Tag: progress on goals (Page 1 of 3)

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, maybe that’s why I suddenly feel like I’m this cat ;p

This past month I wrote the entire first draft of Charming Rivals (16,300 words), did a revision of Glass Slippers, and also wrote, edited, and submitted Hanabi to Kitsune (5,700 words). That’s 22,000  brand new words (there’s a reasonable number of new words in revision, but it’s much harder to track).

After several months and only really scraping together a couple of thousand words and almost the only editing I did was with professional editors for stories I’d already sold, to suddenly slam out 22,000 words and then some in one month feels like powering through.

Now to see if I can maintain the momentum.

For October I’d like to:

• Revise Charming Rivals and start getting feedback on it.
• Take the feedback from my writers group for the first 5,000 words of Glass Slippers and use it
• After the above get feedback on Glass Slippers as a whole and revise
• Assuming the above is completed hire an editor and begin the process of professionally editing Glass Slippers
• Write the first draft of Nix, Naught, Nothing (the third Charming For Hire story from the Retailored Fairy Tales world

I also hope to find the time to tinker with the new My Book Table 3 plugin which I backed on Kickstarter. I want to check out this ‘beautiful page’ mode and see how sexy it is 😀

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The month started out well enough, then my body decided to abandon me(more than one trip to the hospital to check baby was doing better than I was and fortunately she was fine even though I was not) and by the time I recovered from that my life decided it needed some more drama on top of that – but let’s not get bogged down in that.

I achieved goal #5(start my newsletter). Yes goal #5 is completed. Done and dusted at last and you can sign up here and get the free bonus ebook of ‘Stolen Hearts’.

Goal #4 (writing and submitting short stories) I wrote 6,000 new words in two different short stories. One(working title: Light In The Deep) was intended for a specific anthology but I blew the word count out of the water and haven’t even finished the first draft so I (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ and started writing another story(working title: The Broken Mirror) since to trim Light In The Deep down to word count would take out too much of what I love about the story.

Also – kind of goal #4 related – both Short Circuit and Stolen Hearts were listed as honourable mentions for Twelfth Planet Press’ Years Best Speculative Fiction 2013 anthology. I totally would have missed that without the keen eyes of Shane Halbach (thank you 😀 ).

Goal #6(keep learning) was furthered by watching a Holly Lisle webinar and joining Critters (but because of the drama I’ve fallen behind 🙁 ) so I’m working hard on that as always.

And lastly goal #1(being a good president to my writers group) kept me busy with trying to reorganise a new meeting date since our usual ‘first Sunday of the month’ meeting day was Easter Sunday. Still don’t know for sure if I’m doing a great job, but no one’s tried to depose me yet ;p

For such a short month I was surprisingly busy, but at least I managed to get a lot done.

For goal #1 (being a good president to my writer’s group) we’ve commenced work on an anthology to celebrate 20 years of Vision Writers writing and critiquing one another. The anniversary is next year, but as most people who know about publishing are aware it’s not as simple as snap your fingers and done, so we’ve a long road.

I also organised and ran my first writers retreat. It was all Vision Writers members, but it wasn’t an official Vision event. We all had a great time and you can find out a little more about it here if you’re interested. I would like to do it again, but not any time too soon – not with baby on the way ;p There’s so much organisation that you might not realise is involved.

In regards to goal #2 (final revision and editing for Storybook Perfect) I still haven’t started it, but that’s because I only want to revise one book at a time, and I’m working on goal #3 which is the revision of Written By The Stars. I’ve been using holly Lisle’s How To Revise Your Novel course to help me get as much done in one pass as possible. For most of last year I was stymied by the massive world building lesson, lesson 7, but I finally defeated the daunting lesson and moved through another 6, I’m almost finished 😀

Regarding goal #4 (writing and submitting more short fiction) as usual I killed it. I think I’m very much in love with short fiction, which is funny considering one of my very early posts about finding them difficult ;p

I wrote an extra 3000 words in ‘Foxworth'(previously known as Tubby) based on the group’s feedback, and according to those who gave the story a second read through made it even better. I also finished ‘Couples Counselling’ at a total of 3358 words and submitted it to my writers group for critique. Then I wrote a new flash fiction piece called Ella’s Baby (500 words) and did some editing on the novella ‘The Troll’s Toll’. Because of The Troll’s Toll’s larger length I’m seriously considering self publishing it as it’s length makes it a hard sell to just about every market I know of.

I’ve been working towards goal#5(starting a mailing list) too – finally! I have formatted two ebooks and made my first cover, all working towards the freebie for signing up. I’m repackaging a competition winning story that’s now out of print. You’ll see the results very soon.

Goal #6 (keep learning), well I learned lots through goals 1, 3 and 5 and even (as you always do from good feedback) some from goal 4, so still chugging along.

On wonderful, but slightly less goal orientated notes, I enjoyed my 3 year blogiversary and I added Goodreads buttons all over the website 🙂

How’d you go with the shortest month of the year?

There should be a ‘belated’ in brackets at the start of that title ;p

As mentioned yesterday I not only went on a writers retreat but organised the whole damn thing(including lunches and dinners), so the end week of January was a crazy rush for me – hence utterly forgetting to do my goals round-up.

I sent out only a couple of stories (most of my polished ones were sent out at the end of last year so are still awaitng acceptance/rejection), but I did do a crazy massive edit on Glass Bones to make it an acceptable word count for a particular magazine running a theme I thought it very apt for. I took Glass Bones from 8,400 words to 6,000. I wasn’t sure I could do it, but somehow I did(I might post about that more soon).

I wrote a new short story ‘Tubby’ based on the writing prompt I created for the Vision Writers website. Tubby came in at 2,300 words and I submitted it to my writers group for critique. I also got back to work on Couples Counselling(an idea I had last year) and wrote an additional 1,800 words in it. So goal #4 is chugging along quite nicely.

As far as goal #1, being a good president to my writers group I think I’ve been doing well. This is based on a lack of hate mail and no one throwing rocks at the back of my head ;p . No, really, I’ve based that on me getting to work on the Vision Writers website, updating pages, getting the start of a regular blogging schedule underway – including making up (what I hope are) new and original writing prompts. Not to mention the writers retreat (despite it not being an official group event I’m sure it fostered happiness within the group), lots of organising for that!

While I didn’t touch #2 or #3, number three did get a thorough going through at the retreat, but since this is a January round up we can’t count work done in February.

All up, a good, but very busy start to the year 🙂