First Quarter Report

Friday again, right after work. I really have to stop blogging at this time, the exhaustion just clings to me. I'm sure I'll be embarassed at the amount of typos I find in this post at a future date. Oh, well. I don't have enough brain power to actually write (haven't had any all week, and my word count of 0 is proof), so I figured I would blog. I intended to do a quarterly progress report of my goals at the end of march - so, I'm a week late.

So, let's look at my goals and what the progress has been (I won't address the ones with dates further out):

• Finish the rough draft of Shepherd of Dreams novel by April 30 - I am not at the point I should be for this one - little over 25k in, have made some progress, but no where near enough - hopefully I'll be done by the end of May, if not the week I am taking in June to write should get it done - if I don;t finish by June 30, I'm in trouble with myself
• Set up a monthly word count/productivity tracker - as mentioned when I posted the goals, this was created, and I have used it every time I write - there are some adjustments I need tot ake care of - it has shown me that I am progressively writing more each month - a good sigh, in my opinion, even if my numbers aren't at where I want them to be
• 10 hours a week OR 5k a week of new material - already said my count isn't where I want it to be - I'll get there, I hope
• Begin and complete 6 short stories - yea, well, I haven't worked on any shorts - been concentrating on Shepherd, which I might need to work on a short just to have a breather soon
• Revise the backlog of short stories that have been waiting to be looked at, and possibly get more feedback, then revise again - nope, haven't touched them - bad me
• Keep all completed short stories in circulation - another no - I did finally recieve a rejection I'd been expecting about 2 weeks ago, though
• Start querying agents and editors again for The Mind Behind the Mind novel - alas, I have not queried anyone because I still can't find that list! - I did revise my query letter and synopsis, and I have been planning to make a shorter version of the synopsis and send a particular query out, but I keep running out of time on my days off
• Critique 1 to 2 items a week - I was doing this, until I got urked at the Critters situation - I'll be starting this up again next week again
• Reactivate Critters - yes, I did this, and if you've been reading my blog, you know the trials, and I have an update - Wednesday the head person of Critters FINALLY contacted me (responding to the first e-mail), and I e-mailed him back asking for credit, and he gave it to me, since it was the writer that broke the rules first, not me, the reader - OK, so it took a while for him to respond, as he had spam and more spam to weed through after his vacation, so I will continue critiquing there for a bit, but I doubt I will ever want to do a RFDR for someone for quite a while - as far as the person that is reading my novel, she critted the one section, and now I haven't heard from her for like 2 weeks :/
• Blog and Update my Website once a week - well, you know how successful I've been at this one
• Keep up with my writing groups, newsletters, magazine subscriptions, and writing books - hahahahahahaha - I'm still behind on a million e-mails, and this is pretty much on my list AFTER e-mails

That's it. Am I proud of my progress? Well, it's not exactly where I wanted to be 3 months into the year (where exactly did those months go?), but here's hoping I'll get better. Maybe if I get the house cleaned once and for all, my brain won't slam the door on any productivity when it looks at the mess and doesn't want to deal with it.

Okay, the middle finger on my right hand is numb, so it's time to stop typing. Hey, at least I wasn't yelling or overly depressing in this post. It's the thoughts of spring, I think (even though winter decided to come back for a time where I'm at - bleh). Happy writing!