Midlist Writer: New Year's resolutions: eight months on

Thursday, 24 September 2009

New Year's resolutions: eight months on

At the beginning of the year I posted my New Year’s writing resolutions in order to pressure myself to keep on track. Let's see how I did in August. Yeah, it's a bit late to be blogging about this. More on that later.

Write 7,000 words per week minimum, 10,000 preferred.
I've been keeping up the word count this month, helped by my job at Gadling. Today I wrote my 100th post for them. My nonfiction books keep me busy too.

Get through that huge list of magazine article ideas I'm going to pitch. As I send them out, the list will be added to, so this is a perpetual goal. Same goes for several book proposals I have.
I sent only one magazine pitch this month, but I got a yes from a magazine I'd never written for, so that's nice.

Search for another paid blogging job.

This is no longer a goal now that I'm blogging for Gadling.

Finish a how-to book on writing that a publisher is interested in.
This project has been put on the back burner since I'm in crunch time for one of my Osprey military history books.

Try to get an agent for my fiction and nonfiction.
Working on it. Still no luck.

Do another round of edits on all three of my novels.
I've already done this. Right now I'm working on a summary for my Civil War novel, which I'm submitting to a contest.

Write my next novel, set in London and Oxford.
I did some writing this month, although not nearly as much as I like. I've been struggling with this one and having a lot of nonfiction work doesn't help.

Finish two short stories and two novellas I've been fiddling with.
I haven't done anything with these.

Write and send out "Willoughby: England's First Great Explorer", a book proposal I was supposed to write last year (whoops!).
Still haven't done anything with this proposal.

Increase my online presence.
I've been slacking off on my blogs, as you can see, but my work with Gadling is gaining ground. Several of my posts have made it to the front page of AOL, which gets me lots of hits and tweets.

All in all, a pretty good month. I'm especially happy about breaking into a new magazine market.

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