L. Saige Johnson

Hello friends! I talked a bit ago about wanting to add some more structure into my writing habits, and decided the start of a new month, and the beginning of more structure for me, was the perfect time to do so!

You may remember me complaining a bit about the struggles I have when it comes to accountability and finding the time to get myself in the headspace for writing. This is something that has always been true for me with many hobbies, mostly during the summer. Having little to no structure at all is my greatest inhibitor. Since I don’t have a typical 9-5 and work as a substitute teacher, my summer consisted of a part time summer camp job with not-so-consistent hours. Meaning my motivation and structure were in the can.

Now that school has started and I am getting consistent subbing jobs, which my wallet is very happy about, my ability to get to work on writing projects has resumed. I’ve already worked on starting my new project, which I shared earlier, and I’ve written a few pages of Fae Marked to try and get back into that project as well.

Rather than some loosey goosey writing here and there, I have decided that what I want to do is give myself some concrete goals for the month of October, and each week I will share my progress here with you all!

Goal number one: Write 15,000 words. This one is pretty self explanatory. I’ve never done too well with daily writing goals, like with NaNoWriMo, but this goal seems very doable. An average of 500 words a day, on any project, will be enough to meet this goal, and I think it’s one I can manage, with so many projects and ideas I have floating around. This one is also nice because I can make one of those like. Temperature goal visuals and I can color it in to show my progress.

Goal number two: Submit to five places a week. Ava has been on a roll lately with getting pieces published! While part of me is insanely jealous, the other part of me knows that I just need to get my ass in gear and get back to submitting! I have a slew of poetry and some new short story projects that I need to get out there, and aiming for five submissions a week, for a total of 25, if I get started this partial week, is a good start and a good way to get myself back in the habit of continually querying my work.

Goal number three: Write three full short stories. This one is inspired by a recent blog project I did with Ava, which I am so pleased with that I want to submit it, meaning I can’t share it here yet. But I think that writing some short stories would be a great way for me to get more pieces that are easy to submit, and to work on my ability to write satisfying pieces of work that aren’t insanely long winded. A good challenge for me!

Bonus goal: Restore my article backlog. I have been publishing these weekly articles by the skin of my teeth lately! While part of me can blame the busy weekend I’ve had as of late, I know that if I just make a backlog like I realistically am supposed to, then I won’t need to scramble as much when it comes to getting these bad boys out! So this month I’d like to at least get a few extra articles written up so I don’t need to stress Saturday night/Sunday morning to get them posted.

And there you have it! My goals may not seem super crazy or hard to achieve for some, but part of these goals for me is just to warm up and restore some of the habits I was practicing before summer hit. Goals should be realistic, after all. How many of us remember SMART goals from school? I only remember a few of the acronyms, but they should be Measurable, Realistic, uhhhhhhhh Timely? Something like that. I feel pretty good about these expectations and would love to make them goals for every month, depending on how this October goes for me.

So friends, tag along with me and stay tuned each week for short updates regarding my progress on my goals to get my writing habits back on track!