cheshbon

Making a plan for 5775

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Since, in last week’s post, I identified five areas in which I can improve my writing career in the next year, I thought I should also consider the steps to take in order to accomplish those goals.

1) Stop wasting time.

I really do need to stay connected on social media for professional reasons: for networking, to publicize my work when it goes live, and so on. However, I don’t need to check it periodically all day long, and then stare fascinated at the screen when I should be writing.

Two steps I’m going to take: allow myself one half-hour of Twitter and FB at noon, and one half-hour after the kids go to bed. The only exception is on those days I actually expect to have a story published online and know I’ll need to publicize it.

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Considering my last year of literary pursuit

beccakinla authors, blogger, blogging, blogs, book, books, chareidi, depression, doldrums, frum, frustration, G-d, God, good news, Jewish, Jewish writing, Judaism, persistence, publishing, rejection, rejection letters, submissions, success, tafkid, writing, writing process Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 11 Comments

Since there are just two weeks left of the Jewish year of 5773, I’ve been looking back at the last year and evaluating my life on every level: spiritual, physical, and even professional. And one goal still stands out at unfulfilled:

I STILL HAVEN’T PUBLISHED BOOK #2.

This issue depressed me a couple weeks ago, as I sat in front of my journal on Rosh Chodesh Elul (exactly one month before Rosh Hashanah), scribbling about the past year. I’d submitted a few picture books and two novels to multiple publishers and had zilch to show for it.

But then I counted how many times I appeared in print in the last year for pay: over two dozen times (bli ayin hara).

And then, I counted how many words I’d written. Essentially, it was the length of a novel. Wow.

I realized at that point how many more readers — potentially thousands more people — read my work in magazines this year than in my entire previous professional life.

That’s when I felt blessed.

Okay, I still have a major unfulfilled goal. It will be top of my professional goals again for this 5774. But if success is measured in progress, I made a lot of progress last year. And I could only do it with G-d’s help, which makes the year feel very sweet indeed.

How are you feeling about your last year, professionally? What is your top goal for 5774?