Setting Short (and Shorter) Term Goals

Good Morning! At least it's off to a fairly good start for me. The kids are off to school on time, the major part of the clutter is picked up,and a load of laundry has been started. I have now made it to my computer with a nice hot cup of coffee. If only I had a lovely chocolate hazelnut biscotti to go with it. Ah well, maybe next time.

I have been putting of the rewriting of my first novel for far too long. Having never revised more than a short story or a term paper before, I have been frozen. I have had absolutely no clue what to do. I have been reading, reading, reading all the advice for beginning writers, but the thing is there is just so much varying advice that I still didn't know how to start.

Finally, I realized that I was never going to even get started if I didn't impose a deadline on myself. I officially started writing the novel last November, so I have set my deadline for revisions for October 31. I hope at this time that it will be fit for submission to agents.

So deadline imposed. Now what? It didn't take me long to figure out that putting sticky notes here and there in my manuscript and making notes in my journal were only going to take me so far. I need a more manageable goal than finish by Halloween.

I came up with an average number of current pages that I need to revise each day to meet my goal. This seems to work for me so far, the same way I planned an average number of words per day to finish NaNoWriMo. At this point, I need to revise approximately five current pages per day each weekday to finish on schedule.

Wow! I feel like I've finally got it. That means that I should have Chapter One rewritten and polished by this Thursday. Suddenly I have something more immediate, more tangible that I feel like I can accomplish.

This is now my plan- to work thru my revisions one chunk at a time. After that stroke of genius, I realized that I need to put my other responsiblities thru the same process.

So here we are, early morning chores completed, writing time started, afternoon responsiblities prioritized. I feel confident that this is acheivable.

(Let's hope nobody throws a wrench in my plans. I don't have a solution for that yet)