December 3-1-1

3 updates, 1 useful tool, 1 impactful image

Hi Readers,

This month’s 3-1-1 is my final post for the year. When I started Write on Track in May I had no idea how rewarding it would be to wrangle my thoughts into coherent letters for you all each week. I’ve had such incredible conversations and learned so much from this community.

I look forward to whatever comes next for this little publication. The sky’s the limit, but even if nothing changes, I’ll still be so glad to share my novel-writing/self-employment/career-pivot journey with you all week after week. Have a great holiday season and cheers to more words, more stories, and more meaningful conversations in 2025.

Yours in friendship and solidarity,
Noor

One: Boss-me is giving myself a “barely meets expectations” performance review for this quarter.

I think boss-me has been overzealous in her expectations.

I set a number of KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for myself to achieve this quarter. (Lol you can take the girl out of corporate but you can’t take corporate out of the girl).

Here are my Q4 (Oct-Dec) 2024 KPIs and results:

• Novel: Revise 49,500 (out of 100K) words of the novel manuscript.

  • I only finished revising 47 pages (around 14,500 words) for the novel. These pages underwent multiple revisions, though, especially the first few scenes.

• Substack publishing: Prepare and follow an editorial calendar.

  • I didn’t really do this. What I want to write and share each week changes based on what ideas I have the most energy around that week.

• Substack education: Watch and implement strategies from one Substack marketing/growth related workshop each week.

  • I only did like 4 workshops total during this period.

• Prune Substack: Unsubscribe to 20 stacks I don’t read.

  • I achieved this one! I unsubscribed to 28 pubs. Maybe next year I’ll write a whole post about my decision-making process on unsubscribing.

• Writer education: Finish the Writing Mastery Academy novel revision course and the webinar on how to write good fight scenes.

  • I didn’t finish either of those. But I did finish the WMA scene revision course and that was super helpful.

• Literature Publication: Get my short story “The Giant” published.

  • I didn’t achieve this one. I only submitted my story to like 2 journals. I think next year my goal should be to “collect rejections” rather than set a goal I have less control over like “get published.”

• Writer Community: Set up a novel revision accountability group.

  • I got started on this but it’s still a work in progress. I found one consistent critique partner (hi Brian!) but finding other committed people who are also revising their novel has not been as easy as hoped.

  • I have a lot of warm leads for next year though, including my fellow writers from the Writing Salon fiction workshop that wrapped up yesterday.

• Reading: Finish 11 books from my TBR list.

  • I failed miserably at this. I read a bunch a books, but not from my TBR list.

  • I DNF’d a lot of books I’m supposed to enjoy.

  • I consumed several romance novels (not on my TBR list) via audiobook because they’re easy to listen to when I wash dishes and put away laundry.

  • Not sure how to improve my reading performance for next quarter. I’ll try harder?

I didn’t achieve a majority (or even half!) of my KPI’s this quarter. In retrospect, they were a bit too ambitious and perhaps became misaligned as my values and strategies changed throughout the quarter.

But I’m glad I went through the trouble of establishing KPIs. Each quarter I think I’ll get better and better at gauging what is possible and use KPIs in a way that is motivating and useful to my productivity.

Two: Novel revision = strikes and gutters.

I had a pretty gloomy outlook on my novel revision journey in October. I’m happy to report that things have improved since then. I sought out resources and support and found a lot of guidance from online courses, critique partners, and you all! Revision is still hard though.

Some days, the words pour out of me, I get into flow state, I see awesome things happening on the page. Other days, I spend hours and hours brainstorming and staring off into space and still nothing good comes. I can’t get the dialogue to feel real, and the character choices to seem believable.

Unlike the first draft, my writing goal is no longer just getting the words out—I have to put a lot of thought and effort into selecting the right words and arranging them in a way that is most engaging. Some of this is beyond my current skill level, so I have to develop craft technique while I write the novel. I’m building the plane as I fly it here, people.

Still, I am pushing myself to remain optimistic about this wild, ambitious, novel project that I started in March of this year. By next May, I hope to have Draft 2 finished.

Three: There’s a road outside Columbus, Ohio I used to roll along for years.

We’re going to Ohio for the holidays. My husband and I both grew up there and we still have lots of family and friends there. I like the gloomy, cozy, hygge feeling of experiencing a real winter in Ohio, especially during the holidays. I wonder if it will inspire some lovely writing.

Columbus, Ohio November 2013

I’ve mentioned using Toggl Track, a time-tracking tool, in a couple of my previous posts. It has been really effective in helping me understand where all my time goes. I can’t understate the benefits of time-tracking for creatives. You can pay money for advanced features, but as a solopreneur, the free version of Toggl Track has been more than good enough for me.

For more on how time-tracking has been essential for my work flow, check these out:

What does a novelist do all day? I tracked every minute for 6 months.

Productive artists are selfish and arrogant.

My kid is a menace and also regularly melts my ice cold witchy heart. I think that is basically the essence parenthood.