Marie Brennan has some great advice for novelists setting the goal of “Getting Published This Year”.
What’s your plan?: “…it should be something in your control. ‘Sell my first novel’ is up to editors; you can only do so much. But ‘write my first novel’ is all you.”
(Via SF Novelists.)
After I wrote my first novel, I set a goal of getting the book accepted within six months. Of course, that didn’t happen and even though it wasn’t a rational thought I blamed myself for not being aggressive enough.