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?

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?

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?

May Goals

April was more about recharging myself than writing or revising more.  I had my goals set light, but ended up slacking off even more and just reading.  It was good.  It was needed.  And I’m glad I did it.  So, getting on to the point of this whole blog!

April Goals!

• Finish Casual Love.
• 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.

What I did…

• I finished Casual Love!!!
• I read through Absolutely, cleaned it up a little, and gave it to my friends to read for fun.  I also waded through the mess that was my roller derby story and decided that it’s a lost cause.  The characters are great – but the story sucks.  I didn’t get through Maligimus, and I’m sad about that but I’ll hold off on the project for later.  I have hope for the book in the long run.
• I started several short stories – but – ah – didn’t finish anything except Rescue Me.  It’s currently out on critique rounds.

May is Savvy Author’s Boot Camp month.  I have but one goal…

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.

So bring on the challenge!

March Goals

Goals are important.  They’re a tangible target for you to aim at.  I’m a goal motivated person. Being able to scratch something off a to-do list motivates me about as much as being competitive.

I think February was all about learning focus for me.  I had myself chasing too many willow de wisps and shiny baubles.  I started the month wanting to work on two projects and revise and blog and do all this really great stuff, but I spread myself a little too thin.  But moving on!

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

What I did…

• Topical blogging rocked in February!  I’ve really got my feet under me I think and it’s going well.
• I read Gate Keepers. The manuscript is okay, but I’m questioning whether or not it’s worth revising.
• I’ve written around 20K on Reti

So, in the spirit of focusing on obtainable goals, here’s what I want to do in March:

• 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.

That’s not a lot, I know, but all of those require a lot of my time.

This is, in the spirit of everything this week, brief.

Do you make goals?  Do you find them useful?  How often do you complete all of them?

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?

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