Monthly update: April 2018

It’s April! It’s spring! Or it should be, anyway. Maybe it is where you are. It almost was here, then the temperature dropped back down to the -20 C range. I’m hoping we’ll get back up to spring temperatures soon, though.

Anyway, it being April means it’s time to look back on March and reassess a few goals. Overall, I’m pretty happy with how my month went, though I am disappointed in my lack of progress in one area. I know what I need to do to improve, though, and I have big plans for April.

Before we get into that, though, let’s take a look back on March.

March’s goals

1. Edit 20,000 words of CD
2. Rework some character aspects in BC
3. Get halfway through editing a short story

Let’s start with the good news, shall we? I fully accomplished two out of the three goals on that list! The first one I checked off was actually the third goal: I made it a little more than halfway through editing one of my short stories this month, and I expect I’ll finish those edits in April. It’ll actually be on my list of goals for the month, which you’ll see in a minute.

The second goal to be accomplished was the one related to BC. Not only did I rework those character aspects, I also made some other edits along the way. I gave the full manuscript a look-through, and I think it’s in better shape now. Checking that goal off as complete is something I’m particularly happy about.

Now, the area I’m disappointed in? My work on CD this past month. I didn’t get a whole lot done. I did get about 6,000 words edited or newly written, but, well, that falls really short of the 20,000 I was aiming for. I think this is due to a number of factors. The largest was that I hit a difficult spot in the rewrite, and I had some trouble figuring out how to write the scenes that I knew had to be added. Between that and simply not dedicating enough time to the manuscript… well, you already know what happened.

So, what I am I going to do in April?

April’s goals

1. Finish my CD revision
2. Send out queries for BC
3. Finish those short story edits
4. Participate in some social media hashtag games/discussions

As you can see, most are continuations of last month’s. I’m determined to make that CD goal happen. To do that, I’m going to try adding in another night per week of CD-dedicated time, as well as see if I can get those rough spots figured out.

Goal number two, meanwhile, should be fairly easy to accomplish. All I have to do is continue with the list of agents I was using before, and keep sending those query letters out. No problem.

Number three, will fall somewhere in between numbers one and two in terms of difficulty. I should be able to get it finished. I’ll admit, though, that I’m going to let it slide if it interferes with finishing CD.

Number four, on the other hand, should be a little bit of fun. But it’s also going to require some planning. I’ve tried keeping up with hashtag games in the past, and I’ve always ended up letting them go partway through the month. I think, though, that if I know ahead of time what I want to post for one or two of them, I should be able to keep up with those one or two.

So, those are my plans for April. What about you? Have you set any goals for the month?