I just realized that I have mentioned ROW80 several times this round...and never explained it. ROW80 is a writing challenge that is designed around the fact that we are each at different places in our writing and lives, and lets each participant set their own goals accordingly! I think it's fantastic because I'm the kind who needs some sort of outside accountability in order to get anything done, but I also need to be able to set my own goals when it comes to writing and life. This gives me the chance to have both of these key ingredients in one.
You can find more information about ROW80 on their page and I encourage you to join if you want a great way to be held accountable to your goals. They are a wonderful group and nobody minds if you join in mid-round, so it doesn't matter that we are already a few weeks in!
Now on to my goals. I'm not going to go through each of them one by one today like I usually do, simply because there isn't much to report since Wednesday. This is that trend I mentioned in my blog title. I seem to have a habit of starting out strong and finishing weak. I know this week part of the problem was that I ended up spending hours working on a laptop my hubby brought home before we realized that we just weren't going to be able to fix it's fatal flaw. This was rather depressing because my laptop is edging towards antique status, but the upside is that I finally organized all my files, deleted files and programs that are no longer needed, and I'm positive that everything important is backed up now!
Because I was working on the computer stuff (and a few other things that came up) I didn't get much else done in the latter half of the week, but I'm ok with that, because at least I was being productive! My overarching goal for this week is going to be to stay consistent through out the week if at all possible.
The one thing I did really well with this week was commenting on other blogs! I not only visited some bloggers I haven't checked in with in awhile, I also visited blogs almost every day. I think I'm finally getting into a routine, and that's making me happy! I'd really like to build readership to this blog and I know that is one of the ways to do it. I'm also interested in joining in on some blog hops, so if you know of any good ones coming up just let me know!
It's the last day to enter to win the book Hush Money by Chuck Greaves, so if you haven't already, make sure you go visit the post and enter! It's quick and easy and I'd really love to have more entries before it closes.
One of my goals right now is to cook more often, and so when I sat down to write this goals post the only I could come up with was this song. So of course I had to look it up...
Bring back memories for anyone? I'm not that old (not calling you old, calling me young :P) but my Daddy used to ask my Mom that question all the time, and even sing from time to time!
So how am I doing on my goals? Well...
Writing:
1. Five hours editing a week. I'm at 3:10 right now! I'm very happy with that. I'm actually ahead of the game! Granted, it's only by 10 minutes, but I was behind schedule last week, and never reached my goal, so this is super fantastic.
3. Write book reviews and post on GoodReads.com. Four so far! I'm not caught up yet, but at least I'm up to writing about the books I read this month! One of the reviews is in Monday's post... in fact it's the book I'm giving away! (hint, hint)
4. Read and comment on at least 5 other blogs. Check!
Life:
1. Put more variety in our diets. That above picture is last nights dinner. Left over burrito meat cooked up with some scrambled eggs and cheese, topped in salsa and olives, served on a tortilla (and rolled up, but this is prettier)! Super yummy. Tonight's dinner was a newish recipe (old favorite ingredients, new combination) but of course I forgot to take a picture of that!
2. Clean/Organize the house. I cleaned! A little bit. The house is still a mess in general, but the bathroom is clean! And a little bit of the mess is gone.
3. Exercise! I've been doing more stretching, and the cleaning is counting as exercise this week. Believe me, my knees are feeling it.
4. Take more pictures. I think the above picture of dinner is the only picture of any worth I've taken this week so far (the one's of my husband when I was picking on him don't count) but hey, that's one good picture. I'll take it.
See that pretty picture? Ok, so maybe it doesn't look so pretty to everyone else. Especially since I have gone through and blurred the text in the center. But that my friends, is the ready to go file for the second draft of Misfits!
Woohoo!
I finally finished the overly long process of taking all the changes I made on the paper copy and putting them in the new digital copy. This required lots of copy and pasting text, putting it in a different order (in many cases) than I wrote it, typing up the outline I created, typing notes into the text and highlighting them, and lastly, making sure all my references pages were in the new work-from file. Oh and for the heck of it I alphabetized, color coded, and labeled everything.
My OCD side was very happy when I was done.
It took way longer to do all this than I expected, but I figured out some more things about my story along the way, and I know the next phases of the the process are going to be much easier because of this phase, so I'm happy.
So what is next? Well I was going to tell you rewriting is next, but I realized yesterday that I need to do some more world building and character building before I tackle the rewrite. I started in on that today, and I'm not sure how long it's going to take me, but I know the book will be better for it in the end, so I press on!
3. Continue to write and post book reviews on GoodReads.com - 2 book reviews written, not enough, I'm really behind on these!
4. I'm adding one - I need to visit and comment on at least 5 blogs every time I post a blog post. We'll see how it goes doing so this week!
Awesome re-purposed type-writer - check out the source!
Life Goals:
1. Put more variety in our diet, try new recipe's and cook more often - I didn't do as well as I wanted on this one as I wanted, but I still did really good! I tried two new recipes this week (I wanted to try a third but ran out of steam) and I only fell back on making sandwiches one night this week. Woohoo!
2. Clean/Organize the house - I completely failed at this goal, but it was more important to take care of myself emotionally this week, so I'm ok with that.
3. Exercise! Not as consistent as I'd like, but I did do quite a bit this week, so I'm happy! Plus my physical therapist was really happy with my progress when we met on Monday, so that makes me really happy.
4. Take more pictures - This is another goal I did really good the first part of the week and not the second half, oh well, tomorrow is another day!
I'm a sucker for soundtracks - picked up Coyote Ugly's soundtrack this week for $5 - and listening to it right now!
So as you can tell if you actually read through all of that - it was a mixed week. I would have liked to do better, but like I said in one section, I needed to take care of myself emotionally this week, so I'm ok with not meeting at all my goals. I'm just happy I had enough presence of mind to meet any of them! I'll keep trying, one day at a time, and we'll see what this next week holds. I know one thing it'll definitely hold a giveaway, so check back for that tomorrow!
I have a confession to make - one of the many things that distracts me from writing lately is Skyrim! My brother-in-law bought it for us last week and I've been a bit addicted. Nowhere near as much as my husband though. Of course since we only have one gaming-capable computer I only play when he's at work, so that could be part of it. I'm doing my best to be a good girl though. I do honestly need some downtime right now because I've got a lot I'm working through emotionally, but I'm making sure I get some writing time too!
Here's where I'm at on my goals for this week so far:
Writing Goals:
1. Five Hours Editing a Week (Ideally an hr a day M-F) Currently at an hour and a half of editing. Not quite the 2-3 hr mark I'd like to be at, but considering I had no time to write at all on Monday (other than getting my blog post up) and didn't really sleep Monday night so I was exhausted Tuesday... Well, I'm happy with where I'm at!
2. Blog on a regular basis: Monday - Posted about these goals Tuesday - Finally updated my blog (long over due) and posted about it. Today - Duh :P
3. Continue to write and post reviews both here and on www.goodreads.com - Two book reviews done!
Life Goals:
1. Put more variety in our diets, try new recipes and cook more often. Done!
2. Clean/Organize the house. First get things organized, then get on top of doing weekly chores. No progress.
3. Exercise! I actually have really good news on this front! I saw my physical therapist for the first time in a month and she was really happy about my progress. Of course this means she gave me harder exercises ... which are very uncomfortable for now... but it's still good to hear.
4. Take more pictures. Done!
All in all I'm happy with where I'm at right now at the mid-week point. I feel like I'm making good progress on most things, and considering other factors in life the last few days, I'm ok with not making progress in other areas.
Best of all? I'm very, very close to starting re-writes of Misfits! In fact, if all goes according to plan I should be starting tomorrow or Friday on the rewrites. Yay! I'm both excited and a little nervous...
Doesn't that look yummy? Among the many things going on in my life right now I'm trying to cook more. Tonight's successful experiment was a Boboli crust, Jack Daniel's BBQ sauce, chicken (fried up using a little pan spray, garlic, and oregano), minced garlic, diced green onions, and diced red onions. I love it! Mo even gave his approval, although he said he'd prefer a garlic alfredo sauce to a bbq.
Anywho... As you may have noticed from my sporadic posts lately, I'm having an awfully hard time focusing lately. There's some life stuff that has just made it hard to stay focused, and unfortunately there's nothing I can do about the "stuff" except give it time. What I can do is work on how it's affecting me.
For now, I'm working on spending a few minutes each day meditating, finding my center, that seems to help me focus and get done what I need to do. At least it did today :P We'll see how much it helps moving forward! I finally sat down today and made my ROW80 goals (a week late) so hopefully having those set will help with staying on track as well. I'm sure I'll mess up, but I'll keep trying, and that's what's important right?
You can see the goals I've set for myself on my goals page but I'll also post them into today's post. They are all pretty self explanatory, but feel free to tell me in a comment below if you have any questions :) I'll be talking more about each of the goals when I do my check in posts.
Writing Goals:
1. Five Hours Editing a Week (Ideally an hr a day M-F)
2. Blog on a regular basis: Saturday: Creative Nudge for the week Sunday: Row80/Goals Post Monday or Tuesday: My piece for that week's Creative Nudge Wednesday: Row80/Goals Post Friday: Book review Any other posts are bonus!
3. Continue to write and post reviews both here and on www.goodreads.com
Life Goals: 1. Put more variety in our diets, try new recipes and cook more often.
2. Clean/Organize the house. First get things organized, then get on top of doing weekly chores.
3. Exercise!
4. Take more pictures. (like the two in this post!)
I originally just was going to share my writing goals, but that's not who I am. I mean, yes, I am a writer, but every writer is so much more than just a writer, and each of those goals I posted are important to me, and the pursuit of each affects the amount of time and energy I have to spend on the others. So, as the weeks go by, I hope to keep sharing my love for writing and my progress on my book, but I'll also share some of my life, because after all, whether you write fiction or fantasy, every writer's life affects their work.
For the non-geeks, "Trials and Tribble-ations" was the 100th episode of Deep Space 9 in which they pay homage to The Original Series episode about tribbles.
February was full of Trials, in fact, they were almost multiplying at the rate of tribbles! Not quite though, fortunately, or I would have been completely buried. Between myself and my friends we had 2 ER trips, a hospital stay, car accidents, parasite infections, and a multitude of housing problems. Ugh. Just ugh.
Because of this, February was less than stellar. I got a little bit of writing done (10,233 words) but no where near as much as I had hoped. This month, instead of focusing on the writing part of the equation, I'm going to focus on editing. I'm doing NaNoEdMo - National Novel Editing Month!
What's that? Well NaNoWriMo is for writing the novel, NaNoEdMo is for editing it! 50 hours of editing in one month, which really shouldn't be as bad as doing NaNoWriMo. I know I put in more than 50 hrs in November! On the other hand, editing is harder, so maybe it will be just as hard. I have no way of knowing. I've never done this before.
I wasn't really planning on doing NaNoEdMo because I thought I'd be far into the editing by now. But, well, the last two months haven't exactly gone the way I expected. And I work better under a deadline!
In other news - I read 14 books this month (15 if you count the beta read I did for a friend) although that number doesn't show up on the good reads tracker yet. I have a couple books to put reviews in on the site still. At 30 books for the year I'm right on track for my 180 this year! Which is just a silly challenge to myself, but still fun.
I'm not really "back" to blogging yet. The parasite I mentioned up there? Yeah, um, that was me. *sigh* I'll be fine in the long run, but really still not feeling good, so I'm not going to commit to blogging regularly again until I know I'm better, and that I'm well in the groove for NaNoEdMo. See you next week maybe?
For those of you who haven't been following along, ROW80 is a writing challenge that lets you set your own goals, and cheers you on as you work on reaching them! I recently had to change my goals because I realized that, for now, my focus needs to be elsewhere. And, following quickly on the heels of that decision, I got thrown for a major loop. Some of my best friends are going through a personal crisis, and while there are going to be upsides to this whole ordeal, it's very difficult on all of us in the short run. Which, of course, means no time for me to write!
It has gotten me thinking though. My post yesterday (which only made it up because I wrote it Monday lol) talked about my experience with The Fault In Our Stars Tour and about living a life that is awesome, and the biggest thing I took away from the book that tour promotes is that life does not have to be going well for it to be awesome. So how can you be awesome when the people you love face hard times?
This can many different things because we all have different ways that we communicate and differing abilities and resources, but what that act is isn't really important. What's important is that you do something real, genuine, because people instinctively can spot fakes. Give flowers, take them out for a cup of coffee, write them a poem, send an email, do the dishes, just make sure its from your heart and not just some sense of obligation.
2. Be Realistic
When the people you love are hurting it is easy to want to save their world, but the truth is that usually you can't. You may be able to do some incredible things to help, but the truth is we all have our limitations, and there are some things that people have to work through themselves. As you are sitting there trying to figure out what you can do, be honest about your limitations. Maybe you can make a meal, but your not up to babysitting. Maybe your on the opposite side of the country and you can't be there, but you can still write or call. Maybe you can write a check or maybe all you can do is hold them while they cry. Don't feel bad about what you can't do, because everything you can do when someone is hurting is amazing!
You are no good to anybody if you wear yourself to the bone, and this one is extra important if you are closely involved with the situation. Don't forget to eat, drink some water, sleep, and take care of your self emotionally too. I think that last one is often the hardest, especially for someone like me who likes to take care of everyone else! You are important too, so call a friend, allow yourself an extra treat, take a bubble bath, but never forget to take care of you.
4. Don't Be Afraid to Laugh
Laughter really is the best medicine, and when you can find humor through the dark times, you'll make it through to the other side in much better shape. Granted, a funeral isn't always the best place to laugh, but then again, sometimes it is. You'll know what is appropriate, but don't ever loose site of the funny side of the dark.
~ Ruthie ~
Ps. I'll try to post tomorrow, but until this is all "over" I have no idea really what day to day is going to look like.
I made banana bread! I'm so happy! Why? I'm learning how to do more baking, and this is something I've never made before and it came out awesome! Woot!
Anyway... on to the writing!
On Wednesday I said that I needed to rethink my goals. Here is the conclusion that I have come to, I can not devote my life to writing right now.
What does that mean?
First of all - I'm not going to stop writing! That would just be insane. That would be ... soul sucking. I may go through weeks where I write less than others, but I am a much happier Ruthie when I write, so completely abandoning writing is just not going to happen. Period.
Second - I am keeping my writing goals, but they have been massively scaled back. I have decided that while I have two books I want to work on, I just can't sustain that level of focus right now because I need it for other things. For the next few weeks my goals are simply to work on blogging regularly again, and focus on Misfits. This decision was HARD because I want to work on both, but I'm not doing justice to either and getting stressed. Stress is not good.
Lastly - the reason behind all of this is that I'm really good at setting myself up to do to much, and between asthma and migraines, that is not a good thing! Especially since stress tends to lead to both of those. I got through NaNoWriMo and said, "I can do this! I'm going to focus on my writing and put it first!" Which would be great if I was truly at a place in my life where I could do that.
Instead, I really need to put my health first. I'm in the middle of a long journey out of the deep hole that was dug by my body. That may sound weird, but a full explanation would just take too long and make me sad. Suffice it to say, I am a very unhealthy person and large portions of it are not my fault (that and I love food, I really love food!). It means I have a long journey ahead of me to be what could be considered even semi-healthy. I am much better than I was, but...
Working on my healthy isn't just good for all the normal reasons, as I continue to get stronger I'll be able to do more, which in the long run, will mean more writing!
Where are you at with your writing?
~ Ruthie ~
Ps. As a perfect example of how messed up my health has been - yesterday was a really busy day and I wrote this up while the banana bread was cooking. But by the time I had pulled it from the oven, taken pictures, and eaten, I had to go do something else. By the time dinner was done I was so tired I couldn't do anything else and this never got posted. See why we need to get on top of this whole health situation?
I mentioned in Monday's Post that I have some posts I'm really excited about. Unfortunately I then lost Tuesday to a migraine (seriously, it might as well be erased from the calender). My plan was to post it today... then I realized that it's the first day for February, and the first day of the month is a day that I like to reserve for looking at the month prior, and thinking about the month ahead.
My exciting and fun stuff is going to have to wait. I will tell you that it has to do with where I'm knitting in my picture, and why the gesture for "Live Love and Prosper" was my first thought for posing for said picture. Other than that, you'll find out tomorrow! I'm going to write up the post today to make sure I don't get knocked down again and miss posting it.
Looking Back at January:
I posted on our PDX Wrimo's group that I was ready to write January off writing wise, and I was, until I looked at the numbers today. No, I didn't meet any of my goals, and that is frustrating. I had a bad month and it was hard to get anything done. BUT I still got a total of 20,781 words written between books, short stories, blog posts, and other random writing. Divide by four and you get just over 5k a week on average.
What does that mean? Well I've decided it means January should not be written off. I didn't meet my goals, but back in the day (before I took a break from writing and found my way back through NaNoWriMo) my goal had been 5k a week. I never met it back then. Ok, maybe twice I met my goal, but it puts things in perspective.
Perspective is always a good thing. In this case it tells me that I have still grown, even if not as much as I had hoped for, and considering my health this last month, I'm more than ok with that.
Reading wise I've done really well. I usually do when I'm sick. My goal breaks down to 15 books a month, and I read 16, and some of them were really awesome!
Looking Forward to February:
Honestly, this part I'm still figuring out. I am going to have to dial back my goals, but I'm not sure the best way to do that. I don't really want to give up any of them, but apparently my health is not going to cooperate with my dreams right now, so I need to dial it back a little. I think, at this point, that is going to mean working on one book at a time, which frustrates me because I really want to work on both!
I will update my goals sheet to reflect my current reality by Sunday, and share about those changes then.
I look forward to seeing what books this next month ends up holding. I'm excited about the one's on my shelf from the library right now, and I'll be doing a beta read for a friend as well, which should be fun, it's my first one!
How are your goals going now that we're one month into 2012? Read any good books?
I'm making progress and writing again. It makes me so happy! I'm no where near caught up on my goals, and honestly I'm fighting a migraine right now so I'm not going to pull up my goals sheet and update it until tomorrow. I'm going to need to revise things based on the time lost due to the back injury, but that's ok. I'm well aware that there are things in life that are out of our control. The only thing we can control is how we respond to them and then move forward.
Moving forward can be hard sometimes, especially once you know your too far behind to properly catch up. The key, I've found, is to remember that even if you can't catch up you'll only fall farther behind if you don't start moving. That's where I usually start, simply moving.
Simply moving can mean a lot of things. Pertaining to the actual injury, it means doing what I can for myself, with out help. Getting my own water. Then, as I improve, getting my own food. As time progresses I move about more often, do basic stretches, start to catch up on small chores.
With writing, simply moving looks similar. The first thing I usually pick back up after a major set back is this blog. If you look at the last two weeks my posts have been few, but I did make attempts to get back at it. Then, once I was able to do that with relative ease, I focused on catching up on book reviews. Now? Now I'm back to the "real" writing.
In the last couple of days I've not only written some of those book reviews that I've mentioned (I have several in queue right now!) I've also started on a ghost story, and worked on going through Misfits and taking notes. I was hoping to work on Jemnath today, but I got knocked down with a migraine so again its one of those days where moving forward involves small steps.
The ghost story is one of those cases where I have loads I'm supposed to be working on, but my muse is insisting I take some time to work on a different idea. I'm trying to balance all three right now, but hopefully the first draft of the ghost story (it's a short story) will be done in the next week and I can put it on the back burner for awhile. Depending on how it turns out I might work on polishing it from time to time and make it my first submitted work. It has potential, but who knows what will happen!
Before I start talking about where I'm at in my writing goals - I wanted to share something fun with you! I mentioned on Tuesday that I won the Book Mark Break Challenge this year, and the prize was that she featured me on her blog. I'm very excited about it as its my first time being featured since I rejoined the bloggy world, so I'd really appreciate my lovely readers heading over there and checking it out. Just don't forget to come back and read this post and leave me a comment!
Today marks the end of my first week of ROW80! (If you don't know what that is go here.) It's been a weird week, but a good one. Most of my plans got changed around, but I still got a lot done, and I had some invaluable girl time that I don't regret for a minute, so that makes me once very content writer. Mr. Muse is happy too.
The Goals and what I accomplished:
1. Write 750 words minimum a day - I did it! I had one day where I was really sick and almost didn't do it, but that's why I've set up a reward. If I do my 750 words every day I get to buy a book - and I really want to buy a book! It was enough to get me to the computer. Most of what I wrote that day was trash, but reading back over it today it was interesting to see how some of what I wrote set me off on things I worked on the next day, without even remembering I'd made a note about it while sick! See? Even sick ramblings can be useful.
2. Jemnath - Ch’s 16 &17 - I barely made this goal ... by writing at least half of it today. But hey, the goal was there, this blog post was looming over my head, and it got written. Isn't that what joining ROW80 is all about? I know I do much better when I both have set goals, and a system of accountability. Of course we'll have to see what future weeks hold, but so far it's working!
3. Misfits - Read Through & Hatchet Attack - This is a lesson in needing to adjust goals. I'm not done with the read through - and I haven't done the hatchet attack yet because I have to finis the read through first! I'm ok with that though because I am 30% of the way through my read through, and I put a bunch of hours in it. It's just taken me longer to do than I expected because of the type of notes I'm taking. So I've adjust my goals, dedicated next week to trying to finish the read through (hopefully life will cooperate a little better than it did this week), and going from there. If you look at my goals page you'll see both that I updated it with this weeks results, and I've already adjust my editing goals to match reality!
How is your writing going? Are you meeting your goals? Do you need to adjust your goals like I had to when faced with reality?
I’m very excited to share my writing goals with you, my blog readers! I’m not sure I’ve ever been this excited about sharing my goals. There are several reasons for that, but I’ll save that for later.
This year I’ll be joining in on A Round of Words in 80 Days (ROW80). ROW80 is all about setting good writing goals and then achieving them, but there is lots of grace involved, you are free to change your goals and adjust them to meet reality.
I am excited about meeting other writers, and about the accountability involved. I’ll be posting twice a week (Sunday and Wednesday) about how I’m doing with my writing goals. I have put a page up at the top of my blog with my writing goals (or you can click here). That page has it a copy of my spread sheet (I’m all about spread sheets!) but I’ll summarize in this post.
1. Write 750 words a day. I’m doing the 750words.com monthly challenge (for more on 750words see my post here.) If I write every day for this month I get to buy myself a book! Going back and forth between actually owning Hunger Games, Eden by Keary Taylor, and working on my Terry Brooks collection. Anyway, the 750 might be made up of writing prompts, writing book reviews, working on my books, or just stream of consciousness, but it will happen!
2. Two chapters a week in Jemnath. I’ve projected that out until the end of the 80 days, but I honestly have no idea how many chapters this book will take! I may be done by the end of ROW80 - or I might just be really close. We’ll see. Two chapters equals one long chapter and one short (about a page) chapter. I think that’s attainable and still gives me time to meet my other goals.
3. Editing Misfits. I really don’t know exactly what that’s going to look like past the first read through and going at the book with a hatchet (I’ll post about that on Wednesday). For now I have the first two weeks filled in and the rest is TBD (To be Determined). I’ll expand on my goals once I have a better idea of how the edit is going.
Like I said - I’m really excited about this! I think I’ve set attainable goals that will stretch me, but not too far. It certainly won’t be the challenge NaNoWriMo was, but I think thats probably a good thing in this case. I also feel more confident about meeting those goals than normal, because I’ve learned that I desperately need outside accountability to meet my writing goals, and I think this will be perfect for that. Not to mention, I’m just elated that I’ll be doing so much writing!
What are you writing goals right now? Want to join ROW80? We’d love to have along for the ride!
~ Ruthie ~
Ps. Do you like my writing notebook (see picture)? I love Celtic knot work and leather - so this book is perfect for me! I also love purple and this pen works really well.
