It’s Still Supposed to be January by J Vincent

Well, it is.  If you could see my “To Do” list and goals to be met for last month, you would plainly see it is still supposed to be January.  But “supposed to be” laments are absolutely a waste of time.  I know that even as I find ways to procrastinate and am fully aware life’s peculiar twists can jump in and claim far too much of my time. So you's think I would be prepared or plan ahead.  (Huge sigh here!)

January set me back a pace.  Health issues as always.  Where would I be without health emergency 4,564?  I won’t bore you with details--even I am fed up by it all at this point.  Then we had two funerals in our extended family which entail taking food, wakes, and services.   

But the thing that ran the train off the track was when my sister convinced me we had to go to the Romantic Times Convention in May.  May is when my next Honour book, Honour’s Choice, is released.  My sister also signed me up to provide a promo item for Choice for the registration bags at the convention.  That’s only 1400 fluer-de-lis soaps with insert cards I’m making and bagging.

Add to Feb goal:  Order more soap molds--six and a time is not a good thing.

One positive thing about making the insert cards was that I learned how to make a QR --those odd square codes i-phones etc. scan.  The one I created takes the person scanning it to my author page on Allromance.com where they can purchase my ebooks.  It's on the back of the card I'm inserting with the circular soaps I'm making which are "replicas" of the coin used in the books.  On the front I've placed the book cover and tiny blurb.

 Add to Feb goal:  Upload Honour’s Debt to this Allromance.com.

My sister is also paying for an ad in the May Romantic Times magazine for Choice.  Making the components for that ad taught me how to make transparent backgrounds and work with eps files.  There was a writing “skill” involved in the ad--making even briefer an already short blurb.   It also blew a week and several short term goals.

Add to Feb goal:  Remember to finish that last final check of Choice

While contemplating what else I needed to put on my list for February I realized why I didn’t complete my January goals.  I wrote down the wrong ones!  I’m not being entirely sarcastic.  I knew about the ad and that the deadline for it was the 24th.  “Construct ad” was what I put on my goal list.  This is a perfect example of too broad a goal.  If I’d considered all the things I needed to do I would have broken it into steps.  1) graphics 2) text 3) layout 4) draft.  That would have shown me I needed more than a day to do all this.  In addition I panicked when Vera dropped the Romantic Times Convention plan.  So instead of sticking to my goal of five pages for the BIAW (thank you for the encouragement Penny!) I only completed two and fell headlong into the compulsion of HAVING to get everything done at once for the convention, 

Foolish, I know, but it took me a few days to calm down and realize I had three months to make those 1400 promos for the convention, not three days!

We are in month two of 2013.  February.  I’ve mapped out a new list of goals for this month which are more detailed and thus, hopefully more realistic and obtainable.  They have already been readjusted to allow for some emergency time after I learned today (the 1st) of an unexpected doctor appointment and tests next week!  Always remember to leave room for the unexpected when doing monthly goals!

Have you set writing goals?  Are you on the road to meeting the goals for the month, six months, or year? How do you make adjustments when life interferes?