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The Quarterly Writing Round Up!- Q2, 2017

July 10, 2017August 14, 2017 Emily

Welcome to Q2, y’all!

Halfway through 2017 and I’m feeling pretty good (despite what you are about to see). A lot of things are coming together, setting up the second half of the year to likely be a cascade of productivity!

Here’s a recap of my goals for the year, in case you don’t want to go back and read the original post:

Overall goals for the year: ~~Edit and~~ (Finished, Q1/Q2) Publish “The Stars Are Fire” (now titled “Doubt The Stars”); ~~Write~~ (Finished, Q2), Edit, and Post “Good Intentions”; Finish Writing “Double The Baggins, Twice The Took”; Finish Writing “Wonderland Reclaimed”; Write first draft of Tempest in Space novel (tentatively titled “Such Stuff As Dreams”)

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Blogging, Writing

The Quarterly Writing Round Up!- Q1, 2017

April 13, 2017 Emily

Reminder: For the second year in a row (go me!) I have made a set of yearly goals I would like to accomplish, and I’m breaking them down by quarter for you guys, so you can see where I am. And also so I can see where I am, because sometimes I forget? And I get distracted? So I need this reminder every few months, it’s hella important to me. I appreciate your time and attention as I reorient myself in my life 🙂

Here’s a recap of my goals for the year, in case you don’t want to go back and read the original post:

Overall goals for the year: ~~Edit and~~ (Finished, Q1) Publish “The Stars Are Fire” (now titled “Doubt The Stars”); Write, Edit, and Post “Good Intentions”; Finish Writing “Double The Baggins, Twice The Took”; Finish Writing “Wonderland Reclaimed”; Write first draft of Tempest in Space novel (tentatively titled “Such Stuff As Dreams”)

Okay, so I finished, like half of a goal this quarter. But, hey! Progress! And I did make some progress toward most of the others too, so it wasn’t a total waste 🙂

Here’s my WordKeeper Alpha graph for the year so far!

As you can see, I’ve spent the majority of my time and energy on the self-edit of my novel from November, “Doubt The Stars”, which I’m feeling pretty good about. DBTT is also coming along nicely, so that’s two of my goals I’ve made significant progress on. I wish I’d spent more time on my “Good Intentions” outline, but I am only human, after all.

Here’s the month by month breakdown!

Quarter One, 2017- Review

January– First month of NaNoWriMo’s “Now What?” months, focusing on revising and editing. TSAF- make character sketches, flesh out settings, build up the system of planets, research the tech, and figure out my themes. Dictate my brainstorming for “Good Intentions”. Post four chapters of DBTT.

Um… Some of this happened. The posting of the chapters happened! The dictating experiment was a giant pile of fail.

Apparently, I can’t words through my face, only through my fingers. I did a lot of wording with my fingers this month, so that was good. It was also the month that I admitted to myself that writing of the words was more important than the posting of the words and lowered my chapter goal from four to two. I also wasted a lot of time on a little story that no one cared about and I will probably never finish, but it was fun while it lasted 🙂

February– Second month of NaNoWriMo’s “Now What?”. Self-edit TSAF. Continue to dictate brainstorming for “Good Intentions”. Post four chapters of DBTT (possibly start dictating new words?).

Ugh. The self-edit. The self-edit that I thought was going to take a month and instead took over my life for the better part of two months.

I still managed to write the words I needed and post the chapters I needed, so that was good, but I went through a pretty terrible episode in which I was almost convinced I was never going to be finished with this book. I got out of it, but it was tough.

March– Give TSAF to a select number of readers for feedback. Translate my dictation brainstorming to a workable outline for “Good Intentions”. Post four chapters of DBTT and write 25,000 new words (possibly through dictation).

So, since I obviously wasn’t finished with edits by March, the giving to readers thing didn’t happen. I did manage to finish the edits, so I’m only a month behind where I wanted to be. The outline of “Good Intentions” happened in the most basic sense, and if you add it up, I actually wrote more than the 25,000 words I had planned to write in March. I just stretched it out over a three month period, which I am completely fine with!

I wish that I was able to post chapters faster, but I’m trying not to beat myself up over it. I just need to focus and readjust my goals for the rest of the year. Yeah, things are… fine. They’re fine. o.O

Quarter Two, 2017- Goals

So, my plan for the year has (of course) been derailed already and we’re only three months in. But that’s okay! Trying to stay positive! I can do this!

So, Quarter Two goals! Here we go:

April: Give “Doubt The Stars” to beta-readers. Write 50,000 words on “Good Intentions” for Camp NaNoWriMo. Post two chapters of “Double the Baggins, Twice the Took”.

May: Read the feedback from beta-readers, revise “Doubt The Stars”, send to editors for sample edits and decide on professional editor. Finish the first draft of “Good Intentions”, let rest for the rest of the month. Post two chapters of DBTT, write 10,000 new words.

June: Send “Doubt The Stars” to professional editor, begin search for cover designer, start working on back matter, dedications, acknowledgements, and links to include. “Good Intentions” pre-edit prep. Post two chapters of DBTT, write 10,000 new words.

Wow. That’s a lot of stuff. But actually, it all seems… very doable. Is that crazy? I feel like that’s crazy.

Thanks, John Green 🙂 Alright, you guys, I’m gonna try to do better with keeping up with the blog from now on, so stay tuned! See ya!

Blogging, Writing

The Quarterly Writing Round Up!- Q3, 2016

October 6, 2016October 5, 2016 Emily

Reminder: At the beginning of the year, I made some yearly goals and some quarterly goals, which I promised to reevaluate and re-prioritize every three months. It’s been six months now, and it’s time to look back at Quarter Three 2016! Here’s a recap of my goals for the year, in case you don’t want to go back and read the original post:

Overall goals for the year: ~~Finish Changing History rewrites~~ DONE! (Q1), ~~Finish first draft of Changing History: Entwives~~ DONE! (Q3), ~~Write the Worth Living For short that I’ve been planning for ages~~, DONE! (Q3) Edit and begin posting Clarity DONE! (Q2), Finish the first draft of all three parts of Wonderland Reclaimed.

Reward Project: If I finish Wonderland Reclaimed, I can write my Avengers: Age of Ultron fic for NaNoWriMo in November.

I finished up two more of my goals for the year, bringing my total up to four out of five! The last goal regarding Wonderland Reclaimed I’m no longer worried about completing, and I’ve already moved my Age of Ultron fic, Good Intentions, to my tentative 2017 plan. So things are going very well this year!

Here’s the month by month breakdown!

Quarter Three, 2016- Review

July: Camp NaNoWriMo #2! Finishing WriMo including Calenhiril’s Search, Paradise Found (Worth Living For short), and Wonderland Reclaimed: Down The Rabbit Hole, 50k words cumulative. Possibly finish posting Clarity, but NaNo is the priority.

This was a HUGE month for me, and I’m proud to say I accomplished all of my goals, plus some! I picked up Double the Baggins, Twice the Took this month, along with my writing and I managed to post a couple of extra Calenhiril’s Search chapters. I really need to learn how to pace myself, because…

August: Finish posting Clarity (if not finished in July), Focus on the editing and posting of Calenhiril’s Search (at least one chapter posted a week, more as I finish them).

…this month was a disaster. I didn’t have to worry about Clarity at least, because I had finished that in July, but I lost all the momentum I had built up for NaNo and only posted one (two if you count Sept. 1st) chapters of Calenhiril’s Search. I did almost nothing else. I also managed to burn myself out for Wonderland Reclaimed. I don’t know when I’ll be able to look at that story again. I’m hoping early 2017, but not holding my breath.

September: Continue posting at least one chapter of Calenhiril’s Search a week, complete first edit of Paradise Found, add at least another 25k to Wonderland Reclaimed.

I feel better about this month, even though one of my goals was a complete non-starter. I had given up on Wonderland Reclaimed by this point, so I didn’t even try, but letting that go seemed to have the effect of freeing up my brain to post for Calenhiril’s Search, doubling my projected chapter count. I completed the edit of Paradise Found and posted the story too, which was a nice boost to the ego 🙂

Quarter Four, 2016- Goals

Quarter Four is a short quarter, since I usually try not to set any specific goals for December to allow my brain to rest and try to cope with the depressing reality of the holiday season. For all that, here are my goals for Q4!

October: Finish Calenhiril’s Search, post one chapter of DBTT and write 5,000 new words, finish outlining my new NaNoWriMo project, The Stars Are Fire.

November: National Novel Writing Month! This year, my goal is not just to write 50,000 words, but to COMPLETELY finish the first draft of my novel.

December: My only goal this month is to post my requisite chapter of DBTT and to finalize my plans for 2017. I will likely try to pull out Wonderland Reclaimed again and see if anything has jostled loose, but I’m not setting any goals in that regard.

And that’s it! I feel pretty confident in what I have here, we’ll see how I feel once December rolls around. Until next time!

Blogging, Writing

The Quarterly Writing Round Up!- Q2, 2016

July 7, 2016 Emily

A reminder: At the beginning of the year, I made some yearly goals and some quarterly goals, which I promised to reevaluate and re-prioritize every three months. It’s been six months now, and it’s time to look back at Quarter Two 2016! Here’s a recap of my goals for the year, in case you don’t want to go back and read the original post:

Overall goals for the year: ~~Finish Changing History rewrites~~ DONE! (Q1), Finish first draft of Changing History: Entwives, Write the Worth Living For short that I’ve been planning for ages, Edit and begin posting Clarity DONE! (Q2), Finish the first draft of all three parts of Wonderland Reclaimed.

Reward Project: If I finish Wonderland Reclaimed, I can write my Avengers: Age of Ultron fic for NaNoWriMo in November.

So out of five goals, I’ve finished two. Not quite half, but pretty close, considering I’ve been working on Calenhiril’s Search as well.

And here’s the month by month!

Quarter Two, 2016- Review

April: Camp NaNoWriMo #1! Edit Clarity (A Loki Fanfiction).

I did this! 80,000 words edited in thirty days! It was awesome! I’m super excited! 😀

May: Continue to post at least one chapter of Calenhiril’s Search and DBTT a week. Finish the first draft of Wonderland Reclaimed, or add 50,000 new words (whichever comes first).

I posted three chapters of Calenhiril’s Search. Respectable, but not quite what I was hoping for.
I only posted one chapter of Double The Baggins, Twice The Took, and this was the month that I decided to put this particular fic aside for the time being, until I could dedicate the time and attention it deserves.
No new words were written in May. Actually, I may have, kinda, forgot I had even made this goal. Whoops! ;P Hopefully July will make up for this!

June: Prep month for Camp NaNoWriMo #2! Depending on how May goes, either prep for editing Wonderland Reclaimed, or prep for a finishing WriMo (50K words on Wonderland/Calenhiril’s Search/DBTT). Begin posting schedule for Clarity (M/W/F).

I… prepped as much as I could? Okay, I didn’t really prep for Camp. I’m doing a Finishing WriMo so it’s not quite as critical, but I probably should have done more on this front. Hopefully it won’t be too detrimental. Also, I changed up one of the stories I decided to finish, instead of DBTT I’m working on my Worth Living For short (one of my year-end goals, so yay!).
I started posting Clarity! \o/ I only missed one day early in June, but I’m still well on my way to being finished with Clarity by the end of the month of… wow, I’ll probably be done by the end of July if I keep up the way I have! 🙂
I also got back into the swing of posting Calenhiril’s Search and made up for the missed chapter in May by posting five chapters in June 🙂

In review, I think I accomplished a decent amount this quarter. Granted, no new words were written (I feel like such a dumbass for forgetting that goal, tbh), but I got a lot of other things finished and several more things are in the process of being finished. One of my goals for 2017 is to limit myself to two sprawling epics in a year, one fanfic and one original work. I’m well on my way to making that happen, I think 🙂

With that in mind, here’s what I have planned for the next three months:

Quarter Three, 2016- Goals

August: Finish posting Clarity (if not finished in July), I don’t plan to add any new words this month, instead focusing on the editing and posting of Calenhiril’s Search (at least one chapter posted a week, more as I finish them).

September: Continue posting at least one chapter of Calenhiril’s Search a week, complete first edit of Paradise Found, add at least another 25k to Wonderland Reclaimed.

So, with any luck, by next quarter, I will have finished two more of my yearly goals and be well on my way to completing another, which will put me on track for the year! I’m really looking forward to this quarter, I think my goals are definitely doable, if nothing untoward happens (which, let’s be honest, is always a possibility).

Until next time!

Blogging, Writing

Once More Unto The (Writing) Breach- May 2016

June 7, 2016 Emily

I actually did more this month than I thought (which should really not be surprising to me any more, but it is :P). Let’s get started!

What I’ve Accomplished This Month

Changing History: Calenhiril’s Search– 3 chapters posted

I had every intention of getting right back into the swing of this story after Camp NaNoWriMo in April. It didn’t happen as well as I had wanted. I got bogged down in edits. These later chapters are in far more need of editing than the nine or so chapters previously and it’s making it difficult to get through. But I am persevering, as much as I am able! The time of plot twists is nigh and I’m super excited about it! 🙂

Double The Baggins, Twice The Took– 1 chapter posted

This story was started on a whim. Unfortunately, that means it’s the most likely to get dropped, which is exactly what I’ve decided to do. Not forever (I have way too many plans for this story to possibly consider dropping it forever :P), but at least until I feel like I’m in a good place with “Calenhiril’s Search”, which will probably be when I have the first draft completely finished, possibly not until the whole thing is posted. I just really want to focus on “Calenhiril’s Search” right now and get that off my conscience before I stress myself out with too many other things. And posting two stories at the same time (“Calenhiril’s Search”, and now “Clarity“) is more than enough for my plate right now.

What’s Coming Up in June

As of Wednesday, June 1st, “Clarity” is officially live!

Link to Fanfiction.Net

Link to AO3

There are two chapters currently posted, with an expected chapter count of twenty, plus an epilogue. I will be updating every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, as time allows, so keep an eye out! I’ve already had some really favorable reviews and I’m very pleased about it. I use those reviews to motivate me as I go through the proofreading process for each chapter and my perfectionist brain keeps trying to tell me that it’s all crap 😛

That’s right, folks, July’s Camp NaNoWriMo is nearly upon us! I know, I can hardly believe it myself. But June is the time to prep, waffle, and generally stress about the relative sanity of trying to dedicate my life to this thing three months out of the year. And I’m doing a bang up job so far ;P

I’ve got myself almost completely sold on the idea of a Finishing WriMo in July, starting with finishing the first draft of Calenhiril’s Search, followed by a quick foray into “Paradise Found” (the “Worth Living For” short sequel that I’ve been promising for nearly three years now), and finishing up with “Wonderland Reclaimed: Down The Rabbit Hole” (the first part of my Wonderland retelling that I lost in The Great Disaster of 2015).

Which is a great plan. Solid. I’m excited to be a part of it.

(…)

Except that I also started writing out the summary for my Age of Ultron fanfic and I’m really getting excited about it. It even has a title now: “Good Intentions”.

So, yeah, who knows what’s going to happen in July. I’m still about 90% sold on the idea of a Finishing WriMo, and I would get to do at least one Marvel related fic if I did that, so… yeah. Stay tuned next month for my decision! 😛

Blogging, Writing

Once More Unto The (Writing) Breach- April 2016

May 4, 2016 Emily

What I’ve Accomplished This Month

That’s it. Literally, that was all I did this month. I edited over 80,000 words in 30 days, and let me tell you, there were days I didn’t think I was gonna make it. I started out very confident, completely certain that I was going to get everything done, maybe even get done early! And then I realized I was ripping this story apart and now I had to put it all back together, not once… not twice… THREE TIMES this happened to me, in the second half of the month! It was heart-stoppingly stressful some days, but I think I’ve done the story a lot of good.

For those of you who might not remember what the heck I was even working on, here’s a reprint of the horrible summary for Clarity that is getting a well-deserved rewrite sooner rather than later:

Clarity (A Loki Fanfiction)

Loki (the traitor, the usurper, former prince of Asgard) is imprisoned below the palace that was once his home, cut off from even his mother, possibly the only person in the whole of the Nine Realms who still cares for him. But Lady Frigga has always been a clever woman. And there is a girl in her service, a girl with no past and an unusual quality that makes her uniquely suited to the task the Queen has in mind. Klara might not know who she is, but in the dungeons of Asgard, she might learn who she wants to be.

I’m letting the story rest and I’m going to allow a few trusted readers to read the final product before posting begins in June. The tentative date for the first chapter to post is Wednesday, June 1st, with a posting schedule of Monday, Wednesday, Friday, if anyone wants to mark their calendars!

Also, I have this playlist on Spotify I’ve been listening to while I work on writing/editing Clarity. Feel free to give it a listen if you want a teaser for the fic!

What’s Coming Up in May

My intention is to get back into the swing of regular posting, starting with one chapter per week for both Changing History: Calenhiril’s Search and Double The Baggins, Twice The Took. I might post more as time allows, but mostly I’m taking this month to rest and try to recuperate my energy from my work intensive Camp session. And also prepare for the next Camp NaNoWriMo in July! A writer’s work is never done, it seems! Currently, my heart is set on trying to finish Wonderland Reclaimed, but that could change depending on how I feel about Calenhiril’s Search and DBTT by then. I could be doing a finishing WriMo instead! We’ll see what the future brings!

Until next time…

14654138 — If you thought I forgot it was May The Fourth, you clearly don’t understand the level of extreme nerdery I operate at… ;P

Blogging, Writing

Once More Unto The (Writing) Breach- March 2016, Plus The Quarterly Round-Up!

April 5, 2016 Emily

What I’ve Accomplished This Month

Changing History: Calenhiril’s Search– 7 chapters posted!
- So, I posted WAY more chapters in March than I had planned, which is AWESOME! I’m still not finished with the first draft of this story, but I feel like it will probably come to me as I go, and I still have at least 30 chapters to post before I really need to start worrying about it too much. I’m just really excited to get this all out there and ACTUALLY be done with Mel and Boromir’s tale 🙂

Double The Baggins, Twice The Took– 6 chapters posted!
- I’m gonna be honest, this came completely out of left field. I wrote the first 50,000 words of this by accident in July 2014, but I just had too many other projects going at the time to even consider posting it. I still have too many stories running at the same time (I’ll be posting THREE simultaneously, come June…), but I happened to read a really great Hobbit fanfiction (Stirring The Leaves, recommended to me by my friend, Sarah!) and it made me realize that my story deserves to be read. So here I am, with yet another story I’m posting even though the first draft isn’t quite finished. But I feel like I have enough of the framework figured out to get a start on it, at any rate. It’s just for fun right now, so we’ll see where it goes 🙂

What’s Coming Up in April

I finished all my editing prep work for Clarity, my newest Marvel fanfiction set during the year of Loki’s imprisonment preceding (and including) the events of Thor: The Dark World.

From my Camp NaNo Synopsis:

Clarity (A Loki Fanfiction)

Loki (the traitor, the usurper, former prince of Asgard) is imprisoned below the palace that was once his home, cut off from even his mother, possibly the only person in the whole of the Nine Realms who still cares for him. But Lady Frigga has always been a clever woman. And there is a girl in her service, a girl with no past and an unusual quality that makes her uniquely suited to the task the Queen has in mind. Klara might not know who she is, but in the dungeons of Asgard, she might learn who she wants to be.

Despite that terrible blurb, I’m really, really excited about this project, and so far it’s been a joy to edit! I’ve been adding and cutting and rearranging like a crazy person and it’s been a lot of fun! I’m really hoping to have everything done and ready to go by the end of the month, then it will rest for a couple of weeks before I start posting in June.

Speaking of long-term goals, it’s time to introduce our newest segment!

The Quarterly Round-Up!

So, at the beginning of the year, I set out some yearly goals and some quarterly goals, and vowed to reevaluate and re-prioritize every three months. Three months have come and gone and it’s time to keep my word! Let’s start with a reminder/recap of my goals for the year:

Overall goals for the year: ~~Finish Changing History rewrites~~ DONE!, Finish first draft of Changing History: Entwives, Write the Worth Living For short that I’ve been planning for ages, Edit and begin posting Clarity, Finish the first draft of all three parts of Wonderland Reclaimed.

Reward Project: If I finish Wonderland Reclaimed, I can write my Avengers: Age of Ultron fic for NaNoWriMo in November.

Now, let’s break it down by month!

January: First month of NaNoWriMo’s “Now What?” months, focusing on revising and editing. My goals are to finish editing and posting Changing History: Second Chances, and to finish the first draft of Entwives.
- I didn’t finish my rewrite in January, which set everything for the year back a bit. I also didn’t finish my Entwives (now Calenhiril’s Search) first draft, but that didn’t set me back as much as I feared it might.
- Unexpectedly, I started work on my new Star Wars collaboration, Resolving of Gray, with Sarah this month! We’re still working on it, but it’s slowed down a bit now, with both of us working on other projects at the moment.

February: Second month of NaNoWriMo’s “Now What?” months. I’ll be setting aside Changing History this month and shifting my focus onto my intense editing of Clarity (Loki fic). I will also add new words to the rewriting of Part One of Wonderland Reclaimed.
- Because of the setbacks in January, February had to be completely rethought. I made the decision to move the editing of Clarity to April for my Camp NaNoWriMo project, and shifted my focus from new words to editing and finishing of Changing History. I also made the decision to add a new villain to Wonderland Reclaimed, which means that when I do finally sit down to finish it, it’s gonna be a lot more work than I had anticipated…
- I finished the Changing History: Second Chances rewrites this month! It was glorious! There were gifs!

March: Prep Month for Camp NaNo #1. Prepare to edit Entwives, write out an outline of what I have so far and make note of any plot holes that need filling. I’ll also continue to add words to Wonderland Part One.
- So, by the time March got here, everything was all outta whack. I did start posting the fourth and final part of Entwives (now Calenhiril’s Search)(see above), but I didn’t work on Wonderland at all. I did finish all my prep work to edit Clarity for April Camp NaNo, though.
- Began posting Double The Baggins, Twice The Took on a whim (6 chapters posted)

So, despite a slow start to the year, I did actually manage to accomplish quite a bit in this first quarter, even if not all of it was in the original plan (the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men, amirite? ;P). I’ve decided to put less emphasis on new words this next quarter, and more emphasis on getting these projects finished, be that writing, editing, or posting. On the flip side of that, I just found out that Alice Through The Looking Glass is being released on May 27th, and since my original novel is an Alice In Wonderland retelling, I would like to get that finished sooner rather than later, in order to capitalize on any resurgence in that genre that might result from the movie (which looks AMAZING, by the way, check out the trailer!).

As much as I’m enjoying editing my Loki fanfiction, in light of this news, I kind of wish I had set it aside and worked on Wonderland this month. Since that’s no longer an option (I’ve COMMITTED, dang it! ;P), I’m going to try (try!) to work on finishing the first draft in May, instead. With that in mind, here’s a break down of my goals for the second quarter!

April: Camp NaNoWriMo #1! Edit Clarity (A Loki Fanfiction).
May: Continue to post at least one chapter of Calenhiril’s Search and DBTT a week. Finish the first draft of Wonderland Reclaimed, or add 50,000 new words (whichever comes first).
June: Prep month for Camp NaNoWriMo #2! Depending on how May goes, either prep for editing Wonderland Reclaimed, or prep for a finishing WriMo (50K words on Wonderland/Calenhiril’s Search/DBTT). Begin posting schedule for Clarity (M/W/F).

I’m going to be honest, this next quarter looks super intimidating. It’s a lot of work. And I’m going to make a side-goal this quarter of making time for my original fiction, even if that means setting aside a fanfiction project I’m enjoying. I can always come back to it once I’m done 🙂

And that’s it! We’ll see what happens! If you’re doing Camp NaNoWriMo this month, break a leg, and I’ll see you all on the other side!