Category: goals

Week Three

Not much progress in week three, but I have a really, really good excuse. Really. I packed most of my house up this weekend, and moved from a four-bedroom, three-bath house to stay with my parents. Yeah. Not the greatest transition, but a workable solution. It’s the five cats that are less than impressed. Cian has been hiding under the cabinet since he got here, and I’ve only seen him once, at 4:30 this morning when I was the only one awake. Murray, who is normally laid-back and affectionate, has been growling at anything that moves. Salem hid under the bed and scratched me when I tried to get him out. Two Socks hisses at everyone (especially Mom’s two dogs). Boo is the only one behaving normally, and she’s pregnant, which is not wonderful.

Okay, so, really no progress to speak of on my writing goals in the past week. I haven’t written anything, not a single word, since the 13th. That’s almost unheard of for me. That zombie chapter is still pending (Tonight, maybe? Maybe.) I did get a crit done for one of my crit group, which puts me at only being three crits behind in the circle. Not too bad, since everyone apparently decided to post new chapters in the same week. I did get the second chapter of Witches posted, though, so I guess that’s progress. Hopefully I’ll have more to report next week.

Week Two of the New Year

It’s Tuesday, and time to update my progress on my writing goals. I have to hold myself accountable somewhere. So, out of the ten writing-related goals I set for myself this year, in the last week I’ve worked on five of them. Not great, but three of the others can’t be completed until I finish writing the stories involved, and one of them is NaNo, which has to wait until November. Not too bad, I guess.

I worked on the NaNo ’07 story twice this week. It’s coming along nicely. Almost through now, and the climax is looming on the horizon. Nerina and Cy will be back in Atlantis in the next chapter, to face the bad guys and the wrath of Poseidon.

I did some work on the zombie story. I only have about 2 ½ pages written, but I know what happens in the rest of the chapter. There will be much action and adrenaline, I just haven’t had time to write it yet!

I’ve edited several chapters in Witches. Unfortunately, they’re more like rough edits, and I need to go back and look over the chapters much more thoroughly and really think about some things. So, I have the first five chapters printed out to look at again.

I did another chapter on the 2YN story. I like where it’s at right now, and things are just about to take an upward swing. Samantha continues to surprise me. (What is my tomboy-tough character doing wearing a dress and flirting with a man to get what she wants? What? I don’t understand!)

And, I wrote a total of 5,998 new words this week, which brings my grand total for the year up to 8,911.

Goal Progress-Week One

Every week, I’m going to try to update my progress on the goals I set for the year. I’m hoping being held accountable like this will give me the motivation to actually work on the goals, instead of procrastinating and letting them slide.

Of the ten writing-related goals I set for the year, I think it’s safe to say that I’ve worked on six of them in the last week. Not too bad, all things considered. I did some work on the NaNo 2007 story, finished up a chapter. Less than a thousand words, but hey, every little bit helps. I’m also planning on working on it some more tonight. At least, that’s the plan.

I haven’t actually written any on the zombie story, but I did have a meeting with my co-writer, to read her most recent chapter and plan out the next couple of chapters. So, I know what my next chapter is about, I just have to actually write it. That would be the plan for tomorrow.

I’ve been working pretty consistently on Witches, and have edited around six chapters this week. Of course, those were all chapters that had been extensively edited before, so this was just a loose edit. Now I’m moving into the untouched chapters. The horror!

I have actually done a tiny bit of work for my NaNo story for this year (2008). See, I already have a loose idea. And then, a couple of nights ago, I had this dream and I woke up thinking “OMG! It’s the NaNo story. It’s part of the story. I have to get up right now and write this down.” So, I did. (Then, the next night, I had another dream that could definitely be a story one day. Yay for dreaming!)

I’ve worked on the 2YN story. In fact, the last chapter I wrote flowed really well. I love those days. I just sat down and there it was, straight from my brain to the computer screen with no pauses in between. Such a good day. Makes me love being a writer.

Last but not least, I’ve written a big, whopping 2,913 words towards my goal of 250,000. Sad to say, only a week into the new year, and I’m already behind. Oh well. There’s plenty of time to catch up, right?

Writing Goals for 2008

Since I work better under a deadline (it helps me overcome procrastination), I’ve set myself goals to accomplish in my writing this year. I even gave each of the goals a completion date. This will help keep me motivated and focused. I did more or less the same thing in 2007, but I got off-track in about August with the editing on Witches, and I never really got completely back on-track. I’m hoping to avoid that problem this year. And to make it even more “official”, I’m posting the goals here. I’ll try to do updates every few months to hold myself accountable.

1) Finish first draft of NaNo 2007 story (February).

2) Start subbing Through Shadowed Stone (April).

3) Finish first-round edits on NaNo 2007 (May/June).

4) Finish first draft of zombie story (June).

5) Finish first-round edits on Witches (June).

6) Finish first-round edits on zombie story (September).

7) Do NaNo 2008 (November, of course.).

8) Outline the sequel to Witches (end of December).

9) Finish 2YN class (end of 2008).

10) Write 250,000 new words (up 25% from my goal in 2007).

Happy New Year’s!

Woot!

I hit my word goal for 2007! 200,000 words! Yay! That is all.

Yay!

I am so relieved and excited that I have five days off now! Normal people would probably be planning to take it easy and relax, but not me. Oh no. I have a two-page to-do list, organized by days. It may be the holidays, but I intend to get some things done! My goal during this little break is to write or complete two chapters in each of my three WIPs, and also to edit several chapters in Witches. I also have two crits on the agenda, and I plan to post the revised first chapter of Witches sometime early next week. And I’m not going to mention all the other, non-writing-related things on the list. Like packing. Cleaning. Cooking. I’m sure it’ll be a lot of fun. Somehow, I always feel better if I have a lot of things to do. So, Merry Christmas to everyone!

Writing Progress

So, it’s halfway through the week. Time for an update, I guess. I hit my word count goal for the 2YN story (Really going to have to come up with a name for that sometime soon.) The first person POV is getting so much easier for me to write! Samantha is really coming alive, which is great, since I think she’s a wonderful character.

I’m keeping up with my editing goals for Shadows of Stone. The plan is to be through on Sunday, and it looks like I’ll be able to hit that. Then I’ll key in the edits next week, and hopefully find some beta readers. (I’ve got one lined up, at least!)

No progress on Witches. That’s slated to begin the week after next. I promise. Just in time to get distracted with NaNo. Oh, and I’ve finally started researching names for the NaNo book (aka the Atlantis story).

And as if I don’t have enough to do, my best friend came up with a fabulous story idea for us to work on together. She even sent me the first nine pages, which completely intrigued me. It’s The Stand, and some zombies, and…some other stuff I can’t talk about yet, until we get it all straightened out. But it’s cool, and I’m excited about working on it with her. It should be a lot of fun.

I know this looks like a ton of stuff on my things-to-do list (and it is), but I think I’d go crazy if I didn’t have a lot going on. I’d just get bored and slop around all day watching TV. Sigh. So boring.

Also posted in my personal blog, A Figment of My Imagination.

On Goals

I think it’s important to set goals in writing. I don’t mean goals like “Write the next Great American Novel”, or anything like that, either. I do have a list of writing goals, some of which I’ve already accomplished, but many more that I hope to. Finishing the first drafts of Witches and Shadows of Stone are both on there, although on the list Shadows is simply called “the nomad story”. There are other stories on the list right now, five to be exact, and I’m actually working on one of them for my 2YN story. But there are other things on the list as well. Like finding an agent and hopefully getting lucky enough to not have to work full-time at the day job. Stuff like that. Those are the big writing goals, as far as I’m concerned. These goals are always in the back of my mind, and they keep me going.

But what really keeps me motivated are the smaller goals, like word count goals. For most of the first draft of Witches, I didn’t have any sort of goals. When I sat down to write, I just wrote until I felt like stopping. Some days I tried to finish up a chapter, but that was as well defined as my goals got. That is possibly the reason it took me so long to finish writing Witches (that and the total lack of an outline). I was a bit better prepared when I started Shadows last year for NaNo. I had a phase outline, and I had set myself the personal goal of 80k words (Yes, for my first NaNo. I can’t help it; I’m a little bit of an overachiever. I’m trying to overcome that!), which came down to 20k a week, or about 2.9k a day. That was a pretty high goal for someone who had never bothered to keep up with word count before. But it went well, and I hit my goal. Some days I didn’t manage to write at all, but there were a couple of days I hit 7.5k, and I was really proud. Seeing the word count go up was enough to keep me motivated, to keep my butt in the chair and my fingers on the keyboard. And that’s the important part, right? That you’re actually writing. It could be crappy first draft material, but you’re writing, and it’s so much easier to fix something that’s actually written than something that’s not.

I’m currently working on my 2YN story. I don’t have a daily word count goal, but my weekly goal is 5k. Now, I type fast, and I have a phase outline for this story, so it shouldn’t be too hard to hit a measly 5k. Sadly, I’ve been behind since the first week. Only four weeks in, and I’ve been behind for a month. Sigh. The good news is, I should be caught up today. I only needed 3k to catch up, and I’ve already done 1k of that, so my numbers should all add up by tonight. Which is good, because I hate being behind. It discourages me, makes it harder for me to work.

I figure if I’m caught up on the writing, maybe that will motivate me to work on the editing. I need to finish this draft of Shadows, but I’ve pretty much lost my thoughts on where I was. And then there’s the looming specter of editing the behemoth that is Witches. So, if anyone has any ideas on how set motivating goals for editing, I’d love to hear them.