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?

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

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

#ROW80 Check In

I haven’t done a proper accounting of what I’ve been doing as far as my ROW 80 goals.  Though I’ve been working on them, everything has been overtaken with my Savvy participation.  It’s worked because the goals have matched up, but I haven’t been focused on this.  There’s two weeks to go, so here’s hoping I can do a good showing of myself over the next two weeks.

ROW 80 Goals…

1. Finish Casual Love

The story is done.  This week I’m going to do a read through and begin writing the new beginning.  I’m disappointed that I need a new beginning, but it will be stronger if I start the real tension earlier in the story.

2. Finish at least two short stories.

I’ve finished two: Rescue Me and Decoy.  I’m working on a third with a ridiculous name because I couldn’t come up with something that worked.  Names are difficult for me.  *sigh*  I’m hoping to finish it by the end of ROW.  I’m well into the story, but thanks to June and the boot camp I’m a little burned out on solid write, write, write!

3. Do writerly things every day.

With a few exceptions, I’ve written almost every day of the last three months.  That’s a major success I think.  Building that daily habit is important.  My day doesn’t feel complete unless I have written something.

4. Juggle revisions and writing.

This has been fairly successful.  I do better by large when I can focus on revisions or writing, but I can do both.  Right now I’m doing deep edits on Decoy while polishing Rescue Me and making progress on the zero draft of Booty-Call Bust.  It’s difficult, but I think I’m learning!

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?

ROW 80 Check In

I’m going t do a proper check in this week.  I’ve been blogging less so I might as well do the proper check in, right?  No excuses!

Okay, this last week was the kick off of the Savvy Author’s Boot Camp, which translates to uber focused writing and editing time.  I’ll talk more about it tomorrow when I do my big weekly check in.

ROW 80 Goals…

1. Finish Casual Love

Done, and done, and done! I need to write a new beginning for it but I’m not ready for that. I’m still exhausted from just writing it.  I’m kind of hoping that the last week of May I will have the three stories I have slated to write for the boot camp done and I can churne out a new beginning then, but in the meantime I should probably read over the book so I get a better handle on what exactly it is I need to establish in the beginning of the book.  This is more on the revising of this book, but oh well.

2. Finish at least two short stories.

These are more like novellas.  The first one I wrote, Rescue Me, is out making the critique rounds.  I told the group origionally two weeks and realized that with the boot camp I should wait until June, so in a monthish I’ll circle back to this and work on it again.  I have a general plan for the siblings of the sister introduced in this story in case I can write the whole family.

Decoy is what I’ve been working on in the last week.  It’s pretty awesome.  I’ll talk more about it tomorrow.

3. Do writerly things every day.

This last week was a return to the dedicated mentality of doing things every day.  Yeah, I felt guilty for the two weeks I was laying around reading all the time but I needed that.  It was writerly in that I needed my ‘word tank’ refilled.  It wasn’t obviously writing or revising or whatever time, but it’s still an important part of being a writer.  And I’m okay with that.  This last week though has seen me at the computer until all hours of the night getting in those words and pages!

4. Juggle revisions and writing.

The boot camp has made this really happen.  I revise during the day at lunch or before work, and then write and blog at night.  It’s really working out well.  The revision project this last week was a fantasy book I wrote last year called Maliginus.  I’ve been writing on Decoy.  Last night I did a quick pass through a short story I wrote during NaNo called Gentleman Pirates and Lady Smugglers.  Sometimes I really surprise myself with my writing.  All things are awesome!

Weekly Check-In

Okay this week was all about being the last stretch of rest I get before the Savvy Author’s May Boot Camp kicks off. I did manage to do a lot of revising work this week.  As my primary ROW 80 goal to juggle writing and revising this was important to me.  Yes, I know that through May I will be primarily concerned with my output, but all in all I’m really pleased with my ability to get both done.

During May I will accomplish another ROW 80 goal which was to write another short story.  I actually plan on trying to write one a week.  And my short story I mean novella length stuff around 20K-30K.

Blogging.

I’m going to be blogging light for the next month.  Hopefully I’ll do three blogs a week, but no promises.  My effort will be going to word count on my stories.  As of Sunday night I’ve started all of my topical blogging, none of them are finished, and I have all of one other random blog about writing zombies scheduled.  Talk about lean blogging!

Revising.

My short story Rescue Me is officially out on critique rounds.  More than a little nervous, but hopeful that it will come back with positive results.  It’s also the first thing I’m sharing after going through my self-editing class.  I’m hoping my grammar is better, because the kind of story is frankly making me nervous sharing it.

Plotting.

As of this week I’m finished bringing my characters to the Warrior Writer Boot Camp group.  I won’t be able to go for the next two weeks but after that I’ll be bringing my plot points to the group.  I’m a little nervous about that because I feel like I have really strong characters but the plot is weak.

I have two other projects I want to work on during May that I’m hoping I will finish that I’ve been plotting out.  One is a contemporary roller derby, the other is a superhero story for the Samhain anthology call.

Writing.

This kind of stinks since I’m only talking about one day of writing here.  I didn’t do much of anything over the last week I would call writing except for a little discovery writing here and there.  But Sunday, Sunday I write plenty!

Project: Decoy
Genre: zombie hunter romance
Type: novella
Progress: I started out with about 4,000 words written.  I’d set the stage, and it was time for the main characters to get down and dirty.  It was very Mr & Mrs Smith with guns and knives, but without really trying to kill one another.  It was also the scene that would never friggen end.  I took a page out of some of the books I’ve read recently about stripping away the characters walls and leaving them vulnerable so I’m hoping that when I return to revise this, I capture that between these two characters.

What I read.

•  Building Magic by Lily Cain
• Red Ribbon by Lila Dubois
• Wrapped Around Your Finger by Fallon Blake
• Rigger by Kelly Jamieson
• When You Dare by Lori Foster
• Cloudy with a Chance of Marriage by Kieran Kramar
• Tiger’s Eye by Marjorie M. Liu
• Shadow Touch by Marjorie M. Liu

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!

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.