Storybook Perfect

Always quirky, sometimes sweet speculative fiction

Tag: goals (Page 3 of 3)

June Goals Round-Up

July 1, 2013 / / 0 Comments

While the temptation of games still loomed (and with a particularly deadly sting thanks to Animal Crossing 3DS) I was slightly more productive this month than last. I also experienced a fantastic success for the first time.

My success came in the form of winning my first competition. I am one of the shortlisted writers for the 2013 Redlitzer writing competition. Quite exciting, and some great prizes(including but not limited to the confidence of having won).

I have been working hard on The Troll’s Toll. After getting feedback on the first part from my writer’s group I rewrote entire chunks and changed the personality of a character (apparently I should give up trying to write demure girls, I just can’t do it without making them dish rags – probably because I’m as far from demure in real life as possible without having large amounts of testosterone coursing through my system).

I purchased a couple of exciting courses to take part in during the Byron Bay Writer’s Festival which will bring me excitingly close to where I grew up as well as improving my writing.

I’ve also been doing some reviewing on Storybook Perfect as a final check before submitting it to a manuscript development competition.

Mostly I’ve been editing, not creating much new, but editing often involves a lot more writing than you might at first expect.

Looking back on the first half of 2013, I’ve made a lot of progress as a writer, but there’s still a few of my goals I’ve barely even touched, so I better kick it up a notch in the second half.

I’m looking forward to July now and the Byron Bay Writer’s Festival and one of the parts of my Redlitzer prize: working with Marianne de Pierres, Rowena Cory Daniells, Louise Cusack and Angela Slatter on my shortlisted piece.

May Goals Round-Up

June 4, 2013 / / 1 Comment

And STILL from a duct-taped together laptop.

I blame YOU sir, for this.

I blame YOU sir, for this.

You know how the last few months my goal round-up posts have been all ‘woe is me, I did nothing’ but then I look at the list and think, you know, actually I did a fair amount really.

This wasn’t one of those months.

I can make excuses like my terror of my laptop simply never switching on again (I am scared every time I close the lid) or the fact that instead of only working a couple of days a week I was working almost full time filling in for my boss while she jetted off to her honeymoon in Bora Bora (geeze, some people, right? ;p ), but really, I know I could have beaten the time out of somewhere because I managed to find some time to play video games.

And don't think you're off the hook, missy, you're partly to blame also.

And don’t think you’re off the hook, missy, you’re partly to blame also.

At least I didn’t do nothing. I took another Holly Lisle course, this time her ‘How To Write Flash Fiction That Doesn’t Suck’ course which reminded me of something I’ve been forgetting to do in my fiction a bit of late. If you’re ever looking for good writing courses I strongly recommend Holly Lisle’s courses, they are comprehensive and brilliant.

I also picked back up an old project I’ve been toying with for almost two years now, a book written in blog form which I still have no idea if I’ll ever get to publishing (it would be free to read online if I ever commit properly to it). I re-read the old work, wrote some more and tinkered with the outline.

Now, to learn from my mistakes and make June a more productive month.

April Goals Round-Up From A Duct-Taped Laptop

May 1, 2013 / / 8 Comments
all that's keeping my poor baby together :(

all that’s keeping my poor baby together 🙁

You may have noticed a rather long radio silence from me. Normally I have back-up posts so I don’t go more than a week without posting, however, when a wild toddler throws your computer on the ground and it falls to pieces that tends to render any computer based actions impossible without either repair or replacement.

Since there’s no money for replacement, behold, my duct tape repaired laptop.

(yeah, yeah, there’s a desktop in another room, but it’s at the far end of the house closeted away from the family so I can’t keep an eye on Xander while I’m on it. That and it’s a desktop… ewwww)

We also went to Supanova Gold Coast and here's Xander dressed at the eleventh Doctor in front of the Hire a Tardis

We also went to Supanova Gold Coast and here’s Xander dressed at the eleventh Doctor in front of the Hire a Tardis

Anyway, on with my progress report on my goals. This month was definitely my worst so far, but that probably has something to do with the fact that my other months all kicked ass. Plus, one poor month does not a year destroy – I just have to make sure I get back on my game, and by game I mean put down my 3DS and the inserted copy of Fire Emblem which has consumed all my spare time for the later half of the month (damn you awesome video games – you get me every time). I can’t entirely blame Fire Emblem and the sheer awesomeness of that game, manga is to blame too. I re-read three series this month(High School Debut, Fushigi Yugi Genbu Kaiden and Butterflies, Flowers for anyone curious).

So, I did manage to complete my novelette The Troll’s Toll and a sweet little follow-up short Petrified Lips. I also wrote a follow up for Charming which follows Hannah, it has no title yet and is still a little rough – not to mention the fact the computer kept not saving my ending. It is soooooo frustrating to write the same ending five times and always be wondering if one of the other lost ones was perhaps that tiny bit better than this one.

I also did some more tinkering in Storybook Perfect book 2 as I continue trying to wrangle the chopped in half remnants of the old second half into a book two. The start is very stilted, I need to add a good starting chapter and then figure out a smooth order for the following few chapters. There seem to be more rewrites involved than I had at first anticipated. At least the first book is looking good and is out waiting on an agent’s reply right now. So I’m making headway on goal #1 at least.

On goal 5 I haven’t submitted a lot this month because most of it is already out and waiting for responses or still needs work, but I have been told one of my stories is on the shortlist for a very cool magazine – so not a guaranteed in, but definitely a vote of confidence in the quality of that story, particularly since I thought I might have been aiming a little high by submitting it ;p

Also did some research for the Redlitzer (a local writing competition) by buying the anthology of previous winners and reading it. I’ve figured out what the judges seem to like, but I’m just not getting any inspiration. Sadly that’s about all the ‘learning’ I did.

I was still creating plenty, but didn’t do much else. Except for reading manga and playing video games. Oh, and I suppose I still did all that mothery, housewifey stuff too ;p how did you all go?

March Goals Round Up

April 3, 2013 / / 7 Comments

Once again, reporting in on my progress on my yearly goals.

I returned to work on the 1st of the month to Key, Clocks and Quests, intending to get enough of a draft hammered out that I would be able to come up with a working title that didn’t suck the big one. Fell a bit short, but did manage to pound out an extra 7,500 words, so I’m making progress on goal #3.

I also wrote 14,800 words the novelette ‘The Troll’s Toll’ and am down to the very final scene now. The Troll’s Toll was supposed to be a short story, but at 15,000+ words I’m afraid there’s nothing ‘short’ about it. I’m still counting it as work towards goal #5 (write and submit more short stories).

In fact, The Troll’s Toll is the story in which I have had my most productive recorded day ever, typing 8140 words in one day. I know, mammoth! I may perhaps have had a few better days back when I was bedridden with my vertigo disorder, but I wasn’t recording my word counts back then.

I also wrote a flash fiction piece ‘Stolen Hearts’ which I’m intending to submit to Fireside Magazine.

The biggest achievement for me this month was receiving my first acceptance for a short story. I’m eagerly awaiting the edits to come through and looking forward to giving you all more details when they’re available.

As for goal # 7, learning, this month I’ve mostly been reading short stories on my Kindle to see what published shorts are like. I’ve read all the old Fireside magazines, several Aurealis releases, Subversion: Science fiction and fantasy tales of Challenging the Norm from Crossed Genres, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show(awards anthology), Dieselpunk ePulp Showcase, and Phoenix by Chuck Palahniuk (the writer of Fight Club).

I beta read Talitha Kalago’s Lifesphere Inc (very awesome young adult series) and of course have been devouring the critiques for my writers’ group as well, so am working a fair amount with other writers also. This wasn’t really a goal, but it’s something I quite enjoy.

How are you tracking with your goals this month?

February Goals Round-Up

March 2, 2013 / / 4 Comments

February was not quite the raging success that January was, but it was not a total wash either (if you need a reminder, you can see my original goals here and how awesome January was here).

In the newly added learning goal I have read two books on improving my craft, ‘The Elements of Style’ and ‘Self-Editing for Fiction Writers’. I also attended two webinars and went to my writer’s group and got some amazing feedback (you can read about my reaction in this post). Finally – in the last minutes (OK, not minutes, hours more like) of the month – I joined Holly Lisle’s 7 Day Crash-Revision Workshop. I would have loved to have had the money for her full How To Revise Your Novel course, but alas and alack not this month. (Side note: Holly’s courses are great, I’ve done one of her big ones (How To Think Sideways, now available as e-books) and several of her smaller ones and recommend her to anyone looking at courses on writing. No, I’m not an affiliate, just a happy student.)

In actual creation I made a flash fiction, ‘Eyes on The Sky’, but birthed nothing else new. It isn’t my greatest work to date, and I definitely need to go over it again, but I don’t want to pull it down either.

I started converting the Kindle edit of ‘Written by The Stars’ into the Scrivener file, also did editing and rewrites for my short story ‘The Beauty of the Dance’ and ‘The Wyvern’s Sting’ based on awesome feedback from beta-readers.

I submitted a horror/supernatural piece called ‘Brown Paper Packages’ to my writer’s group for critique after tiding it up, but it was an older piece I went back and cleaned, not a new creation.

I could have done a lot more, even though there was severe back pain, broken down cars which needed parts from France (I know, France? Seriously!?) and relatives moving into our house (and taking up our junk room so aaaaaall that junk needing to be relocated and organised), but also there were things I did instead of writing that weren’t so justified, like playing Ni No Kuni and finishing my 1,000 piece puzzle. So this month I am determined to put in more effort.

At least until Atelier Ayesha comes out ;p

January Goals Round-Up

February 1, 2013 / / 0 Comments

OK, so as I have set myself so many goals for this year I thought I would re-cap where I’m at with each of my goals at the end of each month. Accountability, oh yeah! If you need a refresher on my goals you can read the original post here.

So:

Goal 5 has been fruitful for me since I entered two stories into the Black Apples Anthology (Belladonna Publishing) and another one for the Oomph: A Little Bit of Super Goes A Long Way (Crossed Genres).

I’ve also written quite a bit this year, finishing some short story drafts I started in December (Charming, The Wyvern’s Sting, Short Circuit), editing based on beta readers/critique group feedback (Groundskeeper & The Wyvern’s Sting) and writing from scratch (The Beauty of The Dance, Emily’s Typewriter). You can read blurbs for and see where I’m at on all of these stories on my Current Projects page.

I’ve done no work on any of the novels yet (writing wise, editing I am doing), but it is still only January so I can’t get too worked up about that.

In relation to number six I’ve started work on the story I believe will be the incentive to subscribe (The Beauty of The Dance) and have put some effort and thought into which mail service I will use (do I go free or not?).

I’ve also commenced editing ‘Written By The Stars’ (if you want to know more about the story check it out in my Current Projects page) by converting it to .mobi format and reading it on my kindle. I feel so tech savvy doing it that way ;p I’ve done all the edits and just need to action them in the Scrivener file. So I’ve started number 2, but not completed.

Also I’ve kept myself running smoothly with the Australian speculative fiction authors Challenge (you can read more here about my progress).

Not to mention (even though it isn’t a goal) I made my first beta-reading of a novel report to the author.

So I think January has not been a shabby month from a writing career perspective.

Bye bye productivity, maybe we can hang out again in March.

Bye bye productivity, maybe we can hang out again in March.

February however, is going to be a true challenge. Why you ask? Because I just brought home my collector’s edition of Ni No Kuni. I’m going to have to be very strong to not get carried away gaming.

2012 Rounded Up Plus Goals for 2013

December 30, 2012 / / 7 Comments

I started this year expecting little. I was determined to move forward with my writing, but last year had not been kind to me and I wasn’t dreaming big. Now, as I write my summary of writing accomplishments for this year I’m surprising myself.

  • I created an author website (you’re on it)
  • I turned my epic fantasy trilogy into a quartet, splitting book one into two books and doing rewrites and revisions to make the new book one complete (now out waiting on an agent *fingers crossed*).
  • I wrote a stand-alone novel, cross-dimensional fantasy of 65,000 words, have done a 10,000 word re-write so far, but not a full revision, so it’s still in second draft stage. (Working title: Written By The Stars)
  • Wrote 58,000 words on ANOTHER stand-alone novel for NaNoWriMo which is epic fantasy. (Working title: Key, Clocks and Quests)
  • Joined a fantastic writers critique group (fantastic both in the fact it is speculative fiction we write and critique and the fact everyone there is fantastic).
  • Attended my first (and second) writers’ festival
  • Wrote and entered a short story into the Supanova 10th Anniversary competition (I love Supanova so much I really hope I can be a part of it!)
  • Have written several new short stories, most of which are part of my fairy tale re-imagining series.
  • Have beta-read my first novel of another writer’s work.

So all-in-all a fairly productive year as far as an emerging author’s life goes.

Of course a good year needs to be followed with another, so here are my goals for next year:

  1. Finish re-writes/revisions on book 2 of the Storybook Perfect quartet, get it up to standard.
  2. Finish revisions on ‘Written By The Stars’(the 65,000 word novel mentioned before) and start querying with that novel too (If I haven’t landed an agent with current query). If I can afford it, I’d love to buy a manuscript assessment on it as well, both for the novel itself and also to learn from it for further stories.
  3. Complete first draft of Keys, Clocks and Quests (the NaNoWriMo novel). If I have time get it up to snuff too, but I’ve been aiming fairly high so far.
  4. Complete another first draft of a new story (what will I choose? So many ideas!). I’ll probably start it during NaNoWriMo(or Camp NaNoWriMo, I recently signed up) to give me a good boost.
  5. Enter more competitions and start submitting to journals and zines. I haven’t written many short stories, so probably make some more too (got a few ideas, as always the problem is keeping it small)
  6. Start a newsletter with a freebie incentive – I have to write that freebie incentive as well.

I’m not going light on the goals as you can see. If I can achieve what I did this year with no goals set down for myself, what can I achieve this coming year if I do have goals? Let’s see!

 

What goals have you set yourself? They don’t have to be writing related. Do you have any resolutions you’re determined to finally achieve next year?

Five Year Diary

March 22, 2012 / / 2 Comments

I first heard about five year diaries in a quarter column in Kare Kano. (Quarter columns for those who don’t read manga/Japanese comics are small spaces – a quarter page to be precise – where, when the chapter was printed in the serialised magazine it originated from, an advertisement used to be. When the chapters are collected up into a book the space is left blank and the author usually fills it with what might resemble a short blog post or a tweet. They usually talk about their life, or something to do with the comic you’re currently reading.)

When I read about it I was immediately enamoured of the idea. I wanted one. I scoured the bookstores, newsagents and stationery stores around me, but to no avail, I’d started looking for it too late in the year, no one could order them in (apparently, even though they don’t bear any set year date) and they are not usually a desired item.

After almost giving up searching I stumbled across one on the sale table in front of a newagent’s where all the 2012 diaries were stacked up and discounted. The ‘yoink’ as I grabbed it before anyone else could was audible I’m certain.

A five year diary features one date (for example, January first) on each page, but the page is split into five parts, one for each year. So as each year passes you can look back to exactly what you were doing this day last year. I’m using it as a tool to encourage me to accomplish at least one thing with my writing each day. Knowing that Future Me will look back on it and frown if I did nothing is a bigger incentive than just feeling glum when a whole week passes me by with no notable progress.

I’ve been having a great time filling up the pages. Some days the five measly lines I have aren’t enough space for everything, even if I shorten my sentences down to note form. I feel a sense of achievement even just looking back at the previous day’s entry sometimes.

What methods do you use to keep yourself motivated? Do you keep a different kind of diary?

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