October Goals

This has been a random month. Writing the end to Decoy was both exciting, and like pulling teeth. I’ve been kind of bouncing around, not really steady, so in a large part this month has been frustrating. I wanted to get more done than I did, but I did what I set out to do. I knew heading into September that I needed a breather. I needed to focus on fewer projects and get other, non-writing things taken care of, like finding a new place to live! And work!

Overall, September was a great month that went by far too quickly. I’ve been looking forward to it for a while because of FenCon, and it didn’t disappoint in being an eventful month!

September Goals!

• FenCon critiques.  There are 18 of them to do. Very time consuming.
• Finish the additions to Decoy and set aside for at least a week.

What I did…

• FenCon critiques – all of them.
• Decoy’s ending is done, but now I want to write a new beginning!
• Finished writing a novella I haven’t mentioned.

Yes, I randomly wrote a new novella/short novel! The workshop was an interesting experience. It was good, but I think I need to focus my feedback on my audience instead of settling for feedback, period.

Okay, October! October is an unfortunate month. It’s right before NaNo, which is always a drain, so I like to take October easy, at least as far as writing goes. I hope to get revisions on at least one project done and loads of reading. I’ve seriously been slacking on my Book Addicts duties and I need to step it up.

I don’t quite know what I want to write for NaNoWriMo, but I hope to get the project ironed out over the next month so I can work on it during November.

October Goals!

• Write new beginning for Decoy.
• Revise on Decoy.
• Plan for NaNoWriMo.
• Read. Lots.

Well, that’s what I have going on. How about you?

Weekly Check-In

I’m writing this while still fumbling through the post-con haze. Tomorrow I’ll do a recap of my FenCon experience, but for now I’ll try to be all responsible like and talk about what I’ve accomplished this week, which feels like not a whole lot. Having the FenCon workshops start on Thursday meant that the rest of my week was all about getting things taken care of, like having my hair cut and dyed and grocery shopping and this and that and I’m tired just talking about it! So, this feels like another week that not enough happened.

Blogging.

I was so proud of myself for writing up blogs that would publish while I was at FenCon, and then they didn’t publish. So bummed! My new Salon Sunday blog didn’t go up until last night, so very disappointing!

Revising.

After all of the feedback this weekend, I have a really exciting dose of stuff to add to Decoy. I need a new beginning for the story, or really, I need to write the rest of the beginning. I want to weave in some things I threw in at the end of the last draft. There’s a lot to do but it’s very exciting because I still love this book sooooo much.

What I read.

• My Life as a White Trash Zombie by Diana Rowland
• Love’s Portrait by Monica Burns

Weekly Check-In

This was a good week, even if I didn’t write tons and tons.  There were a lot of life things I had to take care of, like, where the heck am I going to live?  I need to move and since the house drama fell through I need to look for a new place and I really don’t want to!  I looked at a bazillion houses and I don’t want to look at anything else!  But, I’ve found a great place that will give me room for an office area and a big living area, so it’s all good!

Blogging.

I’m being a terrible blogger.  I had a series idea that I was going to do, and never wrote it.  I’m thinking about including another blog mem with my weeks blogging.  Any suggestions or thoughts?

Okay, updating this.  I’m going to start blogging on Sundays, doing the Sunday Salon where I discuss or talk about a book I’m reading.

Critiquing.

I’m almost done with my FenCon critiques!  I’m super excited about this.  The workshop submissions have been all over the place.  It’s a good experience critiquing a wide variety of manuscripts.  I’d suggest doing a workshop that involves a lot of critiquing at least once.  It might not be your thing, but it’s a good learning experience.

Revising.

This week I’m starting another revising project.  It’s been written, I’ve gone over it a little but I haven’t really dug into it.  That starts this week.  Thankfully it’s a short project so it won’t take too long, maybe a week or two depending on how long I have to focus on it, and then I’m off to critique partners and stuff.

Writing.

This last week I finished my zombie story!  Decoy is officially done, and a full length novel.  I’m super jazzed about this and I hope everyone else loves it as much as I do.  It’s a heck of a long way from being done-done, but having the rough draft completed is a big step.  I know some things need to be changed and I want to weave in a few things I tossed in at the end.  I’m super hopeful!

What I read.

• Dark Sins by Stephanie Draven
• Cindra’s Bounty Hunter by Paige Tyler

September Goals

So I knew that August was going to be a tricky month.  Because of PBP I was going to lost two weeks, add in the family stuff with my grandmother passing away and both my drive to write and the time was sapped.  I had hoped to do some writing in cafes while in Paris but the logistics of carrying the netbook into the city and the general disbelief of having outlets available worked against me.  So writing wise, August was disappointing, but experience wise it was super rich.

August Goals!

• Revise Decoy

What I did…

• Wrote a new ending for Decoy

So I had a really sad discovery about my zombie story.  I only wrote half of it.  Yeah.  How much does that suck?  After throwing myself a pity party, I figured out the new ending and I’m still kind of writing it.  Yeah.  I didn’t get as much of it written as I thought I would be able to before or even during my trip so I’m in a really bad flux place with it that I hate, but I love the direction of where the story is going.  I got to add two characters that will need to be interwoven in the beginning of the story, but I’m glad for this chance because one of them will get a spinoff novella.

September is going to be a busy month.  With FenCon coming up, I have a lot of critiques to do and I really want to finish Decoy and get it to submission readiness before NaNoWriMo, which I also have to start planning for.  All of this has to work into my goals.

September Goals!

• FenCon critiques.  There are 18 of them to do. Very time consuming.
• Finish the additions to Decoy and set aside for at least a week.

So there you go.  I’m keeping my goals simple since FenCon will probably sap me for a whole week and there’s so much involved with that process and what goes with it.  I’m sticking with keeping my focus on Decoy because I think it’s a good direction for me to flex my writing muscles.  So yeah.

What do you want to do over the next month?

August Goals

July was a really tough month.  Lot’s of not so great things happened.  I lost the house I was going to buy, my mom had heat stroke, my grandmother was care flighted to the hospital, the doctors mistakenly diagnosed my dad with cancer, and we prepared to say goodbye to my grandmother.  I’m honestly amazed I did anything at all.

I always push myself to do more, be better and get stuff done.  This summer and spring it just hasn’t happened.  Stuff has gotten in the way and I’ve done a lot of shuffling goals and projects.  It’s getting on my nerves because I’m not where I wanted to be, but life happens.  You deal with it and you do what you can do.  I learned a lot about my writing habits under stress and honestly I’m questioning some of my earlier notions about what I should write.  It’s been interesting.  But anyways, moving on to the goals that I did and did not complete.

July Goals!

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

What I did…

• I am still revising Decoy.  It’s had a few passes, but I’m adding to it.
• I submitted Rescue Me.
• I scratched the superhero story.
• My alias rocks.  You’ll also never hear me talk about her again.

Like I said above, July kicked my butt.  I didn’t do what I wanted to do, but I did stuff.  I wasn’t a slouch, but neither did I push myself to do stuff when it wasn’t the best decision for me.  Thus why Decoy isn’t ready to go to critiques yet.  This last month I’ve also begun the process of seperating myself from my pen name.  People question the use of pen names and say you shouldn’t use them, but I think in my case it’s a good thing to use one.  And therefore I need to seperate the two very different individuals in my head!

August Goals!

• Revise Decoy.

I’m going to be in France for half of the month.  I don’t think that will allow for lots of goals for the month, so I’m keeping it simple.  I want to revise on Decoy.  There are some things I need to do that are writing related but they’re not just ‘me’ projects.  Speaking of, I need to get working on those as well.  And that’s another reason I want to focus on one project right now.  Burn out.  I need to safeguard against that.

So what are your August goals?

Weekly Check-In

I’ve had a pretty good week as far as writing goes, though other than writing things were a little messy.  One day at work the A/C went out so I wound up coming home to work.  It was a hassle and I always feel like I don’t get enough done when I’m at home because inevitably the one thing I need to do stuff is — at the office.  I also had my first doctor’s appointment since forever, like High School forever ago, this last week to help figure out what I could be allergic to.  There was an attempt at drawing blood that resulted in a very dramatic fainting from yours truely.  Not one of my prouder moments, let me tell you.

Despite all of that I’ve been working away steadily on one project.  What with the house drama, France coming up and Everything Else In Life, I’m focusing on one thing right now.  I think that means I’m dropping my contemporary romance project because I simply don’t know what to do with it.  I love the concept but as far as what to do with a zero draft that needs far too much work, I don’t know where to start.

Blogging.

I blogged earlier this week about blog block, because I think I have it.  I’ve exhausted my lists of possible topics, and the series ideas aren’t grabbing my attention.  I have enjoyed the snippets where I talk about documentaries and what you can do with the historical information twisted and applied to fantasy.  That’s been cool because it helps me think through stuff.  Other than that maybe I should give myself permission to not blog, hm?

Revising.

I am so close to being done with this round of edits.  I’m not tackling these in a very smart way.  I’m going through the manuscript mostly tackling awkward phrasing and trying to add description to places.  Once upon a time my descriptions were one of the strongest things about my writing but they’ve slipped.  I’m bummed and I don’t quite know how to solve this issue.  I need to go through and do a description pass and make sure that the setting is there.  But I’ll do that after I finish with the awkward phrasing and expounding on the ending.  The ending was so bad, not that the action was bad, but it was almost a verbal list of actions.

This happened, and then that, then they did this.

Not great.  Not great at all, so I’m fixing that and it’s going well.  I love zombies and this story is great.  It’s also a pen name project so I guess I shouldn’t really talk about it, huh?  Need to figure out a better blogging balance for what I can and can’t talk about where.  Sometimes these things are confusing!

Plotting.

I’m plotting out my urban fantasy still.  I think I’ll be writing it when I come back from Paris, or I might start it while I’m in Paris since editing things while using the borrowed Netbook doesn’t sound like a good idea.  I still need to do research on mythology and sit down to work out the characters and the exact plot.  Right now it’s all in my brain and I haven’t pulled it out of there.  I could possibly do that while I was in Paris.  That’s not a bad idea.  Hmm, I must think over this!

What I read.

• Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire
• A Local Habitation by Seanan McGuire
• An Artificial Night by Seanan McGuire
• Lust After Death by Daisy Harris

July Goals

I feel like June was an exercise in how many different directions I could be pulled at once.  There was the Savvy challenge, the Book Addicts BARR event, I had classes and stuff and this and that and — Oh my God, I think I’m going to rip my hair out!  So while I didn’t accomplish as much as I wanted to, the big things did get done.

June Goals!

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

What I did…

• I didn’t revise Decoy.  That was sad news to me, but it was more important to finish I Spy You.
• I finished I Spy You!  This was the short story that wasn’t happy being short.  It’s between a novella and a novel right now.  I plan on adding in to the beginning and a subplot.  I’m super excited about this story!
• I did not write the superhero story and I have ultimately decided to not write it.
• My alias is established and her own person.

For me getting I Spy You finished and doing the submissions was a big deal.  Those got done – and I’m happy.

This next month will be a lot of getting ready to go to Paris and making a deal on a house so a lot of my time will be sucked up by those two activities.  What time is left over I really want to spend working on one focal project.

July Goals!

• Revise on Casual Love
• Plot the Urban Fantasy idea
• Revise some of Decoy

So my focus is Casual Love.  If I can get to Decoy I will but the focus is all about the Formerly Fat Club girls!  I want to rewrite the beginning and possibly get some feedback on the overall plot.  It’s a contemporary, but there aren’t any stalker boyfriends, no criminals, nothing huge as far as the plot except a ‘real life’ love story kind of situation.  I was very excited about it when I wrote it but now I’m worried that there’s not enough conflict.  So!  I need to read the manuscript and figure out if I like it as is or if there needs to be another story as well.  Wish me luck!

What are you working on this month?

Weekly Check-In

This week is back to ‘normal’ in my world.  Normal being subjective of course.  Last week was a gauntlet of exhaustion and I appreciate everyone around me for their patience and understanding.

I did write last week, but not as much as I would have liked.  I feel like I’m becoming a broken record with that phrase.

This week is kind of a big week as far as writing goes.  Suzan and I made an agreement that we would both submit our stories on the same day (Thursday).  So I’m avoiding counting down the days, hours and minutes until we hit send.  So that means that we have a lot to do to get ready over the next few days. There are synopses and queries to polish, not to mention the manuscripts themselves.  Excuse me while I freak out a little.

Blogging.

I gave myself a pass on blogging last week.  With all the family stuff going on I didn’t have the energy.  This week I’m going to bounce back with the blogging.  Suzan and I are planning to continue our series and I want to start blogging about the documentaries I’m watching and how I think we can use real life events and research to beef up stories and writing and cool stuff like that.

Revising.

Not much has been happening on the revising front, which is a disappointment to me.  That said, July will be all about revising as I have a Revise in Company class coming up.  Also, there’s a workshop deadline of July 15th for a writer’s workshop selection I need to be able to hand in with reasonable confidence as to where the story is going.  I’m slightly worried that the story I use for the workshop will be done and out on submission by the time the workshop comes around, but what can you do?

Plotting.

The Warrior Writer Boot Camp crowd is going to hate me.  I have a killer idea for an Urban Fantasy I want to write.  I’ve slowly been fleshing out the world and things in my head while not allowing myself to really think through the plot.  It was my way of telling myself to not work on it, but it’s not working.  I really want to write it.  So the Urban Fantasy might be what I write next, pushing Little Spirits to the project I write for NaNoWriMo, which would be fine since it will be a shorter book anyways.

Writing.

I’ve been averaging between 1-2,000 words a day.  It’s not as much as I would like, but it is progress.  I think I’ve been spread too thin over the last few months.  July will be less crazy in that regard at least.

Project: I Spy You (formerly known as Booty-Call Bust)
Genre: paranormal romance
Type: short novel
Progress: I’m crossing my fingers that I can write The End on the draft tonight.  It needs work.  It started out as a novella and is now a novel.  The beginning needs a better lead in for it to be a novel.  There needs to be some more subplot, not a lot since the book is almost entirely the two characters and only one POV.  Overall I’m happy with this project.  It’s fun, it’s made me laugh and I got to write spies.

What I read.

I don’t really remember what I read.  That’s bad, isn’t it?

• Magic Slays by Ilona Andrews

Weekly Check-In

I don’t even know what to say about this week.  It was both productive and lazy.  I worked on things every day, but not tons and tons.  This update is going to be brief and a little anorexic because I forgot to do it….

Blogging.

The writing sex blogging series Suzan and I have been doing is going well.  We’re pantsing some of it and other parts are really planned out.  Any other blogging I’ve been doing has been light and well, not that impressive I know.

Revising.

My effort really has been here.  I’ve been revising my zombie project and it’s been going well.  I need to rewrite the ending of it so that it’s stronger but I’m hopeful about it!

Plotting.

Nothing to say here.  Missed WWBC again this week and I’m more focused on wrapping up projects than starting new ones.  I’ve jotted down some ideas but that’s about it.

Writing.

[talk about the weeks focus on writing]

Project: Booty-Call Bust
Genre: paranormal romance
Type: novel
Progress: This project has informed me that at 35K, it’s going to be a novel. I expect to wrap this draft up in 5-10K and then add to it.  It’s not the best process for how to proceed, but I think that it’s the right decision to make.

What I read.

• Deadline by Mira Grant

Pictures

Weekly Check-In

Despite this being the last few days of the Savvy Boot Camp, it was a lazy week.  I read Kiss of Snow instead of sleeping, and slept instead of writing, and as soon as the clock rolled over to June 1st all responsibility to write like the wind was gone.  We still don’t know the results for who won the boot camp, but it was a close race to the end.  June is the month that I want to do revisions rather than writing, but I’m still writing.  I got off to a good start, but I’ll talk about that below.

I haven’t been talking about A Round of Words at all, and for that I fail.  I haven’t forgotten that I’m working on that challenge, but I haven’t been as mindful of updating my progress on it.  I solved that yesterday.

Blogging.

Judging by the twitter conversations and the comments left on Suzan’s blog and here I would say that the Let’s Talk About Sex series is off to a good start.  We discussed underwear and what that says about your characters.  Suzan took the girly side and I discussed all things buff and hunky.  This week we’re talking about heat levels and language particular to the romance genre.  While a lot of people already know this stuff, not everyone does and it’s good to talk about it.  We’re also having a blast while we’re at it, so that’s all that really matters.

Revising.

I started revisions on Rescue Me – again.  These were pretty light, going over what one of my critique partners suggested.  A lot of it was grammar, and of that commas.  I have comma issues.  I conquer the apostrophe and now the comma and I are at odds!

I’m really happy with Rescue Me.  I have it up over at Book Country for review if anyone is a member there and feels like giving me some feedback.  I plan to submit it next month after I take my submission package class and hammer out the submission details.  I’m less confident about those, but that’s the reson behind taking the classes!

This weekend I broke open Decoy.  I’m almost halfway through it and hoping to be done with this first pass in a few days.  It’s kind of ugly at this point and there’s a lot of red, but I’m hoping that in the end it will pay off and it will rock.  I’m crossing my fingers that I finish this draft Tuesday or Wednesday and then the super picky stuff starts.

Plotting.

Um, I’m kind of stalled out on plotting.  I’m worried that letting an idea stew this much is a bad idea.  I get bored of the shiny and move on to something else.  I still like the idea and I want to write it but it’s not a driving desire of want any more.  I’m afraid that this is bad.  Very bad.

I replotted my superhero story I was supposed to write during Boot Camp.  It’s a whole new idea and more naughty than the original, but again I waited too long to write it.  So I’m going to write the naughty one and just go for it.  If it flops in the draft process it flops and I’ll move on.

I plan on doing more reading this month to get myself in a place to write certain things.  We’ll see how this goes!!!

Writing.

Yeah, so since it’s June I’ve slacked on writing….

Project: Booty-Call Bust
Genre: romance
Type: novella
Progress: I had an idea for this while watching Deadliest Warrior, of all things.  The story is actually at a very interesting part, so it shouldn’t be hard to jump back in and hopefully hammer it out soon.  My problem is that I’ve been distracted by being lazy.  And revising.  I’m going to attempt to write 1-2K a day on this a day this week in tandem to doing revisions.  It’s not a lot, I know, but I want to keep the ball rolling and finish this sucker.

What I read.

• Kiss of Snow by Nalini Singh