If you’ve been tuned in for the last month, you’ll know that I set some personal goals for the month of October, aiming to improve both my accountability and productivity. Somehow, October is already over, so it’s time to break down how I did, and consider what this means for the month of November, and maybe even my writing in general.

Goal One: Write 15,000 Words

So what does this mean for November? As many of you may know, November is NaNoWriMo, where writers go through the month with the goal to write a 50,000 word novel. And while the organization has shut down due to (very justified) backlash because of their acceptance of AI, the tradition will still be popular for many. I myself have never gotten too far into NaNoWriMo and don’t think I’ll try to finish a whole novel this month (though that would be spectacular), I still want to elevate my goal from October.

I don’t think jumping from 15k to 50k words is very realistic, so for November, I’m going to aim for 20k. This will take a little more focus and dedication on my part, but should still be very attainable with the simple task of writing just over 600 words a day. Of course, I’m already behind, but a few good days will get me back on track.

One of the biggest accomplishments from this goal was that my newest novel project (working name The Changeling Prince), has reached 10k words! Almost all of this has been from this month of work, and I can’t wait to see where I wind up this time next month.

Goal Two: Submit to Five Places a Week

This goal was a complete and utter flop. And that’s perfectly fine! One of the points of trying out different goals is so see what sticks and what doesn’t. Clearly, I went about this goal wrong. While I’ve done well with weekly submission goals in the past, I’m out of practice with submitting projects. And once I got a week behind, it made it even harder for me to want to get started, knowing that it would take a lot to even hit the minimum goal of 20 submissions.

So I shouldn’t even bother, right? Wrong! I just need to pivot. Rather than setting a daily or weekly goal, I think I’ll try out a monthly goal, similar to Goal One. So for November, I’m going to aim to submit to 10 different publishers or agents. This way, I can knock it out all at once, or I can space it out. Since I can’t fall behind, I think this will help me feel less daunted/in a rut like I did last month. Something else I want to do is make a visual tracker for submissions just like I’m doing for word count. I think this can help a lot since I don’t want to be stuck with a blank tracker. And even if I only do one submission, that’s still more than I did in October! The goal isn’t perfection, it’s improvement.

Goal Three: Write Three Full Short Stories

In October, I finished two short stories, which will be shared with you all next week! I didn’t quite hit this goal, but I really don’t mind. I was still writing consistently, and don’t mind that most of it went to my longer form projects. Those need love, too!

For November, I think that I’ll actually drop this goal. It isn’t because I didn’t quite reach it, but rather because I don’t want to force myself to work on projects that I feel less compelled to do. I was so inspired to work on The Changeling Prince, so that’s what I worked on. And the progress speaks for itself! Maybe if I find myself in a rut in the future, I’ll go back to little things like short stories. But I’m perfectly content to let inspiration guide me.

Bonus Goal: Restore my Article Backlog

The fact that this article is up a day late may tell you how this goal went. But it actually wasn’t a complete failure! I forgot that I was leaving for a weekend trip at the conclusion of this challenge, so by the time I was ready to write this article, I was on the road and my laptop was dead. So that’s why today is late.

But in the grand scheme of things, I do have a bit of a backlog again. Yay! I have two articles that just need some polishing, and two outlined. So that’s most of November planned out! And with the end of the year approaching, there are plenty of ideas swimming around that I’m excited to touch on. I think I’ll always get posts done by the seat of my pants, but I’m at least wearing better pants now that I was this time last month.

To Conclude…

I’m so glad I set these goals for myself. It really kept me motivated to make progress and visualize my improvements. I don’t think I’ll be giving updates in my articles anymore, but you may see me post about it on social media from time to time. Speaking of social media…

I actually want to introduce a new goal for myself this month: Weekly Instagram posts. Many of you here likely arrive via links shared in my Insta stories, and social media is a great way to boost engagement here. But since stories are mainly for my followers, I need to do better at making actual posts to reach more people. And I actually do like posting, I just have a hard time sitting down to do it. Hopefully with more of a backlog now, I can start making more Insta drafts, too. Who knows how this one will go! …I guess any of you who follow me will be able to see for yourself.

And there we have it! I have a better idea of my capabilities and realistic expectations for myself. Even though I technically only met one of my goals, this month was a complete success. A successful goal is not just the numbers. It’s in the steps you took and the ones you’ll keep taking. Even baby steps are steps in the right direction! So thanks for tagging along this month, it was a joy to share my progress with you all.

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