I love May. May is my favorite month. It brings back so many wonderful memories, going back to all the school years that ended in May, and all the summers that began in May. Not only this, but for those of you who may not know, I met my husband in May. May 1999, in line for Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Yup, that’s right. He lined up for five days at the theater and I lined up for three (would have been five, but I had to finish making my Queen Amidala’s red throne room dress first!)… we started dating May 21st, 1999, two days after the movie premiered, were engaged December of 2001, married November 21st, 2003 and have been living happily ever after ever since! 🙂
So… what will I be doing as far as writing goes in May? Well, it seems things have calmed down a bit this month, which is kind of nice. Maybe I will get to plant that garden and lots of pretty flowers this spring, not to mention take the kiddo on many adventureous outings! Woot!
Project List for May 2013:
Write 200 words a day or 1400 words a week, of anything, period.I know this seems like a low number in the grand scheme of things, but I’d much rather continuously exceed my goal than continuously fail to reach it. So, I set it low for daily counts, to be within an acceptable range to make up words if I don’t get to write for a day or two! (1st week = 470; 2nd week = 886; 3rd week = 1230; 4th week = 4140! For a total of 6726 words this month, 526 over my monthly goal! YAY! 6.3.13)Submit something somewhere!Super vague, yes, but I don’t have a particular market in mind at the moment. However, I have realized that if I don’t make at least one submission a month, I start getting antsy. This month I hope for it to be a short sci-fi story headed for either the Writer’s Digest Annual Competition or Clarkesworld! (Three poems are off to Four Way Review, Torrid Literature Journal, Architrave Press, damselfly Press, Split Rock Review, Bone Bouquet, and Paper Scissors Magazine, WHEW! The short story is going to take awhile longer, and I don’t want to rush it! 5.18 thru 5.20.13 – yes it took three days to get all of those submissions in! Yikes!)Attend the ConQuesT Science Fiction Convention in KC, MO over Memorial Day weekend.Conventions are great places to learn, gain inspiration and have fun while doing it! (Not to mention an excuse to break out that Queen Amidala red throne room dress… *cough*cough*) (ATTENDED! Did not break out the Amidala dress, but did have a wonderful time and learned alot of great stuff! 5.25.13)Write poems for each Writing Prompt Wednesday.I feel like I need some new poems. Love the concept of “Found Poetry” where you black out words in a book or magazine article to make something new. Might try some of that. This is May, after all. It’s spring. It’s a new year, full of new opportunities. Let’s get ADVENTUREOUS! (DONE! And really fun, too! I am now addicted to Found Poetry! 😛 6.3.13)
Live long and may the Force be with you! 😉
I like that you’re setting lower goals for yourself. When I dropped to 1,000 words a day from 3,000 words, I felt like I wasn’t living up to my potential and was slacking off, but honestly, this goal is better. As you said, lower goals allow you to do more than you’ve set out to, which feels so great in the end, but it’s also not an unreasonable goal to ask for if you’re feeling particularly low one day.
I’m also impressed that you’re submitting things every month, along with writing a book! I’ve wanted to submit something this month to a contest or journal, but I haven’t had any ideas that have particularly stuck with me in the amount of time it takes to write, edit, and submit my work. Do you have any advice for how you get so much accomplished? 🙂
Yes, reasonable goals are way better than goals that are unrealistic given the demands of the rest of life! It is tough sometimes to be realistic about what you can accomplish, but most people find if they can be reasonable and break things down into doable bite-sized chunks, they accomplish more and thus feel better about themselves. They feel as if they are making progress and getting something done, which in turn motivates them to get even more done. I know that’s how I operate, although it took me some time to come to this realization as well! Hah. I highly recommend the book “100 Ways to Motivate Yourself” by Steve Chandler if you haven’t read it already (http://www.amazon.com/Ways-Motivate-Yourself-Third-Edition/dp/1601632444)… I consider myself a generally motivated person, but he has some excellent ideas in that book. One of which… if you find yourself balking at a large project, break it up into smaller pieces, and focus on one piece at a time. He also suggests, instead of attacking a project with high energy and speed, to just determine you are going to work on it as slowly as you want… and what you find happening is that your natural rhythm takes over and you end up speeding up after you start. But the idea of starting SLOW makes you less anxious overall and more likely to begin the project in the first place! Great stuff, really. 🙂
As far as advice for getting so much accomplished (sometimes it really doesn’t feel like much! :P), for me at least, I have discovered that I find it very difficult to write, edit and submit a piece by a specific deadline if I’m starting from scratch, as you said. What I’ve found works the best is to NOT write a specific project for a specific deadline. When I write to try and fit into a specific market, I end up limiting myself and not being true to myself, like we were just talking about the other day. The writing comes off as forced and just doesn’t work. So, it’s much easier and the results are better if I write short stories/poems as they come to me, and then later look at markets accepting submissions and decide then where I want to send what. In this way, you can build up a backlist of stuff, and then every month just browse who is accepting and decide which of your pieces fit which market! That has worked out very well for me these past few months. And then I keep an Excel spreadsheet that tracks which works I submitted where and when, and when I receive a rejection/acceptence. That way I won’t accidentally simultaneously submit anything to places that don’t want simultaneous submissions, etc! For places accepting submissions on a regular basis, see the Submissions catagory on my Resources page on my site if you haven’t already.
As far as ideas go, I am getting a lot better at generating ideas that excite me, largely due to what I’ve read in James Scott Bell’s “Plot and Structure” (http://www.amazon.com/Plot-Structure-Techniques-Exercises-Crafting/dp/158297294X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1368122652&sr=1-1&keywords=plot+and+structure+james+scott+bell)… there’ s a whole chapter on how to generate more ideas. Also, “No More Rejections” by Alice Orr has a few good “secrets” on how to generate good ideas (http://www.amazon.com/No-More-Rejections-Secrets-Manuscript/dp/1582972850/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1368122702&sr=1-1&keywords=no+more+rejections+50+secrets+to+writing+a+manuscript+that+sells) … both of those have helped me retrain my brain to see ideas everywhere, which is helping to build up that backlist of pieces to regularly submit! 😉 And then the novel… sheesh… I just work on it whenever I can, every spare minute pretty much. It means I miss out on some other stuff, but at the moment I’m really trying to make it my priority so it can be FINISHED! I’m chipping away at it, 200 words at a time, lol.
Wow, that was alot! Anyway, hopefully all that info will help some! And good luck with your own submissions! I’d love to see a Bait, Fish and Reel type of report from you now and then, too! I love to know what other writers up too, heheh… I’m nosy like that!
What a great answer, haha! 🙂 I’m going to add all of these books to my Amazon wishlist because I’m pretty sure I don’t have any of them. Also, I love the idea of using a spreadsheet to keep track of your submissions. I used to email myself links to the places I wanted to submit work, but that quickly became overwhelming and I lost track of where I put everything. I also think you have the right idea about writing short stories and then studying different journals/contests to see which ones you could apply them to. For the Yeah Write! Review, I got lucky because I got an idea at the right time, but it’s certainly not happening the same way twice and going at my own pace would probably be the most fool-proof way to get my work done.
I’m definitely going to work on adding a Bait, Fish, and Reel report to my blog. It won’t be quite as ambitious as yours–which is super impressive!–but it’ll be great to have a way to keep track of my thoughts and goals for the month. That might be something I start in June, right along with when I plan to have a draft of Dusk finished. 🙂
A DRAFT OF DUSK FINISHED IN JUNE!!?!!!?!??!?!!? HOORRAAAYYYY!!!!!!
My rough draft is so far from finished I sometimes feel that dread I talked about when it comes to large projects, lol. So I have split it into Acts, and that helps. But anyway, that is SUPER exciting and I hope everything goes as planned! Yes, I would LOVE to see a Bait Fish and Reel report from you every now and then, because as I said, I’m nosey, teeheehhehe….
I’m glad you found my answer helpful, and I hope you enjoy those books!! James Scott Bell is my favorite writer-teacher, I think. He has a brilliant way of simplifying things that others tend to complicate beyond any real understanding! I also have his Conflict and Suspense book and his Revision and Self-Editing for Publication book, but haven’t gotten to them yet. 😛 Looking forward to them, though!
And yes, the spreadsheet, yowza! I would be totally lost if not for that thing! But I love spreadsheets, so… any excuse I get to make one…. I make one!! That’s why I had to make my Resources page though actually, because I kept coming across these awesome writing resources, and I saved them on my Favorites bar, but then it was hard to find them because the list has grown rather long! So I thought it would be much easier if I just compiled all the links into one page, for myself and everyone else! 😉 Whew!
It is a lot to juggle, but we can do it!! 🙂 Best of luck to you with all of that, and happy writing!