Tag: wasting time

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!

 

 

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!

 

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

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.

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!