Tag Archives: goals

NaNoEdMo Starts Tuesday

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It dawned on me an hour ago that it’s the end of February, and there are only a few days until NaNoEdMo begins. So I decided to drop by the NaNoEdMo website and check on a 2011 badge and add posts in a few discussions. Unfortunately, no badges and it looks like their forum has been invaded by those damn spammers. Also, and there are forum bugs because the site wouldn’t allow me to post until I logged out and logged back in. It’s obvious NaNoEdMo is a baby contest compared to NaNoWriMo, so I’m being patient. I’m even thinking of of helping them out…do I dare go there?

Still, I’m pretty psyched to get started on Tuesday. Figure I have to edit 2 1/2 hours a day if I only edit 5 days a week and that’s doable because I do more than that now. Well, most days of the week. My goal, edit 4 hours a day, six days a week, at lease.  Hmmm…that’s 96 hours. Cool, almost double the requirement.

Other news, I received a certificate in the mail for the 3-Day Novel Contest, pictured below. Put it on the cork board beside a picture on a Native American that reminds me of Oscar, one of the main character’s in The Courier. Threw me off when I received it in the mail. Brought a smile to my face though. Reminders of achievements are always welcome.

3-Day Novel Contest Certificate

Oscar and 3-Day Novel Contest Certificate

Twitt

Time to Set Goals for 2011

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Because the holiday season is upon us, and time is limited, I’ve decided to start setting the goals for 2011.  And since this years goals were mostly a pain in my ass and completed at the end of this year or not at all, I’m adding them to the right column so they’re in my face almost every day.

There are seven weeks left of the year and I plan on unveiling the goals every Friday as I create them.  This week I’ve come up with two.  Warning, there’s A LOT of thinking out loud below.

1.  Achieve 50% towards remainder of 1,000,000 words of written fiction.  
This is a goal I set, in September of 2008 after listening to an early episode of Writing Excuses.  Basically they mentioned that the first one or two novels you write are likely crap. I know my first two were both more personal stories I’ll probably never publish.  They also mentioned that it takes writing one million words to begin mastering prose.  These are all professionals’ opinions, and who am I to argue, right?  Anyways, I set the goal back then to write a million words of fiction within a certain time frame that never happened.  Actually I stopped tracking it and have since written over 120,000 new words, which really surprises me considering the writer’s block I went through this year.

Well, IT’S BACK for 2011 & 2012.  I started a counter in the right column, but have the rest of the year’s writing, so I’m not exactly sure where the total count will be for 2011 and 2012 other than an estimated 300,000 per year which is less than the 480,000 I should be able to write if I stick to a 2000 words a day for 20 days a month.   WOW!  That’s 4-6 novels or who knows how many short stories a year, which could lead into another goal.

2. Finish editing The Courier #1 by the end of the first second quarter.
I’ve consistently not met this goal every time I’ve set it, so it will be interesting to see if I meet it this time.  This novel is going into its 4th draft, and now on to the math.  I’ve taken the first 100 pages of the novel to critique group and have another 200 to subject to weekly criticism, and at 10 pages a week gets me to 180 pages by the end of the first quarter.  Well, that ain’t guna work.  So I guess I could up it to editing 20 pages a week and attend critique group twice a week.  Gosh, can my ego take that much slamming…LOL?  Sounds like I’m setting myself up for failure again.  Sigh.  Better make it the second quarter, because I also need to update the synopsis and will likely go through the whole query letter business to find a new agent.   More goals…

Anyone else out there thinking about or setting goals for next year yet?  What do you hope to achieve?

Twitt

Nearly 10 More Weeks Until 2011…Oh My!

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I’m taking a short break from editing to say hello and catch my breath after realizing the end of 2010 is just around the corner. And we haven’t had any snow here at the house yet. Did notice lots of new snow on Longs Peak while walking the beagles this weekend though. That’s always a welcome sight.

In my last post I complained about how time consuming maintaining The Courier Novel’s blog has become, and since then I’ve decided to shut it down.  Or at least forward the domains here, which I’ll probably do some time today.   Kinda makes too much sense to take the previous parts off the Internet for awhile considering all the editing I’ll be doing for the next few months. I’m not feeling too concerned about doing this because the site has not had much traffic lately. 

So what’s that you ask?  What about the ending I still haven’t released?  You’ll notice there’s a new tab on this blog where I’ll be adding all kinds of stuff from the old blog here.  So as I finish editing the last few chapters, I’ll release them here as well as on Twitter.  But, like I’ve already announced, Warrrant for Damnation, Cause for Redemption and all the other books will not be released on Twitter.  You’ll have to wait for publication.

13 more days until NaNoWriMo starts.  CAN’T WAIT!!

Twitt

The Goals Thicken

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Sorry everyone, but no more whining and complaining on Mondays, which means the Weekly Whine has officially retired. I have to thank Mary Martinez on Mysteries and Margaritas in her post Mary’s Rants – Take the whine out of writing. Basically, complaining gets us nowhere, so I’m shifting my Monday focus to the positive.

What better place to begin that looking to the future. Now that half the year is essentially over, I’ve decided to focus on my goals for the remainder of 2010. I did a crappy job of following through on ‘em the first half of this year and don’t want a repeat for the second half. So I’m sharing with you the start of the goals I’ve set.

#1 – Finish releasing book #1 of The Courier by July 31st. I actually have the damn thing done, but it needs some minor editing for the first release on Twitter and the website.

#2 – Finish editing The Courier by October 31st. I’d prefer to get this done by September 30th, but added in another month just in case.

#3 – Complete Bloodlegger parts at least one month prior to its release on Blood Reads. R. J. and I made this promise together so that we don’t get stressed out with each new deadline and release. FYI, the first part, written by R. J., releases in a couple days, on June 30th, and I’m pretty excited. The part I wrote release on July 14th.

#4 – Enter the 3 Day Novel Contest and write the second of The Courier novels. I know, I know, I said no more contests. This is different though. I’m doing it to get the first draft of the novel written and could care less if it places in the contest.

I’ve got a few others I’m still working through and will share them next week.

Oh, I’m also starting a blog hop support group for us crazy writers to help each other reach our goals. More to come tomorrow.

Twitt