How ya doin’?

Hello to all my shells! That’s you – all of my blog followers. It’s how I refer to all of you. With my last name being Shelley, it just works. When I was teaching video production to high school students, I called my personal production company Shells in the Sand. So now, as my media platform has changed to blogging and writing novels, you have become part of my shell world. I love it because each shell is a unique and beautiful work of art, just like each of you. Thanks for hanging with me, and welcome to my new shells! Nine new shells joined us this week! Thank you to everyone for spreading the word and sharing my blog with your friends and family.

My last post was about new year’s resolutions and how we all struggle to keep them. I shared with you my take on it for this year.  I developed my vision for the year and my mission – a plan of attack by taking small steps each month. Now that it’s February 1st, it’s time for me to look back at January and see how I did.

I’m pleased with my progress so far. I admit I didn’t exactly complete the plan for the month, but I took care of some other “to do” items that still lead to the end vision. My goal for January was to create a list of 50 potential agents for my book and to revise my query letter. I do have the agent list ready, but I didn’t get to the query letter. I already have a good one prepared, but it never hurts to make it better. That’s on my “to do” list for next week. Looking at February’s goals, my plan is to start sending query letters to agents (at least 10 per month). I also planned to write/revise a long and short summary of the novel for agents who may request it. Here’s where I’m ahead a bit. In January, I decided to do another revision of the novel. As I went through page by page, I also took notes that will become the summaries. All I have to do is revise them this month. So in January I didn’t get to the query letter, but I did get a lot done on February’s summaries.

That’s what I like about doing my resolution this way. There’s flexibility. It takes the pressure off . It gives me breathing room. It isn’t so black and white – either I succeeded or I failed. Instead, I continue to simply make progress toward the vision.

So how ya doin’ with your goals? Take time to look at how you did in January and what you want to do in February. And if you didn’t develop a vision and a mission, it’s not too late. Check out my blog from January to help get you jump started. Make it a productive 2019! You can do it!