That sound you just heard was July whooshing by and now it is August. I confess I did nothing towards my writing goals (with the exception of posting here regularly) until the last week of July. I co-procrastinated (if that’s not a word, it should be) those alongside a work writing project that had a hard submission deadline at the end of July. But! I got everything in on time (well, more or less).

Recap of July Goals (linked here for accountability purposes):

1. Keep posting here on Mondays and on my other blog, Illustrated Poetry, on Tuesdays.

Did this! At least one post per week on each blog. Didn’t adhere to the precise day of the week so much on my other blog, but eh.

2. Rewrite the first chapter of Enjoinjure.

This I put off until the absolute last minute. I do mean opening the file on July 30 and working on it on July 31. I’m fudging a little because I didn’t really attempt to smooth out and combine the new bits with the old bits until this weekend, which is technically August.

3. Put together an outline for my current untitled story.

I did do this!

I kept the bar low on these writing goals, I know. But overall it worked – I finally addressed that first chapter, which I had been actively avoiding.

August Goals

1. Keep posting here on Mondays and on my other blog, Illustrated Poetry, on Tuesdays. Cannot rest on my laurels on this one. And if I don’t put it as a goal, well, in my life, there’s a real possibility it could slip.

2. Write 2 short stories for submission to online journals. I wrote a short story for one of my writing exercises last month (you’d like to see it? Thanks! Here it is.) and it reminded me of how much I like writing short stories. I’d love to submit a short story to a literary journal, but I keep publishing the ones I write on this blog. Some journals allow this, but most don’t. So, I need to write one or two that I hold back for official rejection…

3. Finish an edit of Enjoinjure. You know how it goes – you open a story file you’ve “let rest” for a while and the errors, typos, and inconsistencies start jumping out at you. That’s the only way I can self-edit. The auto-fill function in my brain is too strong otherwise. I’d like to turn this over to my beta-reader ASAP, but can’t now that my eyes have seen the typos!

4. Continue working on untitled story – needs a title too. Now that I have an outline, it will help me confine my writing on this story to the scenes that need to be written! The story is more than half done, but I’m struggling with a title. Lucy MacGregor’s Children is what I’ve got as the file name, so we’ll see if that sticks.