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:
- Write and/or edit at least 500 words per day
- Finish the novel I started last year
- Finish at least ten short stories
- 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.
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