I've never been one for resolutions at New Years. If there's something wrong in my life that needs fixing, why do I need a special day to kick off the start of it? I do, however, set goals for myself. A few years ago those goals were really simple. Finish a full length novel. There was no set time frame, just do it whenever. So...I did.
In fact, I ended up writing three. O_o
All right, hotshot, you wrote some books. Whatcha gonna do now? Are you going to do something with them or they just going to collect dust somewhere?
Since I had enough doorstops in the house, I figured what the hay--new goal: get published.
Are you insane?
Why yes. Yes, I am, thankyouverymuch. Hrmph. I wasn't under any sort of illusion it was going to be easy, believe me. When that very first rejection came in, my skin was already thick enough so that the worst thing about the rejection was the fact it arrived on my birthday.
Happy 34th Birthday, you reject!
Sure, I may be a reject, but I've got a goal to accomplish. So, I dug back in, played a little with the manuscript and flung it back out into the world. And waddaya know? Is that an offer letter I see sitting there in my email? Fancy that.
The like me! They really, really like me! /poor Sally Field imitation
Wait! Stop! New goal time!! Sell another book before the end of the year (2010). Well....just call me overachiever. I had five picked up for publishing, four of which published in 2010.
Score! Goals: 4, Failure: 0
I do NOT expect to have another year like last year. Why? Well, all total, I wrote five books in 2010 for a whopping word count of approximately 538,000 words. (Yeah, that number boggled my mind when I sat down to count it up.)
For 2011, I'm scaling back a little--
HA!
--I simply want to try to get an offer on a book from a different publisher. I have three in particular in mind, so those are the ones I'm working toward. It's January, so I have all year to work toward this. But really, to be honest, I already started working on this goal several months ago. And already have a ding to show for it. Not so much an outright rejection from one of those publishers like I used to get, but a revise and sub and we'll take another look. So, maybe just a little ding in--what I call--my tarnished suit of armor.
Happy New Year to everyone!
Posts
4 comments:
I like your goals! And I agree, it's good to set them early so you have the entire year to accomplish them. Not to procrastinate but to work toward them. Nice.
Thanks for the encouragement, I needed it today!
I hear you on the scaling back. I've decided I'd rather write one really, really great book than a bunch of average books this year.
It's easy to get caught up in the machine of publishing and get pushed to crank out the words.
@Kristabel I'm the worlds biggest procrastinator, too! I have to set them early or else, forget it.
@Annie The only reason I had so many last year was because I had several written before LSB picked up my first one. I only wrote one of those in 2010 and pubbed it in 2010.
Good luck with your quest for a new publisher!