2011 Recap/2012 Goals

2011 doesn't feel like a year in which I did very much when it comes to writing.  There were a few notable landmarks along the way, certainly, but not much that really propelled my career forward.  Here they are in no particular order:

• I finished the first draft of my first novel--although since the bulk of that was written in 2010 it isn't much of a 2011 accomplishment.
• I had a baby!  (Nothing to do with writing, but it was a big event!)
• Apart from my maternity leave, I wrote or edited on every day of the year.  This is definitely a good one, although I must admit that many days have only met a bare minimum requirement--still, it's something.
• Hubby and I wrote a screenplay together which feels pretty solid, and I'm hoping something might come of that in the next year.
• I received an Honorable Mention from the Writers of the Future contest for my story Child of the Sun.
• The most exciting thing to happen was receiving a copy of an anthology with my published story, Night Terrors, inside--and although that was wonderful, it came from a story I sold in 2010.

Some other elements of 2011 look less jolly:

• The other story I sold in 2010, Pandora's Time, never made it into book form as the press fell apart, and that story is back amongst the slush piles.
• I made no new sales in 2011, so I still have only one credit.
• I began getting my children's Christmas book ready to submit, only to completely ignore it come Kal'El's arrival.
• From mid-May until November I made only one submission, meaning that many of my stories didn't have any chance of publication because no one was considering them
• Although I worked on eight different short stories in some form or another, only two of them got finished and added to my canon of submissions

Some raw numbers:

• Days on which I wrote:  322 (all year minus 43 days during my maternity leave)
• Submissions:  25
• Rejections:  20
• Markets that never responded:  2
• Critiques:  15

I had a good year in 2011, but in 2012 I want to step up my writing.  Kal'El has been around for long enough that we have a semblance of order in our lives.  The boys nap at the same time provided I wake up early enough in the morning to make sure Kal'El doesn't sleep late (you'd think this wouldn't be a problem but sometimes it is--and I'm usually so tired that if he doesn't wake me up, I want to sleep in a bit.)  I've discovered Google Reader, which greatly speeds up my blog browsing, and I've found a schedule that (mostly) works for writing and internet browsing.  I want to use that time wisely, and take solid steps toward making more sales.  I seem to work better when I have deadlines, so I will incorporate some of them into my year.  To that end, my goals for 2012 are:

• Get the children's Christmas book submitted to publishers/agents.  I want to get this started soon.  I don't really know much about publication schedules yet, but I do know that if there is any hope of it being available by Christmas 2012 the process needs to start soon.  So my deadline is to begin submitting by the end of February.
• Get my novel edited and offered up for critiques.  This is the one for which I'm not setting a deadline because I really have no idea how long it will take.  Much of it takes place near Kennedy Space Center and I will have the opportunity to visit this summer, so even if everything else is done by then I will probably make some tweaks once I've seen the layouts and the surrounding town.  Summer seems like a decent target, though I'm leaving this one open.
• I want to see more progress on stories this year, so my last goal is to get one new story submitted every month.  This can be an old story that just needs a little push, one that needs revising, or something completely new, but by next year I want to say that I made 12 new story submissions.  Actually, I want to say I made 13, because I sent a new one yesterday--but I had hoped to get that done on Dec 31 so I'm not counting it as January's story.

I hope that this last goal, in addition to giving me much-needed deadlines, will also keep me from growing bored while editing my novel.  I don't know yet if I'll need to make a schedule (novel on weekdays and stories on weekends) or if I can just move as I feel motivated, but by switching between topics I hope to keep things fresh.

There are two more things that would be nice to see happen, but I'm not going to plan on them until I see how things pull together.  The first is, if I get my novel edited early enough, I'd like to start writing another one.  The second is I would like to start shopping the screenplay around and see if we can garner some interest.  I'll have to see when hubby wanted to get that done too, since he knows more about that business than I do and we have to work together on that.

So that's what I'm aiming for, and I hope to do better at these goals than I did 2011's.  How about you?  Are you happy with what you accomplished last year?