I guess that’s relevant mostly because this is going to be my blog entry for this week. It’s a busy week, so I’m going to be making this blog brief and bullet point-y. I always sorta feel bad when I write bullet point blogs, but I do have a few things to share and not much time to do it in.

<– Check this guy out. How cool is that? This is the graphic reward I get for sticking to my Write 1 Sub 1 goal for January. I’m doing the lightweight version which is writing and submitting one short story or poem a month.

This month I was largely focused on working on Consequence but, because I’d set a W1S1 goal, I also made time to write a few poems and (nearly) finish revisions on a short story I’d written a few months ago. I also revised a couple poems I’d started for the 2011 November Poem a Day and submitted one of them. That, combined with re-submitting stuff as I collected rejection notices for them, resulted in 8 submissions this month and 1 new piece moved into the pool of work I’m actively looking to sell.

I got an email last week that nearly made me cry. In a good way. It was a ‘Your work has gone on to the next stage’ letter from a market I’ve been trying to break into for years now. I’ve got my fingers crossed really tight (and I’m superstitious enough to hope I’m not jinxing myself by talking about it like this) but really, at this point even if they pass on it, I feel like I’ve made progress, and progress is good.

Consequence is fighting me for every word. Now, I tend to be a proponent of the ‘just write it even if it’s shit’ school of thinking for first drafts, but this one is like… well, pulling teeth. I feel like I’m spending too much of my writing time staring at a blank page in my notebook and trying to figure out what to write. That’s not cool so I’ve temporarily stopped physically working on Consequence. I’m going to let my sub-concious chew on it for a little while, and turn my attention to Twixt.

I’d like to avoid having to revise Twixt over and over again like I did Shadows. A good friend of mine took the ‘How to Revise your Novel’ course by Holly Lisle, and another friend took her ‘Thinking Sideways’ course. Both have loved them, so I signed up for HTRYN to try it out. I’ll let it guide my revisions on this draft of Twixt in hopes that it will save me time in the long run. I worry, mostly, that I’ll use this course as a new way to procrastinate “What do you mean I’m not working on it? I’m taking this course…” Only one way to find out, I suppose.

Lastly, on a short crafty note, I’ve reincarnated my Mystery Quilts blog. Hopefully I won’t accidentally delete it this time *eyeroll*. Anyway, it’s right here iffin yer interested. I’ve begun working on a new project for fresh beginners after having a crafty conversation with my friend Jayde, and I’ve got plans for a spring-themed tablerunner too, so, yeah… it should be good.

ETA: It looks like maybe this lil piccy to the right here is meant to be my reward for success in Write 1 Sub 1 for January and the top one is for a sub-section of the W1S1 community but I kinda like the dude up top better. Think anyone will be grumpy if I post both?

(This post has been edited to remove the bullet points because they were messing up my formatting. Funny and true!)

That being said, this is my attempt for this year:

Health: This relates to my writing because the healthier I am the more productive (and less dead) I am.

• Continue to eat healthy. In my case that is a low-sodium pescatarian diet.
• No drinking energy drinks
• Remember soft drinks are a ‘sometimes food’ (Thanks Cookie Monster)
• Workout at least five times a week*
• Lose 40lbs

School: I think this year is going to be more writing and editing-centric so my school goal is optional, depending on time and stress.

• Finish one, or, if I’m feeling super energetic, two more courses toward my degree

Writing:

• Write the first draft of Consequence (Deadline is March 31)
• Participate in the monthly version of Write 1 Sub 1. I have a habit of writing ‘cast-off’ poetry for things like this when I become overwhelmed. That’s not acceptable here. Poetry only counts if it is in a complete and publishable form that I’m proud of. Same goes for stories.
• Figure out what to do with Shadows and my zombie poetry and get to work on doing it. This can mean looking for an agent, a publisher or any number of other things. I can’t be specific until I’ve made a decision
• Either finish a first draft of Hollow Children or a transcription of Twixt
• Revise the whack of ‘mostly finished’ short stories sitting in my Dropbox and start looking for homes for them
• NaNoWriMo is optional. So is NovPad.
• Participate in the Whittaker Prize again this year, but in only one category, not both.
• Finish writing poems for all the 2011 Novpad prompts

Editing:

• Implement the new payment system for Niteblade
• Run a fundraiser and increase promotion in order to move out of the red
• Super Sekkrit Projekt w CJD (not Niteblade-related)

Wow… so that’s a lot more goals than I usually set in a year, but it covers some of the things which affect my writing and I don’t usually address in goal-setting. Hopefully that makes things go smoother, but if not I’ll know better for next year.

*The reward for 300 workouts this year will be Christmas in San Francisco. Rewards, especially those not related to food, are good.

My goals were:

• At least 50,000 words toward a first draft of my novel ‘Richter’. (I’m calling it a paranormal mystery for lack of a better genre. At least until it’s been written )
• 30 poems, one a day, based on prompts from the November Poem-a-Day challenge. All with zombie themes in order to give me the last pieces I need to put together a zombie poetry chapbook
• Work with Danica on a poetry project. I’m not putting a specific poem goal here because the challenge in this will be learning to work together and have fun with it, not on the finished project.

Well, of those three goals I accomplished the first one LoL. In fact I finished the first draft of the story formerly called ‘Richter’ and currently sporting the title ‘Twixt’ (we’ll see how long that lasts LoL). I think it’s a pretty strong first draft, and I’ve got some fairly good revision notes for when that time comes. For right now, however, it’s resting while I reset my brain and re-charge mentally from finishing the draft.

Writing that draft in long hand and trying to keep the NaNoWriMo pace meant that I didn’t have time to do the Poem-a-day thing in November, and Dani and I both were’nt feeling our poetry project after the first day. I plan to use the PAD prompts soon to work on some zombie poems still, and Dani and I will be going back to our project in the new year.

So I reached 1/3 goals, but I’m oddly okay with that and optimistic for future completion of the other two goals.

Speaking of goals…

I bet you recognise this cover

Dragonlance novels, and specifically the Dragonlance Chronicles series by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman are what hooked me on fantasy novels. I love them. LOVE them. I still have every Dragonlance novel I’ve ever bought (including multiple copies of some because they were re-released with new covers) and I can’t imagine parting with them. I named my daughter (in part) after a character in The Cleric Quintet by R. A. Salvatore and I can sooner imagine parting with those books than my Dragonlance ones. When I was in grade nine I created a complete gaming/RP system based on Dragonlance stuff called ‘From the Stories of Children’. Are you feeling the love I have for them? Yeah.

When I created Aphanasia, and with each story I’ve written set in it, I’ve been strongly influenced by the feeling of the Dragonlance books. The incredible world with its diverse races, deep history and potential for amazing stories. I wanted to create that too. To have a world where I could hop from character to character, story to story and culture to culture.

Recently Red Haircrow reviewed Lost and Found and said, in part:

If I had to compare to other works of fantasy, it was be books in the Dragonlance series by Magaret Weis, Tracy Hickman and others. “Lost and Found” has excellent potential and I would certainly be interested in reading further installments.

Talk about making my day If you want to read the full review it’s right here. There’s a tiny bit of a spoiler in there, but it relates to something in the middle of the story, not the end, if you’re the kind of person that makes a difference to.

I am one happy bunny today

Ever feel like Dory? I don’t usually post videos here but I’ve had Dory stuck in my brain an awful lot so far this month, so I thought I’d share the expirience.

I feel rather a lot more like I’m drowning than swimming these days.

I’ve fallen behind on my psych course and frankly, I don’t know what I was thinking taking it in the first place. It’s a history of psych course which requires more memorization without context than my brain is used to handling. I read things, I understand them, I move on, I forget them. It’s horrible. So it’s taking me far longer to wade through than it should, but I’m still trying.

It’s also NaNoWriMo month and I’m embroiled in that again. Here’s the thing. The past few years NaNoWriMo has been a cake walk for me. I type pretty fast and if I turn off my inner editor it’s ridiculously easy for me to pump out 50,000 words in 30 days. However, I’m at a stage in my writing where I’m not interested in writing crap. I also no longer type my first drafts. Since the last NaNo I’ve switched to writing my first drafts out long hand. (I think I blogged about this before, I’m not going to go into detail about it again today). While I may be able to type a few thousand words an hour I can’t say the same for my writing. I have horrible handwriting and if I want to make it legible enough to be able to read it later, that takes time (and it’s still horrible). The process is also slower for mental reasons as well as physical — I think about what I’m writing more longhand. That makes for less crap, but more time.

Time is not something I have a lot of right now.

Danica and I have fallen behind on our poetry prompts, and I’ve only done one zombie poem since the month began.

Right now things aren’t looking good LOL

Not for NaNo, not for many of my November goals. School, obviously, has to take priority over NaNoWriMo or zombie poems (and to some extent even over my project with Dani), so I’ve been giving it most of my attention. Trying to fit other things in in between. It’s been an adventure.

I considered switching back to typing for November, but decided I’d rather keep working slowly toward having a reasonable first draft of this novel eventually than writing 50,000 words in November just to keep up a record or win a .pdf certificate I’m unlikely to even print.

Wow, I sound cynical.

I’m not… at least not as much as that sounded. I’m still hoping to cross the finish line, I’m working to re-arrange things and find some more writing time and get through this coursework too. I haven’t given up yet, but I am feeling more than a little overwhelmed.

But, I’m still swimming.

How about you?

It’s NaNoWriMo eve, and while I can’t get super hyped or whatever about it anymore, I’m doing it again this year, and that means I needed to set some goals. One of the best ways I find to accomplish my goals is to share them with the world — then there’s some external pressure (whether it’s real or not doesn’t matter, I feel like it’s there) and that is very motivating. If you’re me.

November Writing Goals

• At least 50,000 words toward a first draft of my novel ‘Richter’. (I’m calling it a paranormal mystery for lack of a better genre. At least until it’s been written )
• 30 poems, one a day, based on prompts from the November Poem-a-Day challenge. All with zombie themes in order to give me the last pieces I need to put together a zombie poetry chapbook
• Work with Danica on a poetry project. I’m not putting a specific poem goal here because the challenge in this will be learning to work together and have fun with it, not on the finished project.

Let’s see how it goes, shall we?

As for the picture, I just thought it looked ‘autumn-y’. I took it for a collaborative project I was doing.

My first pick would be the re-write of Shadows, but I won a critique of the first 100 pages of Shadows by Deena Fisher from Drollerie Press and she hasn’t finished the critique yet. I don’t want to start the rewrite based on the critique of the first chaper I got from Jim C. Hines and then have to re-rewrite it once I get the one from Ms. Fisher. If that makes any sense. So Shadows is still on hold. *sigh*

There is a paranormal drama/mystery novel bouncing about in my head, but I’m going to be taking a novel writing course this fall (mostly to have deadlines. I NEED deadlines in order to have focus. More about this later) and I was going to use that plot as the novel I’d work on for the course. I got the impression the course was going to have a specific novel writing system it wanted to teach, so if I’m going to give it a fair try, starting the novel ahead of time seems like a bad idea.

The collaborative project I’m working on will take up some of my time on the retreat, but because of the nature of the project, it won’t fill the weekend. Not even close.

That leaves ‘See The Sky Again’ which is a fantasy novel set in Aphanasia that I am looking forward to writing. I was going to do it for my NaNo novel last year but decided against it because I hadn’t sorted out enough of the details yet. I think I know enough to write it now…my only hesitation is that I’ll be starting this novel on my retreat, then starting the other one for my course in October. Think I can get the first draft of See The Sky Again done before then?

I guess we’ll find out…

In other, picture-related news, I think I’m going to put the bulk of the rest of my vacation photos up on My Facebook Page rather than taking this blog over with them.

Except for this picture I took at Alcatraz that I love.

And maybe a few more inserted one at a time into blog posts.