Writing goals: a tiny retrospective

These were my writing goals for the month of July.

1. Write one picture book rough draft every week.
2. Write at least 250 words daily on the mystery M-F.
3. Free-write (bad) poetry as a way to access possible YA mystery M-F. (Sounds weird, but I do have a plan here.)
4. Write a query letter for a magazine article.
5. Write the column once a week.

Here's my assessment of how I did.

1. I have three picture book rough (really, really rough) drafts.
2. I didn't write 250 words daily on the mystery M-F, although I did, in fact, write that much more often than not.
3. Yeah, that was a good idea. Too bad I didn't do it.
4. I wrote that query! I gotta find it, though.
5. I did write the column!

Speaking of the column, I have some little frustrations, which I list below.

1. For whatever reasons, the Trib hasn't been very good about posting my most recent columns online in the place where most people would look for them (i.e., under my name). This has been a source of frustration to both me and my fab editor, Lisa. Hopefully, we've gotten this ironed out.
2. Ken spent a day down in Provo with a group of newspaper-reading people who told him how sad they are that I don't write a column anymore. They were surprised to hear about the Trib thing. I knew I was taking a risk of losing readers when I made the switch, but that was kind of discouraging news because these folks had been long-time readers.

But. Oh well.

On to goals for August. Which I will post tomorrow.