June Goals

This month has been a gauntlet.  I knew going in that this would be difficult, but I didn’t think about how long the cycling event would take me out of the game.  Neither did I plan on getting sick, which has really put a damper on my writing for a week.  But, you do what you can and get to it!  I’ve also learned some important things about my writing life this month, which I’ll talk about below, but first let’s review what I wanted to do, and what I did.

May Goals!

• Write bunches.
• Ideally, I will finish the rough draft of 3 novellas/short stories.
• Polish one short story (Rescue Me) and get ready to submit it.  Write the synopsis, query, etc.

What I did…

• I wrote the most this month out of any month this year.  At this moment I’ve crossed 90K, and there are still a few days to go in the month as of when I’m writing this.
• I wrote 2 short stories, Decoy and one I’m mockingly calling Booty-Call Bust
• Rescue Me was polished and handed over to be critiqued.  With my month being so busy I pushed the date back for my crit group to the end of the month so most of this goal is being pushed out to June.

I’ve discovered a few things this last few month.  I try too hard to be involved, to do challenges, and be part of things.  At one point I sat back and realized that all these other published authors weren’t doing the same things.  When I looked at what I was working on for the boot camp and thought back on the time tables I wrote up for myself I realized that because of my challenge commitments I can’t work on the things I want to work on.  I would have liked to revise and finish Blood Bound.  Where am I with it?  It’s ont he back burner, and I am more focused on other things that it’s slipped between the tracks.  I want to write the new beginning for Casual Love, but I’m too busy focusing on the challenge writing to do that.

So, from here on out I’m going to restrict myself on challenges and classes.  They’re dictating too much of what I’m writing.  I feel that I could be further along on a few projects than I am if I weren’t being pulled in different directions for my challenges.  Granted, I’ve agreed to do June Revision Hell and a Write-Along Class that I will be fulfilling, but for the rest of the summer until NaNoWriMo – no more challenges for me.

This is not to say that challenges are a bad thing.  Challenges are great for connecting people and motivating people by example, that’s just not what I need at this point in my writing life.

June Goals!

• Revise Decoy
• Submit Rescue Me
• Write my superhero story
• Work on my alias

I referenced the issue of writing under a pen name before and after this I’m not going to reference it.  I will attempt publishing under a pen name, and I’m beginning to use it, to be present online that way and work on building that ‘brand’.  I look forward to the goals for June.  While I would like nothing more than to dive into Casual Love and hammer out the book, I’m going to wait for July and fulfill these goals and do some reading time for myself and see the Book Addicts event through to the end.  After that, though, I’m following my gut for what I want to work on and focus my efforts.

Do you have goals for June?

Weekly Check-in!

I’m halfway through April, and I’m already thinking about May!  I spent my lunch break on Friday listing out what I wanted to do the rest of this month and then everything I thought I could do in May.  It’s a lot of finishing up half started projects right now and editing.  My classes are going well.  This is my first week of full classes.  I’m taking three.  One is a Alternative History and Steampunk class.  Then there is a Self-Editing class being taught by Angela James from CarinaPress.  Lastly, I’m taking a class on Adding Humor to your Manuscript.  All in all, it’s keeping me busy!

I got a little bogged down this week so there were two days when I bucked the list of things I planned on doing and opted to just read instead. Sometimes you have to just know when you are stretched thin or burning out and take that step back and recharge.

Blogging.

I’m happy to say that I’ve almost written all of my blog posts for the month.  All of the goals ones at least.  I still need to clean them up, make a few more examples, and fill in the links but they’re looking really good.  I’m very glad that I’m knocking these out of the water.

This weekend I started thinking about my May blogging and I might start writing those soon.

Revising.

This week was a lot about revising.  First up, I was reading and working through an old manuscript called Abs-olutely.  The first fifty pages are good.  After that I feel like it becomes a mess.  I’m not looking to ever do anything with this manuscript but my friends wanted the chance to read it.  So I’m going through and cutting out some things, cleaning up the spelling and grammar.  In a few places I’m rewriting the scenes.  It’s not a clean manuscript at all, but the ideas are there.  I finished it up on Friday.  Here’s hoping it gives my friends a good laugh!

Rescue Me is on the cutting board.  I’ve started going through it with the tips and tricks I’m learning in the self-editing workshop I’m taking.  I think the story is already much stronger from pruning the unnecessary things I wrote in on the zero draft.  I hit a point with it this weekend though and handed it over to my friend Suzan to look over and give me some suggestions.  Here’s hoping they don’t hurt too much!

Blood Bound is a challenge.  Won’t lie.  I need to write more new scenes, but with the story being so complicated it’s hard to write this anywhere but when I’m at home.  I wanted to be so much closer to being done with this project, but I’m not there yet.

Plotting.

I completely missed my Warrior Writer Boot Camp deadline on Wednesday.  I was waffling between revising characters and doing the major plot points.  I pretty much never decided and missed the deadline because I wouldn’t make up my mind.  I’m going to make an effort this weekend to revising the characters profiles and jotting down the major plot points.

Writing.

Writing for now is on the back burner.  I’m mostly editing and revising and working on class stuff.

Project: Decoy
Genre: romance
Type: novella
Progress: I’ve been sitting on an idea for a zombie story for a while.  There was an anthology that I was trying to write the idea for, but it didn’t work out.  Basically I was focusing on too many projects and it slipped through the cracks.  Last week Suzan pointed me to a Carina Press blog where one of the editors said she wished that someone would send her some zombie hunter romance.  Well, I thought it was a great opportunity to grab Isabella and Ty out of the drawer and work on their story.  It’s coming along very slowly because I’m focused on editing, but I’m excited about it.

What I read.

• Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion
• Once Bitten, Twice Dead by Bianca D’Arc
• Doubleblind by Ann Aguirre

ROW 80

 I’m having the uncomfortable position of asking myself if I need to revise my ROW80 goals.  Currently my goals are:

1. Finish Casual Love
2. Write Little Spirits
3. Finish at least two short stories
4. Write every day
5. Juggle revisions and writing

I think #2 needs to go.  I was hoping to write Little Spirits during the Savvy Author’s May Boot Camp, but I don’t think I’m ready.  My Writing Horror workshop is in May, I haven’t read even half of my ghost hunting resources, and I feel like I need more prep work, so that is officially on the block to get cut.

As far as the rest of it, I finished writing Casual Love.  I’ve completed one short story.  I’m knee deep in another one I’m very excited about.  I’ve also written and edited every day for the last two months and I’m still going strong!

I’m thinking that I’m going to swap out writing Little Spirits for finishing Derby Girls Are Dangerous and Space Particle, both are stories I wrote half of during NaNoWriMo ’11.  I’m not saying that for certain, I’ll wait until I’m closer to May, but that’s where I think this is heading.

Weekly Check-In

This last week has been all about high notes.  I knew that this last week was kinda ‘my week’.  I was going to succeed with flying colors, I just hadn’t realized how amazingly I was going to do.  I’m still flying high from my success, but I might be nose diving pretty soon.  *bites finger nails*

Blogging.

I was doing soooo well at blogging ahead of time.  Now, I’m lucky if I have my blogs done a week ahead. *sigh*  I have the topics and place holder posts for future blogs with the idea jotted down in the body of the post, but I have to come back the week or even the night before and write the dang things.  I need to get back into the jive of having the blogs written out way in advance.

I kicked off my Goals series this week, and on Friday talked about the importance of goals.  This coming week I’m going to talk about setting realistic goals and keeping yourself accountable.  Both are easy to talk about, and very difficult to put into practice.  I foresee a lot of self deprecating stories when I sit down to write those blogs…

Revising.

This has been moved to urgent status this week.  As of Tuesday, I’m in a revising and editing class.  Because I decided to take an extra week to finish Casual Love, which I talk about below, I have lost a week of revisions.  I’m diving back into Blood Bound to revise and polish it.  I really love the story, and I think there’s more there to tell.  So I’m writing new scenes, explaining stuff that was crammed into the story too tightly by the word count restriction and beefing up the story.  I hope to take a week to write new scenes and then two weeks to edit and fine tune those scenes before I hand it off to other people for critiques.  Is that a tight schedule?  Yes, but I’m hoping that I can do it in that time because the Savvy Authors May Boot Camp is looming on the horizon and I want to be turning out wordcounts and not pages edited.  If, in the end, I need more editing time I will take it.

I put in a lot of revising and editing on Sunday.  I read through the draft of Blood Bound, made notes of where I thought stuff needed to be added and then set about writing the new introduction.  I was struggling with a way of laying out the world building and introducing some complicated issues without info dumping.  It’s still kinda an info dump, but it’s done in a different, less dumpy way.  I’m tentatively hopeful.

Last year I wrote a paranormal romance called Absolutely, about werewolves.  It’s never going to be publishable.  The idea just isn’t interesting enough, but I’m doing a quick and dirty pass so I can at least share it with my friends and let them read this strange tale.  It’s better than I had anticipated, but not good enough to warrant me doing more with it.  I’m a third of the way through the draft, which is twice as far as I thought I would get today.  I expect it to get more involved as far as cleaning it up from here on out.

Plotting.

I started working my novel idea, Little Spirits, towards being YA.  I’m really loving where the story is going, and even more excited about it than I was to begin with.  The difficulty is that I want to write this for the May Boot Camp, and still take it through the Warrior Writer Boot Camp process.  Those are conflicting goals since honestly they can’t coexist.  You know what I’m going to do anyways?  Proceed with the WWBC process and start the draft May 1st anyways.  It’s not a great idea, since I’m still pretty fuzzy on the plot, but I’m impatient and I know myself.

So my project for the next week is to revamp the protagonist profiles, do quick and dirty profiles for their siblings and parents and the minor characters.  Next Saturday I’m supposed to be doing the main plot points of my story, but I think I’m going to lapse a week and allow the group to have a breather and look over the revamped profiles and the down and dirty synopsis I want to write.

Writing.

Ya ready for this?  Really ready?

Project:Formerly Fat Club: Casual Love
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Type: novel
Progress: It’s finished! I’m still floating on air.  I’ll come down soon, but I’m still excited and happy and yea!

I also finished a short story! Yea!  I haven’t talked about these short story projects much because I’m leaning heavily towards submitting them to be published under a pen name, for many reasons actually.  These are fun side projects that if I can sell them, I will, but mostly I write them because I want to get an idea out of my head and they’re fun.

What I read.

• Wolf Mates 2-4 by Dakota Cassidy
• The Ex-Files by Dakota Cassidy
• Dark Enchantment by Anya Bast
• Bound by Blood by Cynthia Eden

#ROW80

If you don’t know, I’m participating in the A Round of Words in 80 Days challenge.  I’m being a rebel and doing my weekly updates on Mondays because I’m old and set in my blogging ways.  *brandishes cane*  Actually I rarely post on the weekends so the Sunday check in was out, and I had already promised to blog on topics on Wednesdays so it just made sense to combine it.  Anyways!

How did I do towards my ROW80 goals this week?

• This week, like I said above, I finished Casual Love, which was #1 on my goals.
• I finished a short story.  My goal is to finish two, so I’m halfway to that goal!
• I wrote every day.

Whew! I’m exhausted wading through this, so I have no idea how you made it this far.  If I could give you a dollar just for reading this, I would.  How are you doing this week?  Have you accomplished your goals?

April Goals

*gasp*

I’m posting and I’m not even here?  Well, yeah.  That’s the glory of being able to write blogs ahead of time and schedule them.  You can do handy things like this!

Each month I blog about my goals.  This is really a bunch of self centered focus, so don’t feel the need to get emotionally invested in this blog.  I’m sure there are others I’ve written that are more beneficial to you than just hearing how my month went.

For the most part, I’m super happy with my writing.  January and February were slow months, yielding either small numbers or long dry spells of no writing.  March has been completely different.  So far there have only been two days that didn’t involve writing.  Two!  I’m super proud of that, if nothing else this month.  So, without further ado, lets go over what my goals were, and what I really accomplished…

March Goals!

• Write a huge chunk on Casual Love, my contemporary romance which is rocking right along.
• Revise on Blood Bound. Though it came back rejected, I still believe in the story.
• Continue with the Topical Blogging.
• Have something to offer weekly for Warrior Writer Boot Camp.

What I did…

• I added over 50K (and probably by the time this post goes live, 60K) to Casual Love.  I’ve blogged about it weekly, so there’s no point in explaining how my progress is coming or that I’ve realized some of my big pot holes need fixing.  You’ve heard it all before!
• Revising Blood Bound is a next month project.  I started to do this a little.  I’ve added a few scenes I cut, write a new beginning and I’m genuinely excited about returning to this project.
• Topical Blogging is good!  I continue to get a lot of hits on last month’s series and there’s a lot of conversation about the March series.  Here’s me hoping that I don’t peter out and die on myself!
• Warrior Writer Boot Camp is going well.  I think I’m almost through my character evolutions, at which point I will begin taking the group through my plot.  This is a really cool way to work through a story.  It takes a lot of time, but I think it’s worth it for stories like Little Spirits that have a lot of moving parts.

April Goals!

• Finish Casual Love. Write “The End” and stick it on a shelf.  I’m 100% committed to this project, but I know that the amount of work the first 1/3 of the book needs is going to be excruciating unless I separate myself from it a little.
• Add new scenes to Blood Bound.
• Go through my completed novels (Absolutely and Maliginus, mainly) and evaluate them for revision worthiness.  I think they’re both worth looking at and working with but we’ll see!
• Side project short stories.  Write a few.  Get them out of my system.

I feel like my April goals are on the light side.  Lots of stepping back and evaluating where I’m at with projects, finishing stuff up and cleaning up others.  However, I’m also going to be taking three writing classes during this month so I think a little wiggle room is a necessity.  I would like to get Blood Bound to a point where it’s critique worthy.  I don’t think there will be a lot to do, mostly because I’ll only have to hand out the new scenes to people and scrounge up some beta readers.  (Yes, I know those people who have claimed beta reader status, and I <3 you.)

The other big thing I want to do during April? Read.  Read like my life depends on it.  I have a HUGE think rolling out at Book Addicts in a very short amount of time and I want to do a lot of reading and prep work for that so that when The Event happens, it’s smooth sailing.

What are your goals this month?

February Goals

Man, it feels like I haven’t done these in ages. Yes, I know I just did one a few weeks ago but other than that it seems like it’s been forevah!

This month was a new kind of deal for me. It wasn’t so much about my output as it was about putting in hours on a project. Revisions are a new ballgame for me, so I did a lot of learning the process, figuring out how I operate and then crafting the story. But now I’m going to be gearing up for an actual schedule that will have me doing both writing and revising each month. But that’s getting ahead of myself!

Lets review this last month. My goals for January were:

• Finish revisions on Blood Bound
• Submit Blood Bound
• Start read through on Gate Keepers
• Pick a new writing project

What I did:

• I kicked booty on Blood Bound revisions! At least I think so.
• I submitted Blood Bound last Tuesday. It was a big night for me and I celebrated with a blueberry scone.
• I’ve read through a third of Gate Keepers.
• I have two writing projects going on, but one is more prominent in my head than the other.

February Goals!

• Topical blogging
• Finish my read through on Gate Keepers
• Develop a plan of attack for the plot changes that need to happen in Gate Keepers and go for it
• Ideally I would like to have gone through the novel at least once in the next month, but I think that’s ambitious, but I’ll say it anyways
• I would like to write a third of the planned plot for my new urban fantasy with it’s alternate history

I’ve been going to this Warrior Writer Boot Camp, courtesy of an invite from my friend Suzan. Well the wonderful lady who is in charge of this does a lot of work on social media and promoting yourself. Well, with all of the work I’m going to be putting in on creating my world for my urban fantasy, I want to do topical blogs about world building. I’ll delve into what I’m doing and talk about generalities of how other people can create the same results.

Gate Keepers is a really fun project. At times I read through it and I think: OMG I WROTE THIS! and others I cringe and think: OMG I wrote this… I’m hopeful that this will be a project worth my time and effort – and that I’ll be able to share it with others – hopefully in a published format.

And that’s it. So, it’s time I get to working on some of this stuff, huh?

Quick Update

Okay, I’m writing an uber quick note with the promises of more to come.

This week is about three things:

1. Getting Blood Bound prettied up to send off for submission, which means formatting the document, getting the query and synopsis down perfect – all that stuff. There’s actually a lot to be done – it’s not just a matter of slapping an attachment in an email and going – here’s this story I’d like you to consider!
2. Reading. I’d meant to be reading my rough draft of Gate Keepers, but I got distracted with Cynthia Eden books and got several anthologies she’s included in and then her new book comes out, so I’m enjoying the build up – but later this week I have to shift into gear for Book Addicts stuff.
3. Brainstorming! Suzan made a flip comment about doing horror, or something – can’t really remember – but she brought up the idea. Thus the whisper of a thought I had some time ago fully lodged in my skull, took root in that suggestion, and has blossomed into an idea. I’m joining Suzan for her Warrior Writer Boot Camp that meets every Saturday. It’s like a massive think tank for plotting. I’m doing this brainstorming so I can bring stuff to the table and if/when the group has time we can hash it out. I think I’ll do a post on this later – but I approached the idea by asking myself: what scares me? I might actually have a very good chance at doing horror semi-well….

And that’s it! At least for the moment…

More on BB and revisions and stuff!

As I sit here typing this, my brain numb, I’ve just rewritten the ending for my novella – Blood Bound – AGAIN. However, I like this one best I think. I scrambled last night to get the whole thing under word count, and in it’s current incarnation it is, but tonight I will do another read through and see what I have left and what needs to be fine tuned just a bit more before I go off and let yet another person read it. I’m no longer bleeding optimism about the fate of my book, but neither am I bemoaning how awful it must be. I’ve settled somewhere in the middle. I like the characters and the story. I want to write what happens next – because I’m still not quite sure what happens!

I think this is the story of the new Earth finally emerging from it’s cocoon and moving forward – but to do that it needs a new kind of guardian. I’m working over it in my head, but I’m sure the rest will come to me later!

So for now, I’m happy that Blood Bound is one step closer to being done.

January Goals

Okay, so I haven’t really set any goals for myself since NaNoWriMo, and seriously, do you blame me? I’ve been either burnt out, scrambling for the holidays, or working on stuff that blogging about my goals this month hasn’t really entered my head. Lame, I know huh?

Well, even though I haven’t blogged about my goal this month, I have one. I have a big one!

During November I wrote my novella Blood Bound with the intent to submit it for an anthology call. Well, the deadline for that is February 1st so I’m getting close to the official deadline. Since December I’ve blogged about the revisions for BB, and seriously, that is my goal for January – to do my revisions, feel confident about the final draft – and submit it!

If all goes according to plan right now I should be done with my “final” pass this week. Next week I want to have a friend or two just read it – not critique it or revise it – just read it and give me a thumbs up or down on if they enjoyed it.

Now, if I end up with some spare time on my hands to do some writing stuff with I want to start my read through on Gate Keepers because that’s my next big revision project.

I’m still a little wishywashy about what I want to be writing on, but I think I’ll either be completing my draft of Derby Girls Are Dangerous or working on a paranormal horror idea.

So, in bullet form here are my “tangible” goals for the month:

• Finish revisions on Blood Bound
• Submit Blood Bound
• Start read through on Gate Keepers
• Pick a new writing project

Critique Limbo

Okay, so today I think I have done as much as I can to this draft of Blood Bound and I’ve sent it out to my critique group, partners, friends, whatevah.

There’s a certain amount of creep factor involved with having your stuff critiqued. There’s a certain amount of vulnerability involved because you’re sharing your ideas and that’s incredibly personal.

But then there’s also the whole fact that I’m an incredibly impatient person and I will now be waiting for about two weeks until I have all the documents back to compile and work on my final draft before submission.

So, now what will I be doing while I’m awaiting critique docs?

Um, I’m going to Florida.

I think I will read through Gate Keepers, make some notes and work out a plan of attack for that.

But now – I’m going to eat!

Draft 2, and whole new directions

Okay, so I knew I was going to be changing stuff in Draft 2, but I didn’t expect to write a new ending!

Draft 2 took much longer to get through than I anticipated. I cut around 4,000 words of stuff that I decided wasn’t necessary. Most of it was smexy bits; I felt that I was sacrificing a more complex story for the sake of having smexy bits. So – I cut the smexy bits and beefed up the plot. All in all, I think I will be much happier with the way draft 2 reads.

My goal is to hand this off to my critique group by the time I leave for Florida on Wednesday. That gives me very little time to do my vocal read through and revise the new ending, but I have today off, and the rest of the weekend free to work on this and I intend to do just that!

I have, however, hit the wall of thinking everything I’ve written sounds dumb. Hopefully I go back to being excited about it this time around or else I run the risk of getting nothing done. Eeek!

Okay, off to eat and then work on this!