I submit to thee, new year

We’re well into 2014, but I still think we’re in a time of reflection, goal-setting, and planning for the months to come.

At the end of 2012, I wrote a blog post about my annual tally of lit journal submissions. It was “the year of 100 submissions,” as I had made—and achieved—that specific goal for 2012. For 2013, though, I didn’t set a defined number for my submission goals; I merely wanted to keep up a rhythm of getting polished pieces out the door amid the busy schedule of traveling, speaking, and major project deadlines.

As 2013 rolled into 2014, I was curious what that meant on paper. If I hadn’t set a specific numeric goal, did that mean my submission productivity dropped? It did, in some ways; yet I am super excited that my actual results weigh in with similarity.

During 2013, I made 46 submissions to lit journals (that’s 46 batches of poetry, short stories, and short nonfiction). Sure, that’s a significant drop, but my results came in very close percentage-wise to the previous year.

Out of those 100 submissions in 2012, 11 were accepted for an 11% hurrah rate. Out of the 46 submissions made in 2013, 5 received a yes for a 10.869% celebration rate. Not bad.

Also significant? There are 12 submissions from 2013, particularly from the late fall, that have not yet received a response at all just yet. So, there’s still some outstanding hope in the mail.

What does this mean? I don’t know. Quality outweighs quantity or something like that. More so, I think it means the better I define and understand where my work fits, the more chance it has of finding a home there.

Shall I set a goal for 2014? Maybe. I already know how busy this year will be on the road, teaching, and with two books on the agenda…. But I really do want to keep sending my work out into the lit journal world. So I think a fair goal is to surpass what I did for 2013, which means I’ll aim for about 50 submissions in this new year.

What about you?

The Couch Book: A 2014 Challenge

I have too many notebooks to count. Some are filled in their entirety. Others have a page or two with jotted notes. Some have pages torn from their spine.

When it comes to notebooks, I am only consistent in my addiction to acquiring them. They are tchotchkes: quaint items on a shelf I admire from afar. When I make notes for works-in-progress, I most often do so at the keyboard. I admire the art of handwriting, but I revel in the speed of my fingers on keys.

I’m always interested in twists and tricks to help my creative process, so for 2014 I am setting a goal. Not a resolution, but a goal that should be within my reach.

I’ve selected a spiral-bound hardcover notebook that I have deemed The Couch Book. I will place this notebook in my usual comfort corner, where I end the day resting up, sipping coffee, and watching mindless television with my spouse. While I have an awful time trying to read (meaningfully) whilst the television is on, I have found it possible for me to make little notes: grocery lists, to-do lists, random bursts of phrasing that may prove useful in a wip.

My goal for the year is to use The Couch Book on a daily basis, with no set goal of time or line length, to write something other than lists. I’m curious to see what ideas come out of committing to writing in a notebook for one year. My hunch is that without direction, without intent, and without those rules we so often impose on our creative writing time, I may see some organic growth in the idea department.

This is nothing new. Lovely, well-versed, and well-published authors claim so often how the journaling process works wonders for them. It is not my intent to journal, but it is my intent to see what happens when you take a pen and notebook out of the working, must-be-creating mindset and into the comfort of the couch.

all in a day’s mindset: tackling the to-dos

I’m a nerd. A to-do list nerd, especially. I like having a focus—or several—for the day and earning that sense of satisfaction when things get checked off the list.

Yet I’m continually refining the art of to-do list making. I go back and forth between paper and pen lists versus the kind I make in a Word document. Or a bullet point list on my phone. The tactile pleasure of the pen and paper route is great. There’s an added sense of accomplishment in physically striking something off the list. But the computer document has a great function, too, if I don’t let it get out of control: I can amend the day’s to-dos as I move along.

Where the computer doc causes trouble is two-fold: 1) I can continually add to-dos to the day, thus making it impossible to truly accomplish everything and 2) I tend to erase what I have accomplished, so at the end of the day all I see is what I haven’t done.

So I did an experiment this week (as I tend to do such things). I made a new document of to-dos and every time I completed a task, I crossed it out—rather than deleted the item. This was a test to see if I actually found more satisfaction in seeing what’s been done for the day. The result? Sure. There was some joy in seeing checked off items.

The real result, though, is the realization that no matter how I project my day’s activities, I always set overachieving goals. For whatever reason, I can’t bring myself to list just one or two things to do in a day. I aim high, do my best, and push the rest to the next day, or the next. It’s how I operate. And that’s okay. For me, it works. 

I love fantasizing about a super-organized life. One that has a place for everything, and where everything is in its place. One that has a to-do list of achievable goals for each day, and that’s checked off in true Martha Stewart fashion. But I’m not Martha. I’m me. Chaotic, imperfect, organized-in-my-own-dysfunctional-way me. And that’s a good thing.

A Bad Blogger in A Good Year

I’m not a bad person, I just do bad things.

Things To Do

Wait. I don’t mean bad things. I mean I do things—or don’t do things—that make me feel guilty. Guilty for not doing things or guilty for should-be-doing things. Guilty for not doing enough of the right things. Sounds a bit crazy and confusing? It is. It can be.

I like order. I like lists. I take pride in my to-do lists, even when they are a key source of self-loathing when I fail to accomplish impossible and over-achieving goals set for each day. I somehow feel that setting unrealistic goals motivates me to accomplish the majority of my ambitions; aim for the stars and maybe you'll reach the sky, or something John Lubbock said. 

My process is nothing new. I have written about this self-defeating/self-fulfilling strategic plan before:

“I have deliberately sabotaged nearly every day of my writing life with my to-do list. It is aggressive. It is unrealistic. It demonstrates my illusions of grandeur....Yet I continue to carry on this habit, this self-punishment. Because it works for me.”

From “The Not-To-Do List,” Passages North, May 2012

Each year I take stock of things I accomplished, things I didn’t quite check off the list, and, eventually, this transitions into setting goals for the year ahead. This all translates into more lists: lists of accomplishments,

More Things

lists of to-dos right now, lists of to-dos for the new year, lists to remind myself how I, and we, can exercise literary citizenship. I sometimes make lists of lists to make.

So, as December winds its way down, I’m drawn into my usual end-of-year assessment. Last year was apparently “A Tale of 100 Submissions.” In the middle of 2013, I did some self-reflecting and paid mind to needing to downsize some ambitions in order to accomplish bigger goals and keep my sanity. But I also swore to myself that I would not be a hypocrite and that I would, seriously, make my blog more of a priority. I changed up the blog design and set goals publicly—and then failed to execute what I set out to do.

It’s not that blogging is a make or break activity that defines whether or not I am a good person. I actually want to be consistent with my blog. I enjoy writing posts—for myself and for my readers. But the guilt also sets in when I think of emerging and fellow writers who turn to me in my social media workshops and who consider that I know something about this stuff. You’re a full-time writer! You’re good at all that social media stuff! You’re so organized! Oh, please. I’m human. I’m flawed in the most fumbling ways.

That means, in the big picture to-do list of priorities, the blog usually suffers.

These Other Things

In 2013, counting posts only before today, I posted a humbling 37 times to my blog. That’s a little embarrassing. Rather than wallow in my guilt, though, I’m taking action. I’m posting today, obviously, but I’ve also been making notes and plans for topics I’d like to blog about. I have a handsome list (!) accumulating blog post plans and I’m genuinely excited to write more for this venue.

And, really, I don’t feel too bad about being a bad blogger this year. It’s been a great year for me, otherwise. I’ve been busy—overwhelmingly so, but in ways that I feel so blessed to count as Good Things Accomplished in 2013. I traveled—for business and pleasure—to twenty states and two provinces. I worked with the wonderful editorial team at Accents Publishing in preparation for the new poetry book, Square Feet. I finished polishing a new nonfiction book that was contracted this year by Bloomsbury and will be published in late 2014. And I checked so many little—but important-to-me—tasks

Enabling Thing

off my to-do list that I can’t feel bad about not accomplishing everything I set out to do this year. I can’t feel that bad about not blogging more than I did.

But I can aim higher for the year to come. I can accomplish something as simple as posting more often on my blog. I will make this a goal and I will put a realistic plan into action. Which brings me back to assessing the year that was, planning for the year to come, and having fun creating a full-of-hope, full-of-ambition new list of to-dos. Because old habits die hard and I do love those lists…

It looks like I’m going to need a bigger coffee cup for 2014.