Sound Writing Practices }{ AcWriMo 2013 }{ My Goals
This is my log for #AcWriMo 2013. You can read my guiding philosophy for the exercise here. Now let’s set the bar.
Goals for November 2013
This year, with a much better sense of how my productivity functions, I’m setting realistic goals – not to push myself, but to get done what needs to be done while feeling good about it. And so, here are my modest goals:
1. Finish revising the two sample chapters for my book proposal. The book is based on my dissertation but requires a major reframing of the guiding argument, and it is proving more difficult than I imagined. I have an interested editor at a major academic press who requested these chapters after reading my prospectus. I had given myself three months to get the two chapters done, and instead it’s going to take six. So I’ve well overshot the delivery date I suggested to the editor, and though the work steadily moves forward it often feels like a sinking ship. This gets me down – but it’s largely a psychological game. Though it would have been great to get a book contract in time for this year’s job applications, I can’t let that failure interrupt the broader goal. Once it’s all said and done I’m not going to look back with too much anguish on these extra three months. I’ve never written a book before, and so I don’t have the experience in place to accurately assess how long it all takes. If I had known it would take this long from the outset, then I’d be right on track to meeting my goal. And that is precisely what the logging practices encouraged by AcWriMo will help with. But at this point I REALLY want to get this done, and getting back on the AcWriMo program seems like the best way to make a push to hit “send” on this by the end of the month and get on with worrying about whether or not the material is good enough to get me to the next step towards a book contract. And so, though it doesn’t require much in the way of typing new words at this point, I will consider it a monumental achievement if I can get these off my desk before December. And with this experience now logged, hopefully I’ll be more realistic for the next projection and keep sane in the process.
2. Job applications. I have another ten or so due between now and the first week of December, and there is no flexibility there; they must go out by the deadlines. And so they will. I’ve been advised that I shouldn’t spend more than an hour on each one, and I’ve got the letter writing down to about that. But increasing numbers of institutions now require online submission through various platforms, each one different, and most requiring at least an extra hour or two to complete. So be it.
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4. Prepare for guest lecture at a local discussion group on Nov. 27th. I’ll be hosting a screening of one of the films I’m writing about in my book and will give a half-hour talk on it afterwards. I’ve presented on this film before, so I’ll just need to reorganize my Keynote presentations and make a few script adjustments to suit this particular audience.
5. Prepare for job interview on Nov. 25th. This just came up and is unexpected at this early date since the application just went out a month ago. It’s big, and will need prep. I might have to rethink my goals to get this in this month, but it’s a hard deadline so it has to be done.
6. Write four weekly AcWriMo posts with some commentary on my AcWriMo experience and my accountability for the week.
That’s it. Nice and simple. Ideally I’d like to get in 6-8 Pomodoro units per weekday; no work on weekends if I can help it. Well see how that goes…