Monday, November 21, 2011

The Goal Oriented Girl

Tip of the Day: Looking for a good YA read? TANGLED TIDES by Karen Amanda Hooper releases this week and is available in preorder now.

At the beginning of November, my Rochester face-to-face critique group and I set goals for the month. It's an annual tradition. My goal was to finish writing the ending of my YA novel work in progress. Those last few chapters are hanging over my head like a dead weight. So how did I do?

Terrible! I don't think I've written a word!

It's not true that I haven't written a word of anything, of course. But these past few weeks have been life changing for me. I lost my office job in June and my other, more long-term goal for the year has been to work as a freelance writer and editor. This has taken off tremendously all of a sudden. Every project I work on is a learning experience, and every client brings me a new set of skills. I can't wait to tell you all about it as I move forward. For now, though, my routine of looking for work most of the day and then doing some of my own writing is completely broken.

I did manage to rewrite my first scene after attending the Highlights Mastering Setting conference with Kim Griswell and K.L. Going. That was a hard-working conference, by the way. I like my new beginning a lot better. Naturally, now that I know what my ending is going to be, I have more of that tone infused into the beginning.

So I'm definitely making progress over here, but I am disappointed that I haven't been able to type THE END. In fact, not working on my fiction is making me very snippy. For Thanksgiving, I hope I have the chance to curl up with the next chapter. Too bad the school system lets the kids take off time for the holiday! (Just kidding. Sort of.)

-- Kate, Miss Perfecting the Pages

1 comment:

DeenaML said...

Kate, let's pretend that your goal for Nov instead was to get a bunch of freelance work! You are doing awesome with all that editing! But yeah, so much for a schedule, lol!