Tag Archives: targets

That End of Year Feeling

Little Egrets – almost in the back garden . . .

I’m slowly getting back into the swing of things. With a new house and wife who is determined to use her retirement to make me do things, I’m going to have plenty to do (we still have to finish moving an awful lot of stuff). However, I want to get back to writing. This, traditionally, is the time of year when I count up the submissions and the acceptances and decide if I have done enough.

It’s tricky this year. I have definitely not done enough but I have had other things on my mind like the chest infection, the trip to urology and the house move. I’m cutting myself some slack here. It’s not been an overly productive year, but it’s not been bad either, and I do have excuses. Of course, I’ve always had excuses, which is why I am in my 67th year with my carefully horded “potential” still intact.  If I’m not careful I am going to go to the grave with the song still in me (to misquote Thoreau).

May, and the end of an era

Last year I had  20 acceptances and 7 rejections. With the one I am sending this afternoon that will be 28 submissions. It compares with 37 for the year before. Because I lost some paperwork to computer glitches (or, more precisely, my ineptitude in backing things up) I’m not sure what my figures are for previous years.

As I recall, I was pushing towards 50 submissions a year at one time and talking about trying for a hundred, because that’s the figure that is often use in articles on writing and rejection. The theory is that trying for 100 submissions (some even try for 100 rejections) stops the sting of rejection, gives you plenty of practice and makes you more industrious. Blog posts don’t count, because there is no chance of rejection. I can, I suppose, add my 23 pieces for the Numismatic Society of Nottingham FB page, as there is a small chance of rejection there.

Admiral Vernon and Commodore Brown – the start of my numismatic writing career in retirement 

However, that’s still a lot of submitting to be done if I’m going to make a serious attempt on 2025.

First I will get the last submissions of 2024 done, then I will start on the plan for 2025.

Pictures are some highlights from 2024. It takes all sorts . . .

 

It is Done

The Magpie, Little Stonham, Suffolk

I stuck to the rules and I have three new poems to show for it. I felt like I’d had enough after two, but three is the target. Either three revised or three composed. Being inflexible, and having started to write, I carried on writing, even if the rules would have allowed me to write two and revise one.

Silly as it may sound (I am, after all, talking about writing poetry, not cleaning out a hen house) I am now in need of a rest. This blog post is a rest. Just a change of pace.

Yesterday I deviated from the rules, and things went wrong. The gardeners arrived and did their job. I went out to avoid the first three hours then returned, made cups of tea for us all and got to work. I couldn’t think of poetry so I got stuck into an article I am writing – fact checking and constructing a biography from snippets. It’s coming together slowly. Very slowly.  However, it did fill the day so although I veered off track, I did at least spend several hours in useful pursuits.

Norfolk Flint Wall

Flexibility, as TP just remarked, is key. The rules and targets are to make me work with more focus. If I can fill a few hours with effort instead of frittering my time away all day, it is time well spent and proof that a few rules and targets can help.

I have set targets before, for junior sports clubs and for writing and in all cases I have achieved much more when I plan and write it down. The trick is to make sure you sit down and write something out. I’ve let things drift for the last three years and although some good things have happened, I have to say that more would have happened if I had planned.

I use the SMART model – that’s Specific, Measurable,, Something, Something and Time-bound or Timely (they struggle a bit with that last one). I always have to look it up because I can’t remember the middle bit.  It’s Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

Doesn’t really nee a title does it?

I will end up with a table that has magazine names with times and targets in boxes. It fits quite well. The names are Specific, the targets are Measurable because they are numbers of poems, the targets are Achievable, but I don’t actually need a column for that, Relevant is the type of poetry (they don’t all take the same sort of thing) and Time-bound is a good column for the submission windows, though I generally rely on my submissions calendar for that. There’s a lot more admin in writing poetry than the lives of Lord Byron or Dylan Thomas would suggest.

Pictures are from September 2018, a trip round East Anglia.

The contents of the bag

New Horizons

My original plan was to buy enough food so that I could pass the Christmas week without going out to shop. As I take stock, it’s possible that I overdid things. Apart from milk and bread I probably don’t need anything until the second week of January and there are certain things, like Christmas pudding, that won’t be eaten until Spring. I find a little goes a long way and as we ate the one that Number One Son brought with, we don’t need more for some time.

Because we broke the microwave we did at least boil the one we had, which made it more palatable. Microwaved Christmas pudding is rarely a success, but after a Christmas season of large roast dinners I cannot be bothered with the palaver of boiling a pudding. It’s one of those circular things – the less you like pudding, the more you fail to treat it well, and the worse you treat it, the less you like pudding.

I’ve just been reading a book about writing. It’s the first book I’ve read properly for over a year. I really need a reading lamp because my eyes are dimming (which sounds like a cue for half-remembered song)  and I should buy a reading lamp. Julia bought me a new Kindle for  Christmas, which is pretty much the same thing.  In terms of light, that is. In terms of books, it’s still quite different. I don’t buy expensive books for my Kindle as you don’t really get anything from your money apart from renting a few pixels. (t’s a bit like NFTs).

I tried reading that link – it still makes little sense. basically an NFT is a picture which people believe is worth something. It’s a bit like buying a suit from the same tailor that made the Emperor’s New Clothes.

Or as Jimmy Carr put it last night on TV – and NFT is a con trick bought by an idiot. I think that’s probably the best definition I’ve heard yet. Don’t Google him, you probably wouldn’t like him as a comedian. But as a social commentator he’s spot on.

Anyway, the book, which I last mentioned some paragraphs ago, was talking about how to improve your writing. The author writes 750 words a day. I’ve been knocking out my 250 a day fro so long it’s become the norm. I used to do a thousand in various forms, but gradually reduced to a single blog post with a minimum target of 250 words. Then I allowed the 250 words to become the limit. That could be the cause of several of the problems I am finding with writing. Looks like it’s time to set some new targets.

 

Day 43

I’ve just finished the first phase of planning my submissions for next year. So far I have 53 submissions in the planner, and I haven’t quite finished. I will have about 75 by the time I have finished. No doubt I’ll miss a few, but you need some sort of target, and it should always be slightly more than you think you can achieve.

Set a target too low and it’s not worth having. Set it too high and you risk demotivating yourself. Last year I made 48 submissions, though I was ill for a couple of months and would have managed around 55 if i’d been fit. Seventy five for this year seems fair as a target. I still need to add a couple of magazines that always reject me (I need a challenge) and some ordinary poetry magazines too. Life isn’t all about Japanese forms of poetry.

It feels good to have the plan done, even if it is incomplete. At last I have something to compare myself to, and it’s always easier to work when you have  a framework in place. Without one, it’s easy to drift.

When I look at the actual figures, I see that I met or slightly exceeded the targets for numbers of acceptances last year, being on target for haibun and a few over for haiku. I also wrote a few tanka, which weren’t included in the targets, as I hadn’t even thought of writing tanka when I set the targets. Then there were the six “normal” poems. There is no target for them as I just fit them in when I have time and they aren’t a particularly high priority.

 

 

 

A Review of My Targets and Another Pan of Soup

My first job of the day was to take nourishment in the form of two slices of toast (brown seeded bread) with chunky cut marmalade. I know how to live.

I then reported for a blood test and, duly punctured, picked up a prescription from the pharmacy, had a cup of tea with friends (whilst delivering Christmas cards) and returned home for a light lunch made up of leftovers. Tea was home made soup (broccoli and cauliflower, including stalks and leaves) with a sandwich and I am now hungry as I sut and write this.

It is the price I must pay for my health. In the last three weeks I have not gained any weight, but I have not lost any either, and I need to get back into good habits. Lunch tomorrow will be more of the broccoli and cauliflower soup. Fortunately it is quite tasty, though Julia describes it, unattractively, as beige. It isn’t it’s a delicate green shade which, in certain lights, looks a little beige. But it’s definitely pale green. I would call it Eau de Nil, but I’m not sure that I want to associate my soup with the water of the River Nile.

A lot of my afternoon was spent in reviewing how my writing plans went over the last year. The plan took a bit of a knock due to me being ill and missing the best part of three months as I slowly recovered. I had  a target of 63 submissions, and managed 49. Not great, but not too bad.

Of those, I had 13 Haibun and one Tanka Prose (which I’m going to count as the same thing for the sake of these figures) accepted, which is 14 against a target of 18.

Haiku target was 12, and I have had 12 acceptances (a total of 15 poems) so that is OK.

I’m also writing Tanka, which I hadn’t planned for and have had four accepted.

One thing went badly – I had planned on doing three articles but after the first one turned into a bit of a disaster (originally accepted with edits, then turned down when the editor changed his mind< I didn’t pursue that. However, it will still be in the plan for next year.

I have also submitted ordinary poetry five times during the year and had three lots accepted.

I had been feeling a little deflated about my writing, and the way the year ended, but I’m actually quite pleased by the way it’s gone when I review the figures.

However, talking of figures, I’ve just been reading a website where a poet talks of their work. They have been writing poetry for 15 months and has had over 300 published. I really need to up my game. Or I could just stop reading author websites.

The Sanguinary Sequel

This was meant to be posted last night but I seem to have forgotten to press the “Publish” button. Senior moment! Bah!

I have reduced my “Following” list to 33.

At this point I realised that I have several people missing who should be on. I may eventually get up to around 50.

I was surprised to find that Derrick Knight was not on my list. He is one of my most visited sites, alongside Tootlepedal, but I didn’t seem to be following him. As with a number of people who are frequent visitors to this site I just get back to him by clicking on his link. Sorry Derrick.

So far it’s only halfway through the day and apart from cooking brunch and watching one episode of Diagnosis Murder I have done nothing but Word Press related work. I have answered comments, finalised the “Followed” List, followed Val’s instructions on how to delete followers and read a few blog posts. It is not a lot. Finally, as I am working towards a secret self-imposed target, I decided it was time to write.

Unfortunately I just calculated the target and I’m going to miss it. So, craftily, I reset the target and I’m going to meet it. All I had to do was adjust the time-scale. And, as it’s a secret, you will never know…

It’s later now. I’ve been on the phone to my sister, ordered a prescription online from a reluctant NHS system that kept kicking me out, washed up from brunch and made  a pot of soup that will see us through the next couple of days.

I am making slow headway towards my 250 word target. This is 261. At 250 I can persuade myself it’s a proper post. At 240 it’s probably OK, but at 230, it doesn’t seem like I’ve made  a serious attempt.

Some days, the magic just doesn’t happen. This may be linked to the bad night’s sleep I had last night. I have made many mistakes in my life, and last night they all came back to me. They do that once in a while. It has been within my grasp at times to be richer, happier, thinner and more widely published, but I have shown an uncommon talent for failing to failing to close the deal. It’s as if my subconscious likes to torment me every so often by letting me know that it knows…

The photos are just random work photos.

 

Greek banknotes

Greek banknotes

Time Passes…

I originally said I wanted to do two posts a day for a fortnight. Then, in my head, this became two posts a day for 15 days. I’ve just checked and counted up and I’ve done 27 posts in 14 days.

So, despite being ahead at one point, I have missed the target by one post. Or, if I adopt the 15 day target, I’m still in with a chance. Not that it really matters.

Whatever I do, the sun will still rise on a new day and, bit by bit, my life and writings will gradually decay until they disappear and nobody will remember me. That’s a serious point, rather than just me being morbid.

What happens to digital pictures and writing as time goes on? I already have some old camera cards I can’t read, though that may be because they are empty. I really can’t remember. I also have photographs on CD, though I notice a growing trend for laptops not to have CD drives. It’s possible that in a few years my CDs will lie there gathering dust in a house that has no CD drive.

Perhaps it is time to think about using cloud storage, though I’m not really clear what it is or how it really works. I am not altogether comfortable with trusting my life and documents to a third party. I’m afraid of another Word scenario, where I merely rent Microsoft Word instead of owning a copy, and where I belong to an American corporation rather than being a person.

If I live long enough I might have to rewrite that as “a Chinese corporation”, but though the details may change, the reality remains the same.

The header picture shows two British Medals from the Great War – known as “a pair” in the trade. This is the British War Medal (the silver one) and the Victory Medal. All the Allied Nations produced their own Victory Medal after the Great War, with different designs, which is why it may seem familiar to readers from other countries.

It was this that brought on some of these thoughts. We buy something similar nearly every week, and when we ask if they were from as family member, the seller often does not know. They were issued named, and the name often means nothing, because over the years they have forgotten the names of their own ancestors.

The recipient of these medals died in the 1930s, as a result of ill health caused by military service. He was, as far as I could guess from the names and relationships of the mourners, the brother of the vendor’s grandmother. His adverts appeared in local papers of the time – he was a music teacher. He was also a professional musician and a chapel organist for many years.

If you can forget all that in the space of a couple of generations who will remember a man who wrote about eating veggie burgers and similar inconsequential subjects?

Veggie Burgers

Veggie Burgers

Day 101

To be accurate, it’s really only day 75 because I missed a day. While I’m on a roll I’m going to go for the extra 25 and make it a genuine 100.

That’s probably all I need to say about that. From tomorrow I’ll stop rattling on about targets and just get on with it.

I have a few things to do and then I’m going to set to work listing suitable subjects for future posts.

The morning started with sunlight streaming into the living room and dazzling me. An hour later it has now gone grey and the temperature has dropped significantly.

That will do for now – I’m feeling a bit slow due to the pain in my face and Julia needs to go out.

Here are some cheery photos.

 

 

 

 

 

The Decluttering Diaries – January Results

At the beginning of the year I set myself a target of decluttering by stealth – throwing out an item of accumulated detritus each day (by dumping, giving away, recycling or any other means) and getting rid of a book a day. Little by little I hoped to make a noticeable difference without too much stress.

So, the January results are in, and how have I done?

Books

Target: 31 books given away.  Actual: Er…0

I haven’t done too well on the giving away of books. I think I’ll say that I’m confident I can move this along in the next month and bring it back on target.

Clutter

Target: 31 items removed from the house. Actual: 6

I had a good ferret round through a load of old paperwork and threw out the envelopes and other bits I didn’t need to keep.  It felt good to take charge of things, but the feeling soon faded.

I also sorted some bits of useless junk, which went in the bin.

It’s a start, though even I have to admit that it isn’t much of a start. February is going to be an interesting month.

The book picture is a random book picture because I mentioned books in the post. I’ve decided I need some pictures around the blog to brighten it up.

 

Back in the Game

 

 

 

I went out for a walk today, my first since last week. Well, if you consider 200 yards a walk. I liked it so much that I may do it again before going to bed.

Strange to think that it was only the end of December when we made our plan to get out into nature and do more walking. Now I’m struggling to get out of the house. It just goes to show how life can change in an instant.

Here’s another example of how you’re life can change in an instant. I actually saw him at the hospital on Wednesday. He was crossing the car park in a wheelchair as I hobbled around to the Urgent Treatment Centre. I didn’t actually know who he was until I saw the news on my return from hospital.

So, I’m going to get a grip and start making a note of my walking every day.  It might only be 200 yards a day, but as long as it’s 201 yards next time it’s progress. To put that in context, it’s enough to get me from the car park to the lake at Rufford. Getting round the lake may take a little longer…

The photos are from previous visits, but I’m hoping to get some new ones soon.

 

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Through the window