Last Quarter Check In

I paid my quarterly taxes.  I've updated my spreadsheets. The air is cool and the leaves are turning.  So, it must be time for me to do my quarterly check-in.  You can see my updated Write Club chart on the left.  You'll notice some things are already done.

I finished submitting work to agents in August. It helped that I changed this title.  It started as submit Wish You Were Here to agents, but since that project is more literary than commercial, I decided to go ahead and submit some picture books and my mid-grade novel to agents to see what kind of response I'd get.  I also submitted some picture books to publishers.  In total, I've now submitted to nearly thirty agents and publishers, well above my goal of twenty.

Not surprisingly, then, my rejection goal is also complete.  This goal was a late add in, but I love the idea of celebrating rejections, so I wanted to track them.  Tracking rejections has inspired me to submit more work, go figure.  Since August, when I added this tracking to my list, I've submitted nearly 100 poems to journals and anthologies.  That's more than I sent the other six months of the year. I've gotten some lovely rejections and some acceptances already.

This morning, I finished my blog post a week goal.  NaNoWriMo is coming up soon, and I'm spending the month of October planing and outlining.  In November and December, I'll spend almost five weeks travelling for my other job, so I scheduled all my Writing Prompt Wednesday Posts.  I've got some fun pictures and prompts coming up in the next few months. I hope you'll stop by for inspiration every Wednesday.

I read my 1,000th picture book just a little while ago, so I've checked off that goal, too.

I'm on track to write a picture book a month for the next three months.  I have a long list of ideas, so I don't think that goal will cause me any problems.

That leaves three more: Christine, Poem a Day, and Year of Writing Dangerously.

Obviously, I won't complete Poem a Day this year.  But I've written many poems this year, and I'll continue to do so.  This month, I'm working on short poems (14 lines or less).  Next month, I'm working on children's poetry.  I've learned so much from this challange and though it wouldn't work for everyone, it's pushed me to explore new things with poetry.   If I weren't writing so often it might take me years to begin to explore some of the new things I've learned.  And 192 poems out of 277 days isn't bad.

I'll write more about Christine in a later post, as I'm still working through the resistance I've had to finishing this work.

The 365,000 words goal is easier to deal with.  I've been writing low word count projects this year.  I finished Wish You Were Here, I've written many poems and blog posts, I've written ten picture books so far and have a huge list of inspiration that will keep me writing well into next year.  I've completed a lot of work this year, but that hasn't equalled a lot of words.  I imagine I'll write at least 100,000 by the end of November, but the word count goal looks like another goal I won't meet this year.  And I'm okay with that.  Really. I've written 73,000 new words this year, even though this is the first year I've tracked my word counts, I'm pretty sure that's more than I'd written by this time last year.

What I really wanted was a way to quantify and make measurable the goals I have for my writing life.  I tell my husband all the time that he's got it easy in his job--other people generally give him tasks or ideas to work on.  All my work is work I assign myself, tracking goals helps make that work more measurable and helps me learn what's realistic for me.

I'm working on a creativity coaching class with Eric Maisel, and it's interesting to find that other people don't like the kind of measurable goals that I set for myself.  For some people, this type of goal setting leads to resistance.  But I've learned to appreciate setting and tracking specific goals, and when I find I'm resisting a goal, it gives me a place in my psyche and my processes to explore, so I can learn how to set more effective goals next year.

I'm already thinking about next year's focus.  After two and a half years of working towards a poem a day, that seems more like a daily practice now that I won't need to track.  I feel better if I take an hour or three to work on my poetry everyday.  I don't think I need a goal for that anymore.  I'll let my thoughts continue to percolate through the next few months as I decide what I need to do next year to push this writing career a little farther.

I hope you'll be thinking about your goals, too.  About what kind of goals work for you. About what matters to you.  About your life as a writer.  I look forward to hearing what you discover.


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Ta Da!

I posted this to our One Thousand Picture book group on Facebook, but it occured to me that this information might be helpful to many writers needing to find wise guides for their work.  Obviously, if you're writing longer works, the time constraints and numbers will be different, but these approaches work whether you're deciding what to read or reading through large numbers of books. 

1.  Author studies.  I found authors who were writing in areas I was interested in and ordered every single one of their books from the library.  Heck, if you do an author study of Jane Yolen, you'll be able to read about half the requirement.  This month, I've immersed myself in Jonah Winter, Dianna Hutts Aston, and Laura Purdie Salas. 

2.  New book and library display intervals.  I went to the library and pulled all the books I hadn't read off the new shelves and all the books I hadn't read that were faced out (twenty at a time) and sat down at one of the short little tables to read and add them to my Goodreads list.  I chose some to check out for further study, and then (because I love my librarians) returned the books to the proper places on the shelves. I brought my librarians cookies today to celebrate my 1,000th picture book.

3.  Bookstore power hour.  I did this twice during the past year, once in the early summer and today.  I went to Barnes and Noble and pulled books (ten at a time) from the shelves, logged on to my Goodreads with their network, and read until the hour was up.  Today, in that hour (and a half, I couldn't stop), I read thirty-two books, enough to push me over the top.  I made notes about authors I might want to do a study of and gave stars to the books I thought merited 4 or 5 stars.  This is a great thing to do because the face outs are either new books, classics, or books that are selling well.  I put the books back where I found them when I'm done. I heard one of the booksellers say they had 256 boxes to unpack and display.  I've worked in bookstores, so I know they have enough to do without replacing the books read by obsessive picture book readers.  I thanked them when I left. And they thanked me for putting the books back neatly.

(Note: This is adapted from a post I made to the One Thousand Picture Books Challenge group on Facebook.)

Resource Sharing: Linda Ashman's Dialogue Manuscripts

If you didn't sign up for ReFoReMo this year, put in on your calendar for 

next year.  Only five days in and I've learned so much.  I've been so inspired

that I've already written this month's 12 x 12 draft.  Great stuff.  Highly

recommended.

I'm participating in Read for Research Month (ReFoReMo) this year.  I'm reading books I may never have found otherwise and being inspired by writers I love.  I'm also learning some new tricks that will help me bring some projects that have been in my head for a while into the world.  I love ReFoReMo and I'm so thankful to Carrie Charley Brown and Kirsti Call for bringing this fun challenge into the world.

This is the first part of the first page of Linda Ashman's picture book 

No Dogs Allowed.  You'll find the rest of the manuscript at the bottom 

of Linda's web page.  

One of the wonderful resources I've found is from the author Linda Ashman.  She introduced participants to the idea of a dialogue story.  I love these stories.  However, I'm not an illustrator, so I've felt as if this type of story was beyond me. (Picture book writers are frequently warned about not including too many illustration notes.)  Linda directed us to the bottom of her webpage where she has writer resrouces, including her manuscript submissions for four of her dialogue stories.  Yowzah.  Yippee.  I'm a huge fan of model texts.  I'm so thankful that Linda generously shared these files with us.  Now, in addition to being able to write the pictures I've been seeing in my head, I'm also inspired to revise an exisiting manuscript into a dialogue story--the story it has wanted to be all along.

Thank you Carrie, Kirsti, and Linda for helping me learn new tricks.

Resource Sharing: Reading for Research Month

As part of my 1,000 picture book challenge, I’ve also signed up for ReFoReMo.  This challenge, co-founded by Carrie Charlie Brown and Kirsti Call, invites picture book writers to explore the form in depth with mentor texts, guest chats and posts, tools for examining mentor texts, and general advice to would-be picture book writers.

The reading list for the first three weeks was posted today, and though I’ve already read a number of books on the list, there are enough new ones on the list that I’m already excited to find more writers and illustrators to fall in love with. 

The challenge includes both fiction and non-fiction picture books and a number of guest bloggers to help the reader get the most from mentor texts.  I’m excited to take part in what will really just be an extension of the challenge I gave myself to read 1,000 picture books this year. 

I’m already well ahead of my 1,000 PB challenge quota.  I’ve read 186 picture books so far and I’ve found some new writers to fall in love with.  I’m especially enjoying the non-fiction picture books I’ve been reading.  I look forward to strengthening my manuscripts with expert advice from these mentor texts. 

Join me in Reading for Research Month.  The added bonus is that carrying home 30-40 picture books every few days is also helping me with upper body strength. 

One Thousand Picture Books

Some of the picture books I read in Jan. 2016.

At the end of January, I accepted a new challenge.  I would read 1,000 picture books in 2016.

I love picture books. Love them. The feel of the pages, their crinkly libarary protective covers, their bigness, their lightness, their words, their pictures.  But I gave them up in 2012 after having written twelve of them.  "Picture books just aren’t selling," said one speaker after another at the SCBWI Northern Ohio conference.  "Well, they sell sometimes," said KidLit’s Mary Kole, "but not very often and not for very much." 

The message was, if you’re trying to get published in the children’s market, don’t bother with picture books. Even if you love them.   So, I put all but two of my manuscripts away and stopped writing them. 

Then, this year, I’ve gotten message after message that picture books are hoppin’ again.  Agents ask picture book writers to send manuscripts (be sure to have more than one).  Publishers list their picture books desires on Manuscript Wish List, more writers seem to be getting agents and contracts. 

So, I’ve decided to go back to an early love and see what’s going on in picture books now.  I signed up for the 1,000 picture book challenge (a subset of the 12 x 12 challenge). In the first pile of books I picked up from the library (I read 82 picture books last week), I found a wonderful biography of Fannie Lou Hammer called Voice of Freedom and it unlocked a possibility for a project I’d been working on.

This morning, I sat down to read ten more.  I’m awed by the sweetness of the vision that writers are bringing to the work, and I love being part of a group of writers who have committed to honing their craft through reading and studying model texts. 

Most of all I’m happy that publishers aren’t shying away from picture books anymore.  Now if I can just find those earlier twelve manuscripts and see if there’s anything worth saving.