I wanted to get serious about my writing this year, so I set writing goals back in January (I’m a goal-oriented person).  I developed four goals and what I thought were realistic targets for each:

1. Write and/or edit at least 500 words per day
2. Finish the novel I started last year
3. Finish at least ten short stories
4. Make at least forty story submissions or four sales

This week, I officially met one of my goals: on Wednesday, I mailed out my fortieth story submission.  In fact, I’m now sitting at  forty-two submissions for 2011.  While I’d much rather have reached my goal of four story sales—I’m holding steady at three sales so far this year—getting forty submissions is a nice accomplishment and good start.  After all, you can’t sell a piece if you don’t submit it.

I’ve still got time to make that fourth (and fifth and sixth…) sale.  At my current pace I should hit about sixty submissions this year.  Not bad.  Assuming I keep my current sales-rate (~7.5%), I should make about five sales this year.  That’s a bit of a sobering number (to say the least) for someone with aspirations to be a professional writer, but five sales would actually be the best publishing year of my life.  It will also give me something solid to build on for next year.