraph for self-examination and self-congratulation, let’s look at what my goals are for November.
Writing Goals
I’ve once again decided not to do NaNoWriMo this year, and that’s because I want to push through my novel revisions. I managed to break through the block I was having with revising the middle of this project, and I feel ready to sprint through towards the end. However, we all know by now that I struggle with following through on my revisions. They’re just so time-consuming, and they’re not as shiny as working on a brand-new project or pumping out a short story. I definitely have a hard time motivating myself to sit down and revise.
To that end, I’ve already set myself a reward for if I finish my revisions by the end of the year. I talk about that here. In addition, I’ve decided to break down what I have left into milestones and reward myself when I hit each milestone. To do this, I bought myself an advent calendar and divided it up by a certain number of pages revised. When I reach a certain page-revised goal, I get to open a drawer on the advent calendar (I’ve totally stolen this idea from the fabulous Denise Beucler).
If I divide the twelve drawers equally across the days in November, I’d want to be opening a drawer every two and a half days. That might be a bit ambitious, but I’m not going to count myself out just yet.
Submission Goals
As for submissions, I’ve got a handful of stories that have come back having been rejected following my September Submission Challenge. I’m going to try to get all these stories back out on submission and keep them out through the end of the year. Fingers crossed, I’ll get a couple more holds or even sales, but ultimately submission is the goal because if I don’t submit, then I definitely won’t get any sales.
That said, I don’t want to let my submission goals get in the way of my revision goals. If I have a limited amount of time to dedicate to writing tasks on any given day, I’m going to prioritize getting some revisions done, even if it’s just a sentence, rather than taking the easy route and submitting something I’ve already written and revised.
Some Exciting News
And now for something non-goal-related (but kind of).
Several months back, I was solicited to submit a story for a new magazine featuring optimistic sci-fi. The Kickstarter to fund Volume 1 of Habitats Magazine launches November 1st at 7 pm GMT. If you’re interested in having a look, you can find the pre-launch page here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/samuelcooke/habitats-magazine-optimistic-science-fiction
You can also follow Habitats on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/habitatsmagazine/
I’m super thrilled to be part of this project, and I have a vested interest in seeing it succeed. So, as a heads-up, I’ll probably be a bit more active on here, and my other social media accounts this month, pushing my lovely readers to back this project so that it can make its way into the world. I hope you don’t mind.
Thanks so much for reading