Day Four of Unemployment

Unemployment Day Four:

GOALS:
Clean the hallway closet - I relegated this chore to later in the day, but a setback arrived in the form of a letter from Illinois Department of Employment Security saying they wanted a telephone interview with me next week because I listed on my form that I had been discharged from employment. Waited over an hour for a human to come on the phone to let me know if I'd been singled out or if this was a normal event. Turned out anyone who gives the same answer, meaning lots and lots of people, are interviewed. That reassured me.

Get more words done on one of my manuscripts - Got 763 words done on A Bad End yesterday before the letter came from I.D.E.S. Hope to do as much on at least one of my manuscripts today.

Along with Good Paul, I took Rascal on a long walk into town. By now, she must be confused by all the attention she's been getting lately. I plan on giving her another long walk today, despite the obstruction of a dropping tempoerature. At least, there's no snow on the ground.

Obstructions:
Distractions from the DH watching TV, even if it's in the other room, but yesterday I did manage to mainly ignore the programs.

Reward cards to redeem from Menard's and Staples from Black Friday before I forget about them. Also have one from Sears, but can't remember how much it is, so not sure if I should bother, since it's pretty far.

Please Welcome My Guest and Good Friend, Debra St. John - Romance Writer

I'm very happy to host my good buddy, Debra St. John, here today at Double M, as she tours the cyber world promoting her sweet and spicy romance, "Wild Wedding Weekend."

And now, here's Debra -

Morgan, thanks so much for having me back at Double M! I’ve been ‘touring’ the web promoting my latest release “Wild Wedding Weekend”, and it’s a privilege to be here for one of the stops. Today’s visit is special because Morgan is not only a fellow author, but a dear friend as well.

Over the past few months I’ve had several projects going on: promotion for WWW, edits on my upcoming release “This Can’t Be Love”, and trying to make progress on a new manuscript. With all of that going on, I’ve had to make sure I stay on track and on top of everything, so along the way I’ve set some goals as to what I’d like to accomplish.

As a writer, setting goals is an important part of the process. Without them, at least for me, not a lot happens. I tend to use two different types of goals. What I like to call informal and formal. An informal goal is one I have in the back of my mind that ‘someday’ I’d like to get around to. Someday could be today, tomorrow, or next year. These are nice because they give me a direction to head in, but being fairly open-ended, don’t really provide an impetus to get going.

What works better for me are those formal goals: ones I’ve written down. Somehow putting them in writing makes me more accountable. Plus it’s fun to check off or cross each goal out after I’ve accomplished it! For my formal goals I like to follow an acronym I picked up: S.M.A.R.T. I’ve seen several variations of this acronym used, but these are the phrases that work best for me.

SMART goals are:

Specific – Not I’ll write some pages today, but I’ll write at least ten pages today.

Measurable – Checking the page count at the bottom of my word processing screen will let me know if I’ve reached my goal.

Action-Oriented – Getting those pages done means I’ve actively put my fingers to the keyboard and put some words on the screen.

Realistic – I didn’t say I was going to write 100 pages today. Ten is much more manageable for me. And, I said ‘at least’, so I can go further if I’m inspired.

Timed – I want to get those pages done today, not whenever.

So, in a nutshell, my SMART goal for today is to write at least five pages. (Since it’s a work day and time is a bit scarce, I’ve adjusted my example of ten pages to make it a bit more realistic.) I’ll check back in at the end of the day and let you know how I did!

Now, how about you? What’s your SMART goal for the day?




Here's an Amazon link, in case you feel the urge to buy Debra's book.

And here's here website: http://www.debrastjohnromance.com/

Please leave a comment below to welcome Debra here to Double M.