I'm not usually one to make New Years Resolutions -- or to set goals in general. But part of my plan to treat my playwriting as a second job is to be more intentional about goal-setting. After reading Donna Hoke's blog entry A POST ABOUT GOALS, I figured I'd get serious.

My goals this year include: 

• read one play per day on the New Play Exchange
• submit to 10 opportunities per month, for a total of 120 submissions in 2018 (2017 total: 99; I figured an increase of 30% was manageable)
• write one page per day -- of anything at all
• complete a new 10-minute play per month
• complete a new 1-act play per quarter
• complete a rough draft of at least two full-length plays that have been dancing around in my noggin for over a year

Sound rigorous? Yeah, you're telling me. I don't know what possessed me on the morning of January 1st to set these goals (and to write them down in my journal! now it's serious!), but here we are. 

So how did I do in January? 

• I completed four (4!!) ten-minute plays [here, here, here, & here] -- they ain't perfect, but they're alive
• I made 24 submissions 
• I read 50 plays on NPX

I didn't manage to hit my page-per-day quota (I took days off here and there throughout the month), and I'm a little behind in drafting the 1-act play I'm working on this quarter (Assisted Living), but that's okay. I've never written so rigorously or productively in my life, and I still feel like there's room for improvement -- heck, that's part of what the goal-setting's about, in my opinion. 

So now I'm adjusting my February goals in response to the successes and failures of January -- aiming for at least 20 submissions this month (I'm already at 17!) and try to really crack down on that page per day goal (we'll see how many more months that goal lasts). I also want to get involved in a couple of writing groups, and read at least one play per day by a black female playwright in honor of Black History Month. 

We'll see how it goes! What are your goals for 2018?