I got curious about how much marketing I had done this year. The Race tells us how much we have in the mail, but not how much we’ve mailed altogether. I realized there was an easy to figure that out, because I keep a spreadsheet of everything I mail out, one line per submission.

So, in 2009 (to date), I’ve sent out 110 story submissions and 18 novel submissions. I now feel a little less like a slacker. (And I plan to improve on that total in 2010, especially the novels.)

I don’t know if you or any of your readers would interested, but a few years back, I made an Excel spreadsheet with pretty charts and stuff to track up to six books in a year (more can be added; some can be subtracted), twelve proposals, 52 paragraph pitches, and 365 ideas.

If anyone wants one customized to their needs, I’m happy to.

Forgive me, Father, for I am a sinner….

Post #8 is the most sobering of all the motivational posts — at least for me thusfar — because in the last two years, as determined as I’ve been to not be that guy who makes excuses, I have inevitably wound up being that guy who makes excuses.

I don’t have a lot of natural self-discipline, and tend to be a Mood Monster when it comes to getting stuff done. Could be house chores, could be something else. If I am in the mood to do something, I will focus down on that something to the exclusion of all else. But if the mood goes away — or isn’t there to begin with — I have a difficult time making myself do something for the sake of simply doing it. I will always look for an excuse as to why I shouldn’t have to, or I will find a significant external motivator that gets me going.

Being creative when I am not in the mood feels like pulling teeth. Teaching myself to write even when the last thing I feel like doing is writing — when the creative juice isn’t flowing — is an ongoing struggle for me, and the #1 reason I’ve dinked around as an aspirant for so many years. And I’ve also not yet been successful at finding an external motivator that forces me to write, because there just hasn’t been one. The bills still got paid wether I wrote or not. Not writing never negatively impacted the lives of my wife or daughter. In fact, they’ve been happy to have me not spend time writing because that just means I’m spending my time with them, not at the computer — ask me in February how much my wife truly hates it when I am at my computer.

This same time in 2008 I set some very ambitious goals for myself because I thought it was my year to “get serious,” as your last post talked about. Alas, I let mood and lack of sufficient external motivator(s) dictate my progress far, far too often, so here I am again looking to next year as the year I “get serious” and the only thing that keeps me from feeling like a total loser is that I at least accomplished some very important goals in other areas of my life — mostly because they weren’t connected to anything creative, and I could accomplish them on “middle class worth ethic,” or because I simply had no other choice than to bull through and make it happen, due to an external motivator — maybe that’s redundant, as “bulling through” and “middle class work ethic” are potentially synonymous concepts?

The only big difference between now and 2008 is that I have a check on my wall. At long last. And it’s not chump change. It’s the rough equivalent of what I made in two weeks back in 1995, when I worked my first long-term full-time job doing swing and grave shifts at a Travelodge motel.

I said before that I keep that check on my wall because it’s like the cash from the GEICO commercial: it has big beady eyes that stare at me unblinking every time I sit down at this desk. I can’t not look at it every time I sit here, or pass by. It seems to be speaking to me through the ether, “Hey stupid, there is a lot more of me out there for you, if you will stop being such a wimp and sit your ass down and keep it real, instead of flaking out!”

I’m looking at that check as my watershed moment — the fulcrum. Everything that transpired prior to that check was my life as a dilettant. Everything that follows hence, will be my life as a professional. I will develop professional habits. I will make and keep wordcount goals. I will send the work out. I will participate in distance learning and conferences as a professional. I will stop wasting time! I will stop allowing mood to dictate my progress!!

That check is also my thread to the future. To paraphrase the Mad Max movies, it’s my lifeline to a world beyond vermin in suits. Beyond the thunderdome of corporate bullshit. In 2009 I had a middle manager above me who made my life at work very, very difficult, because — so far as I can tell — he simply felt like it. I detested the entire affair. This is the worst possible time for me (or anyone else) to be out of work. I lost a lot of sleep wondering how I’d support my family; getting ready to volunteer for a deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan because it would be the only way to quickly get and keep sufficient bread on the table back home.

Thankfully it was the middle manager — and not me — who ultimately got the axe. Hooray — for once — for being a worker bee. But the lesson seemed crystal clear: I will never escape the Day Job crap — indeed, it will just get deeper — if I don’t buckle down and create an independent stream of income which will — given sufficient time and effort — eclipse that which comes to me from the Day Job. It might take me years to get there, but every year I dink around and don’t get “serious” is a year my dream of financial autonomy gets pushed further into the distance.

Okay, I could keep rambling. It’s way too early and I’ve got a daily wordcount staring me in the face, so it’s time to stop blogging and time to start writing.

Dean, really, I don’t know about anyone else, but these posts you’re doing are so damned valuable for me, as food for thought. Keep them coming, please!

I think I’ll use that point system for 2010, too, or something similar. I once did something somewhat similar in the past, but in a different context, but it worked.