August Goals Retrospective

At the beginning of last month, I said my goals were:

1. Read at least one book on writing.
2. Continue to write every day (at least 250 words)
3. Summarize my notes from a writing book (this month's or last)
4. Critique at least 6 submissions
5. Apply lessons from a writing book to at least 2 stories
6. Get at least 2 submissions critiqued
7. Revise two stories
8. Do a title exercise on at least 1 short story

How did I do?

1. I read Story Engineering by Larry Brooks and loved it.  I'll have a review written sometime (cue goal for this month).
   
2. I wrote every day, using the Magic Spreadsheet, which continues to be magic and full of spreadsheet-y goodness.
   
3. Half marks here.  I did do a review of Million Dollar Outlines, and I finished my notes from the book, but I didn't summarize it yet.  Soon!
   
4. I easily beat this one out of the water.  This was one of the things I ended up emphasizing this month, and I believe I critiqued 3 a week, on average.  Many was the day I felt like I didn't have the mental energy to write (or edit *shudder*), but finding the problems in other people's works... that doesn't seem to be so hard.  Now if only I'd be able to translate that to my own works more easily.
   
5. I've applied some of the lessons to 1 story.  In this case, I'm going to give myself a fail.  I'm sure I'm internalizing some of the lessons, but not as many as I'd like.
   
6. Oh, look, another fail.  I might give myself half-credit for 1 story critiqued 2 times, but I'm not sure.  The good news is that I'm starting to feel pretty good about the story again.  (This probably means it's time for somebody to tear it apart again, but I'm enjoying the feeling while I can.)
   
7. There is a theme here, and that theme is that I've been working on one story.  I need to improve that, and soon.
   
8. Complete fail.

So how did I do?  3 succeeds, 2 halfsies, and 3 fails.  That's not the way to get my goals met, is it?

My take-away from this is actually to dial back on the goals for a bit.  I felt kind of pushed for this past month (the daily writing is part of that, I know, and I shouldn't be leaving it for so late at night, but I'm not ready to give that up yet).  I also don't like seeing the halves and the fails.  So, I'm going to trim the list and really focus on meeting those goals.