RoW80 Sunday Check In

Well after missing a check in last week (thanks in no small part to a wedding reception where the best man dumped his girlfriend) I’m back on the wagon of taking part in the RoW80 Check Ins. Sadly the same cannot be said for my goals. After a disappointing few weeks I can honestly say that things have not gotten much better. I’m not sure why but it feels almost as though I fell out of love with writing for a while. I can feel that enjoyment coming back though, due in no small part to having spent the last three hours working and writing blog posts. Hopefully I can keep hold of that enjoyment, remember it and get back to hitting my goals like I was doing before.

Now, enough of me being miserable, let’s have a look at how I’ve done this week:

Post 1 blog post other than a RoW80 check in a week –   This actually seems to be one of the goals that I’m consistently hitting. Even when I was at my worst, not really doing much of anything I was still preparing blog posts and putting them up on time. It’s something that I really enjoy doing. I mentioned at the beginning of August that I was planning on sorting out my own website or moving to Wordpress but I think that for now I’m going to stay where I am. I would like to move eventually but until my monetary circumstances work themselves out I cannot really afford web hosting and all that other shiny stuff.

Progress – Excellent

30 Minutes on social media a day – I’ve been on twitter a little more but every time that I think to myself ‘Oh I’ll go on LinkedIn in a little while and check out something I saw in the discussions’ I quickly forget until the next time that I get an email. I’m still not spending 30 minutes a day on social media. Next week I plan on focusing on this goal, getting it down until it becomes second nature to do it, just like I did with the blogging goal.

Progress – Very poor

Spend 1 hour doing a creative activity each day – Yeah... not so great with this one. I’ve barely written 1,000 words a day on the Autharium project this week, something that only takes me half an hour at best. It felt briefly as though I was falling out of love with the project, I had forgotten why I was writing it in the first place and was completely focused on the end piece. That is not how you write good stories. I’m going to try to work my way back up next week but take it slow and steady so that I can get the momentum going again the week after.

Progress – Poor

Spend 1 hour doing a different creative activity each day – Again, this has been a terrible thing. I’ve spent more time watching tv than I have doing anything creative outside of working or blogging. It’s not even as though I’m pushed for time and super busy. I’m not. I have too much time on my hands I think and it shows. Once I’ve gotten the other two goals down into a habit I think I will properly focus on this one. In the meantime I’ll give it my best try but it comes second place to other things.

Progress – Abysmal

Start and try for completion of projects on the order day – This one has been fantastic. I’ve been receiving more work, and it’s been a wider variety of work as well. I’m not just ghost writing now, I’m proofreading and editing. I’m also writing book descriptions on Fiverr, something to get me into practice for when it’s my turn and getting me that little bit of extra income that I know is there in an emergency.

Progress – Great

Over all it’s been a mixed bag. Actually scratch that. I’ve been letting myself down quite a lot. I forgot that these goals are there to help me build a work ethic, to help me get into the swing of things and create some habits that will only help me improve as a writer. I got carried away and arrogant, thinking that I could do absolutely everything at once and thought of them as just goals, not a means to an end. Now I’ve realised that though I can focus once more on treating them as habit building activities, working on one thing each week more than the others until I do them all almost without thinking. It’s definitely the social media one that I struggle with the most however. I just don’t see how I can do it.

What do you think? Do you have any tips to using social media as a marketing/networking tool? Are there any social media formats that you might suggest I use? Am I being too hard on myself? Am I being too soft on myself?! Do I just need a kick up the backside and a good week of hitting my goals to get back on track? Let me know below in the comments and maybe it might help other people too.

 Created by Kait Nolan in 2010 after she began to struggle with the madness that is NaNoWriMo A Round of Words in 80 Days (or RoW80 as it is commonly known by participants) is the writing challenge that knows you have a life. In four sentences she sums up the idea of RoW80 perfectly: "We are all different and we all have different demands on our time.  Why should we all have the same goal?  The simple answer is that we shouldn’t.  If you want to be a writer, then you have to be able to roll with the punches and adapt to your changing circumstances.  If that means changing your goals when your life blows up, so be it.  ROW80 is the challenge that champions the marriage of writing and real life."
Be sure to check out other participants and how their goals are going here at the clicky list and be sure to leave a comment on their blogs to encourage them on.

RoW80 Sunday Check In

This last week has been not so great. For some reason I hit it hard last week and then have had very little success this week. That’s ok though, my goals are all about building habits, not just hitting a word count each day. People say that it takes 3 weeks to really build a habit and I’ve only really focused for one week. So I’m not going to let it get me down, not as much as it did the week before last. Instead I’m going to chalk it up as a learning curve, write off this last week and try again next week. I’m going to keep things simple, make sure I take my time and focus on what I’m doing when I’m doing it rather than always focusing ahead. But enough of what’s to come, let’s look at what I’ve done;

Post 1 blog post other than a RoW80 check in a week –   I did this one. Normally I post two, one on Wednesday and one on Friday. I missed Friday’s post, the last post in my three act structure series because I had a migraine and couldn’t face using the computer. But I did do my WiPpet Wednesday post so I’m happy with that. Progress –  Excellent

30 Minutes on social media a day – Once more this has been slacking a little. I’ve been tweeting and posting on LinkedIn, commenting on blogs and responding to comments here. But I’ve not been spending my 30 minutes each day. I need to improve this, focus my attention and figure out where I’m going to be social each day. Progress – Improving

Spend 1 hour doing a creative activity each day – I’ve not been writing this week, not a single word on Autharium Project. It still needs a name, it still needs a cover, it still needs to be written. So overall this one has not gone well. Progress – Completely terrible

Spend 1 hour doing a different creative activity each day – I have done some outlining on my webcomic idea this week, I’ve been working on the Feral Diaries read through and edits. I’ve also done some sketching which has been really nice to get into. It’s not been every day though but it has been done. Progress – Needs Improvement

Start and try for completion of projects on the order day – I’ve slowly been working away at my projects, completing work and getting more. Hopefully, so that I can build up more work and actually afford the hosting fees (more on that later), I will be focusing more on gaining further work this week. Progress – Improving

Overall it’s been a meh week. But I’m really not sad about it. I’ve tried, I’ve failed, the important thing is that I’m going to be getting right back up tomorrow and trying again. It’s when I stop trying that things are going to be bad. And looking through how I’ve been doing, the goals that I’ve been consistently hitting and the ones that I consistently fail, I can see where I’m strong and where I’m weak and how I can change that.

My goal about posting twice a week seems to be one of the goals that I am consistently reaching, in fact I think that I’ve reached it every week this round so far. I’ve even started to post more than the twice I was aiming for. I’m going to keep it as is for now though as I’m planning to relocate my blog and my updates after a receiving a lot of advice regarding establishing my own website that supports website, particularly from the wonderful and friendly Tammy J Rizzo (another RoW80 member who’s blog you should definitely check out). So that’s the big thing in the pipeline for the month of August, hopefully things won’t go too horribly wrong.

In the meantime, between sorting out website copy, photographs, all kinds of bits and pieces that need to go on the website I’ll be plugging away as usual with work, writing and editing. I’ll more than likely do a series of posts about how it is setting up a website for those people who, just like me, don’t really know what they’re doing. And hopefully, by next week I’ll be partway there and hitting more of my goals.

What do you think? Have I let myself down terribly after a brilliant week last week? Was it something that you expected? Does anyone have any advice for setting up a blog slash website? Anyone know of a good hosting plan that supports Wordpress? Do you have suggestions and advice for time management? What should my rewards be for when I hit each goal each day?

RoW80 Sunday Check In: A Bit of a Blip

It was a mixed week this week for my goals. I was doing great for most of the time but on Wednesday my depression returned with a vengeance in the evening and sucker punched me in the face. I don’t know whether it’s because I hit a particularly low ebb after the success of last week, beginning to quit smoking, the dreaded female hormones (which I have noticed have caused my depression to worsen in the past when it was particularly bad), or coming down with a sore throat which tends to leave me feeling a bit sorry for myself. It very well could have been a combination of them all though. I just don’t know.

What I do know though is that I’m undeterred. I’m not going to let this keep me down and after a few days relaxing and pulling myself together, but not slacking off entirely, I intend to come back swinging and take my best shot at hitting all my goals.

So, on to looking at how I did this week;

Post 1 blog post other than a RoW80 check in a week –   I did manage to do this one, even though it was late. Friday I completely cut myself off from the computer, only doing my work and then spending the day with my mother who had the day off work. It was nice and pleasant and a nice change to being alone every day. As a result my blog post didn’t get edited and published until yesterday but it still got published. Progress – Excellent

30 Minutes on social media a day – I didn’t really take part in this goal, beyond making a few posts on Twitter and responses to comments on my blog. Hopefully I can get back into it next week and finally start making social media work for me. I just need to do a bit of reading around the subject first to figure out exactly what I’m supposed to be doing. Progress –  Poor

Spend 1 hour doing a creative activity each day – Until Wednesday this was going great. In fact on Wednesday I had another bunch of writing done and got quite far. The few days that I was working on AP I wrote for far longer than the hour I set myself and made a serious dent in my word count for that project. In a way I think that this made up for the poor progress on in the end of the week but it’s still not as good as I had hoped. Progress – Needs to be improved.

Spend 1 hour doing a different creative activity each day – Much like the first creative activity goal I did fantastically. Come Wednesday, before I could sit down and do some editing or planning I found myself crying in the middle of a restaurant and had to be brought home. Needless to say I didn’t get much done after that. Progress – Poor

Start and try for completion of projects on the order day – I did great on this one. Even with depression hovering around, zapping all my motivation I still managed to begin writing for a client and made a few job proposals. Apparently money can motivate me more than depression can wear me down. It sounds shallow but it bodes well for the future and I know that if depression does pull me down totally again, as it did last year, then I’ll still be able to work and I won’t be completely broke. In fact, straight after this I plan to sit down for a little while and work on a client’s project some more. Progress – Excellent

Overall I’d say that it’s been a mixed week of success. It started out great, as you could see in my Wednesday check in, but then things began to plummet. I didn’t let everything slide though and I feel proud of that fact, that despite how I was feeling I still managed to hit some of my goals and make some progress into creating a better work habit.

What do you think? Am I being too hard on myself? Too easy? Should I have stopped all together or was trying for a few goals better in the long run? Don’t be afraid of hurting my feelings, I’m a big girl and I can take it. I need people to tell me the truth rather than being constant cheerleaders. Let me know your thoughts below in the comments. And if anyone has some tips for quitting smoking or helping fight off my depression then I’d love to hear it.

Progress Wednesday: A Row80 Check In and WiPpet Wednesday

So here we are, another Wednesday, another check in. It’s only been a few days since my last check in but given that I changed my goals around a little I think it’s understandable that I want to figure out whether they’re working for me or not. Overall I’d say they have but I think I need to look a little more closely to be sure.

Post 1 blog post other than a RoW80 check in a week – The week’s still young and the post is written. A few edits and it’ll be good to go on Friday. Progress – Good

30 Minutes on social media a day – I’ve been commenting on blogs, joining in LinkedIn discussions and posting on Twitter. It may not be a full 30 minutes that I'm spending though but what I have done is still good. I just need to find a way to not send half the social media time trying to figure out what I'm doing. Progress – needs improvement.

Spend 1 hour doing a creative activity each day – This first one I chose to as writing, trying to get The Novel finished for Autharium. Monday and Tuesday I spent an hour writing and in fact I kept writing past my hour deadline yesterday and had a 4k word day, the first that I've had in a while. Progress – Excellent

Spend 1 hour doing a different creative activity each day – Monday I struggled with this, trying to edit The Feral Diaries while waiting for a client to appear for an interview. Tuesday was excellent and I’m starting to see how sitting down and doing it can just pay off. Progress – Slow but getting there.

Start and try for completion of projects on the order day – I did in fact wake up to two new jobs yesterday morning and started and finished them both very quickly, before I did anything else. It was a great way to start the day, knowing that I’d done my official work as soon as it had arrived. Progress – Excellent.

Overall I'd say I'm definitely doing ok with my goals. There's only really one worry spot and that's the social media goal. I think I need to figure out what I'm doing there so I'm not wandering the internet in dazed confusion for 30 minutes. But there's more green and orange (I do like my colour coding) than there was last check in I believe and that's good. 

Now... I keep seeing the term WiPpet Wednesday bandied around the blogosphere a lot lately. A few of my new blog friends that I’ve made this round have actually taken part and have encouraged me to take part too. I don’t normally share my writing on here, preferring to keep it secret and safe, hidden from anyone. But I decided that I need to break free of some of these self imposed boundaries. So here it is; the first 500 words of The Novel, unedited and totally fresh from the first draft. I wrote this back at the beginning of July and I still really like how it turned out.

The dock of Crown’s Haven swarmed with men, every one of them knowing exactly where they were meant to be and what they were meant to be doing. Ropes were grabbed and tied and the ship slowly lowered towards the ground. The timbers creaked below his feet, the clanking of the chains growing louder and louder as the ship was towed, inevitably, irrevocably down to the ground. Marrick watched from the forecastle of the Dark Tide, watched the dozens of men and women scurrying around the deck, securing lines and bringing up cargo. The women had their long hair tucked up beneath scarves and hats, their curves hidden in billowing shirts and waistcoats.  

“We’re landed Captain,” said the burly quartermaster at his side.

“What do you want me to do Sir?” Marrick lifted an eyebrow at the older man. 

“Really Wallis?” he drawled “Are you actually going to go along with the Sir and Captain thing?” 

“It’s how it’s done Sir,” Wallis said, his eyes glittering with mirth “Wouldn’t do for one of the locals to suspect we were nothing but the honest, hardworking traders that we are, Sir” 

“Oh we work hard all right,” Marrick said, his smirk growing “You and I both know that you run this ship when we’re landed. I’ll let you to it and go and see if I can find us a new bowman or three,” 

“Ay Sir,” Wallis said with a mock salute. 

Marrick walked away laughing beneath his breath. He threw a quick wave at the other man and slung one long leg over the railing of the forecastle before dropping to the deck below. One of the crew stumbled and swore at Marrick as he appeared in front of him suddenly, making the crewman drop his boxes.  

“Language Hicks,” Marrick said with a scowl. “It wouldn’t do for the dock master to hear language like that here,” 

“Sorry Captain,” Hicks muttered, gathering the boxes together again. 

“Lower your voice, man!” Marrick snapped below his breath. 

“Sorry Captain,” Hicks muttered again, his voice gruffer now, deeper. 

Marrick cast a quick glance towards the dock master who was now on deck, deep in conversation with Wallis. He was looking intently at his chalkboard, checking off the log that Wallis had given him against what was being steadily lowered from the ship. The dock master didn’t look up. Marrick breathed a sigh of relief. 

“Wallis!” Marrick called, walking towards the two men, “I’m going landward but I should be back soon,” 

He didn’t wait for a reply, instead leaping onto the railing of the deck and grabbing a nearby rope. As he slid down it, plummeting faster and faster towards the ground he heard Wallis calling out above him. 

“You need to be back by the windshift Sir! Captain Rush will be mighty peeved if you’re late for the next cargo collection!” 

Marrick laughed and continued walking, throwing up an arm to show that he had heard.

I think that the first few pages are good but then again I wrote them so I would say that. What do you think though? Let me know if there’s anything that you would change, fix, jiggle around a bit. I always like to hear people’s opinions on my writing, more often than not they see problems in the prose that I don’t because I’m too close.

The second part of the blog series on the Three Act Structure should be up on Friday so keep an eye out for that and make sure that you come back next Wednesday for more WiPpet Wednesday and maybe you’ll get to see more of The Novel. Or maybe I’ll be cruel and post something from another Work in Progress.

How do you think I’ve done with my goals? Am I being too easy on myself? Too hard? Am I trying to do too many things each day? Let me know what you think in the comments below. I always try to reply to them, even if it takes me a little while.

RoW80 Progress: A Few Revisions Already

Progress in this first week has been a bit mixed. Even in the first day, when excitement was still running high, I only managed to hit a few of my goals. On my best day I still couldn’t reach all of those goals. I’m starting to think that I may have set myself too many goals. I’m trying to do so much that I’m not doing anything. I’m spreading myself thin and not achieving anything as a result. And then on Friday I kind of burned out and haven’t tried to complete my goals since. Most of my goals were aimed at building a work habit and I have managed to create a bit of a work habit. More importantly I’ve actually been waking up earlier and doing more than I was doing before. I’ve also been tracking how I spend my time and making sure that I do daily to do lists and a weekly to do list. But I haven’t reached my goals though. So let’s see how I did do;

Post one blog post other than a ROW80 update a week

I did hit this goal. On Wednesday instead of creating a check in post I began a new blog series about the three act structure. I’m pleased that I managed to reach this goal as it was one of the most important goals that I wanted to complete. The lack of content on my blog lately has been annoying and worrying me so the fact that I’m finally getting some new content up is encouraging. In fact I’ve already begun writing my post for next week.

Spend 30 minutes on social media each day

I’ve been doing a little bit of social media each day, ranging from comments on the LinkedIn Groups that I’m a member in, to spending time on Twitter and taking part in conversations there, to visiting a bunch of blogs from the other RoW80 participants and leaving comments. I may not have been spending 30 minutes each day doing it but I’ve been doing little bits and pieces each day which is a great start. I want to spend more time doing social media so I’m keeping this goal up.

Spend 4 hours each day doing two different creative activities

4 hours a day is actually quite a lot to be spending on creative activities. I’ve done two different creative activities most days but I’ve not spent 4 hours doing it. Mostly I’ve spent a half an hour at most on each activity. While I could get a lot done in 2 hours of writing it’s difficult to stay focused entirely on one thing for that long. I’m going to change this goal or rather these two goals a little to make sure that I actually have a slight chance of reaching them.

New Goal: Spend 2 hours each day doing two different creative activities.

The Two Work Goals

Apply for 3 jobs each day on the freelancing websites I use
Start and try for completion of projects on the order dayI’ve applied for a few jobs but they don’t update as often as they’d need to for me to apply to new jobs each job. For the first few days I was able to apply to three jobs each day but as the days passed and new jobs didn’t come up I had to stop. And when it came to the job completion... well I need to be hired for jobs to try and complete them. So I’m scrapping the application goal. It’s unnecessary and something that I do anyway. But the starting and completing on the first day is one that I will keep and aim for when I get hired again.

As I’ve been writing this I’ve been looking at my diary, trying to see where I went wrong. And then I realised that I was still trying to do too much on top of my goals. I had the RoW80 goals to reach towards and then I had weekly goals on top of that which were in no way linked to the RoW80 goals. I need to tie the goals in to each other, have a list of weekly goals that are what I needed to work towards as part of my RoW80 goals. For instance I can list the blog post that I need to write as the other blog post each week. I can list the two different projects I want to work on each day within my daily to do lists as part of my creative work each day. Once I’ve got those specific goals that link to RoW80 then I can include a couple of other goals to work towards.

Overall this week has been a bit disappointing but there have been a few successes. Also I’ve made a couple of friends through commenting on other blogs and taking part in conversations on Twitter. This is, in my book, a success. Even with the goal revisions this week has been ok. Let’s hope that next week will turn out better.

A Mixed Week - RoW80 Check In

It’s that time of the week again, the day I talk about how well I’ve succeeded in reaching my RoW80 goals or how thoroughly I’ve failed. It’s a bit of both again this week. But that’s not what I’m focusing on. I’m tweaking my goals a little.

1) NaNoWriMo – very good
Originally I planned to just aim for the daily word goal from the site of 1,667 words. Then I decided I wanted to beat my word-count from last year and aimed for a total of 100,000 words by the end of November. That means I need to write 3,334 words everyday. So far I’ve been beating that. On Friday in fact I wrote over 4,000 words. I’m very pleased with myself and i think I am well on track to reach the 100k goal I set myself, possibly before the end of November if I keep this up. I was a little disappointed though that this writing took me about 5 or 6 hours to complete. I tend to have conversations going when I’m writing and keep my internet browser open as well. Next week I plan on trying to write without the internet going, hopefully it will speed up how long it takes me to write and I can cut some of the time and boost my daily word count. Overall though things have been going really really well for me with this goal.

2) The Darkling Watch – disappointing
I’ve not managed to do any editing of this, simply because it’s been taking me so long to write my daily word-goal. This may change next week though once I start writing without the internet going. I did have some thoughts about the book though, and the series and once I have some more time I plan to put a couple of these ideas into play. Hopefully they will have some promising results.

3/4) The Feral Diaries Book 1 and Book 2 – failure
This week I’ve done nothing for these two goals. And I mean nothing, I’ve not even had any ideas about it or made any notes as I did with The Darkling Watch. I’m quite disappointed but again it’s not that surprising considering the time I take to write my NaNo daily goal. Again, like with The Darkling Watch, things may alter slightly once I turn off my internet.

5) o.S.a.M – a difference
While I have had a couple of ideas for scenes and the details of some of the plotline for o.S.a.M I came to a decision about it yesterday. I love the characters, I love the storylines, I even love the settings. It’s a story that I don’t really want to let go of. But I know that I don’t have the necessary skills in my artwork to tell it. It may be the case that I never will. But what I can do is write. So I decided I would turn the comic into a novel. It’s early days and there may be one or two tweaks to storylines but overall it should stay the same. In fact it may actually be better as I can give more depth to the characters by getting inside their heads. I love writing fantasy and I’ve been trying to find a story to write that is set within my fantasy world of Geniania (Yes the name and the world needs some work) and I really think that o.S.a.M would fit well within it. So there, a decision at last on that story.

6) Blogging twice a week – success
This one has been one of my bigger wins this week, and for the last few weeks. Granted Wednesday’s post wasn’t too coherent but I still wrote it and managed to say what I wanted to say. More importantly I’ve decided on a set schedule for posts, one that gives me more posts in a week and lets me have the chance to say what I want to say. It’s probably going to be the case that I write some of these posts in downtime at work and copy them up later but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that there will be more posts and they will be regular.

• Sundays – RoW80 updates
• Monday – writing based 
• Wednesday – NaNo progress (novel progress once November is over)
• Friday – personal thoughts
• The contents may wiggle a little but those are the days that I’ll be posting.

Overall it’s been a mixed week. I’ve had a variety of success and the usual failures. I’m starting to see a pattern though. That means I need to alter my goals. AGAIN. So here are the altered goals. I’m sure from reading previous posts, as well as this one you will be able to work out why I’ve changed certain goals and targets.

2) Edit Darkling Watch at least once a week
3) Write or edit one Feral Diaries entry a week
4) Wait until Book 1 is done before planning Book 2 of The Feral Diaries
5) Work out how to convert o.S.a.M from a comic to a novel/novel series.

And now I shall return to my NaNo and try to get some more words down before bedtime.

Keep Writing!

Looking Back and Looking Forward

Tonight has a lot of significance for many different people. For most of us it’s Halloween, a night to dress up, eat candy and scare ourselves silly. For others it’s the Pagan New Year, when the veils between the worlds are thin (and yes, that is now a plot bunny in my head). Others still have it as the Day of the Dead, a night to remember and commemorate those we have lost. For me though it’s NaNoWriMo’s Eve. Tonight, right now, people all over the world are setting out to write 50,000 words in 30 days.

I’m not going to talk about NaNo tonight though. I’m looking back at the last month, at how much I’ve accomplished and how much I failed to do. I was looking at my monthly plan for October today. I got the most important bits of what I wanted to do, done. I managed to get my NaNo outline all done, a lot more of The Darkling Watch edited and a few more entries of The Feral Diaries written.

What I didn’t get done was as much on o.S.a.M as I had hoped. In fact I barely got anything done. That was the major disappointment of October.

So I decided something. Obviously, with NaNo and work, I’m having to cut down on what I’ve set myself as goals for RoW80 and my own November goals. I’m focusing entirely on NaNo with a little bit of a focus on the Darkling Watch read-through as well as more blog posts about NaNo, RoW80 and another post each week about something else. Maybe when I’ve got time I’ll do a bit of work on Feral Diaries and o.S.a.M.

My post is short tonight, I’m focusing on finishing the plans for NaNo and getting enough sleep for work and doing some writing. I’m a little disappointed that I won’t be able to take part in the midnight kick-off but I’m still looking forward to it. Hopefully once my money problems are sorted out I’ll be able to put together a bunch of incentives for myself as well.

Keep Writing!

A Very Late RoW80 Check-In

I’m a little late posting this, I know, I know. I’m very bad. Real life caught up with me in the form of vodka. A lot of vodka. But it’s alright. I needed it. I needed to unwind and relax and spend a day doing nothing involving my novels or my blog or my comic. Every day, no matter how minor it is, I end up doing something involving them. Except for Sunday. Instead I spent it lying in a nest of quilts on my living room floor watching Grey’s Anatomy. Yeah, that was my hangover day and it freaking rocked!

Now though it’s over. I had my first day at work (an unpaid work placement) and I’m tired. I’m so very tired. But I want to make this post. I’m driven to make this post. I suppose it’s truly become a habit for me. All day at work I was thinking about what to say, what to talk about. I’m going to start with my progress on RoW80.

Work on o.S.a.M once a week  -  I actually did some of this last week. I wrote a few detailed scene outlines of the first chapter. I may not have gotten loads done but I got enough done to be happy with it.

Edit The Darkling Watch – I did quite well with this one as well. I managed to separate out 3 more chapters and made notes on what I need to expand with them. I’m happy with it. While I may be taking a break from editing during NaNo I’m not going to stop thinking about it, working out how I’m going to attack it again once my placement is up and figuring out where my plot needs to go to get two books out of it.

Write The Feral Diaries – I was a bit disappointed with this last week. I got nothing done. And when I say nothing I mean diddly squat. I wrote one entry and that was it. Not good. I won’t lie, it bothers me a little but that’s just because I feel like I let myself down and disappointed myself. I am putting this to one side as well while I take part in NaNo.

Post twice a week – I did good with this one. I know I did. I managed to blog about NaNo and about my crazy organisation thing. I’m planning to do the same this week, even with NaNo starting properly and the fact I’m going to be working full time. I can’t guarantee that my posts will always be readable or that they’ll make normal person sense but I will try. I have to. I already know what I’m going to be posting about. I hate to admit it but it will be mostly about NaNo.

Plan/Write NaNo – My planning went really well last week. I got my entire plot twisted out, the first few chapters detailed in scenes and I’m tracking which dares I use where. I have lists again. I really like lists. I’ve even decided how I’m going to manage to write and work at the same time, a new experience for me. That will come on Wednesday, Halloween. I won’t be taking part in the midnight kick off like so many of my fellow NaNoers will be, simply because I’m useless without 8 hours sleep.

For now though I’m going to work on my outline a little more, get changed into my PJs and snuggle into my comfy bed for a good nights sleep. Look out for my post all about NaNoWriMo on Wednesday.

Keep Writing!

RoW 80 Check-in and a rant about stationary.

Ok, it’s my...second check-in for RoW. My initial thoughts are that I’m doing ok with my goals but looking deeper it seems that I’m not doing as well as it first seemed. After a really productive start to the week my drive just seemed to go poof and I barely got anything done.

1. Plan/Write NaNo2012: That’s coming on quite well actually. I’ve gotten a rough outline developed and I’m pleased with how it’s looking so far. I’m planning on doing detailed outlines come next week, probably starting tomorrow. I didn’t plan as much as I intended to this week, only a couple of pages but I’m still happy with it.

2. Edit one chapter of Darkling Watch 1 a day: yeah... that one not so much. It seems I’ve lost steam again. I’m looking at the wordcount, looking at how far through I am and it’s just daunting. The original manuscript ended up about 110,000 words long, roughly 53 pages. I’m trying to read through, mark out what needs to be done and separate it all up into chapters. Essentially I think I’m making progress, look at where I am and it all feels slightly hopeless. I don’t know if this is just me being me and slightly depressive or if it’s a usual thing for authors to feel.

3. Finish and edit The Feral Diaries; Book 1: This one has actually been coming along quite well. I’ve been figuring out things about my characters, making rough timelines for when people appear and die and still writing. I’m not writing for this one everyday as I hoped but that’s going to change starting tomorrow. I’ve decided.

4. Plan The Feral Diaries; Book 2: I got some of this done this week. Not a lot but enough to keep me happy. Right now I’m focusing on the struggles that my characters will face, and the themes it’ll cover as opposed to any actual events. Oh I’ve got some events written down but I’ve just not gone indepth on planning them at the moment. Mostly because I don’t know the exact mental state that my characters will be in by the time these events happen. It’s a pretty dark series.

5. Outline and plan o.S.a.M: This one... yeah I sorta skipped on this one this week. With all my other stuff going on as well as trying to find a job I’ve been too busy to really think about it. I’ve got ideas in my mind about things I want to happen, I’ve just not put pen to paper and gotten them down yet. These ideas have stuff though, not disappeared as they are sometimes want to do.

6. Blog twice a week: I had a blog all planned out to write. I even started it. And then my internet went screwy on Wednesday night and I didn’t get it back until yesterday. This isn’t a my family thing either, it’s happened to other people. So I decided not to write the blog or put it up last night. Instead I’m going to do two posts next week. One on The Feral Diaries and one on Darkling Watch. Hopefully this will ease my guilt and make me feel much better.

Other goals

I decided to add two goals to my RoW80 after looking at the goals and blogs of some of my other companions on this challenge. They are not really devoted to writing but focus on my personal life which I realise I don’t talk about much on here.

1. Spend 30 minutes each day looking for a job: I’ve been unemployed since the beginning of February. I’m getting a bit sick of spending each day at home and not having any money to do what I want and buy what I want (mostly stationary). Don’t get me wrong, I have been looking each week for a job, I kind of have to in order to keep claiming my JSA but I feel like I’m not doing enough. So I’m putting this out there to encourage me to look harder and apply for anything and everything. Don’t get me wrong though, I spend most of my day doing productive writerly stuff but it may be the over-abundance of free time that’s making me less productive. Maybe if I get a job that’ll change. Plus it means I could buy a new laptop or a ton of stationary supplies (which I love, so if you know any cool sites for that pop a link in the comments).

2. Get more exercise: I’m a couch potato, a lounger. I smoke too much, I eat too much and I have a pretty serious tea addiction. I’m not as large as I used to be, particularly at this time last year, but I’m pretty tubby and I don’t like it. Especially when my sister swans around the house in very little clothing with the body of a dancer (incidentally she does dance). So I’m challenging myself to do a little bit of exercise each day, even if it’s a 30 minute walk around the village. Every little bit counts after all.

RoW80 Check-in

So... a little bit about whether or not I’m reaching my goals.

· Plan/write NaNoWriMo 2012 - pleased

This one is actually going quite well. I’ve managed to get a rough outline of the entire story and I’m slowly working out the details. I’ve even got names for two of the main characters.

· Edit one chapter of Darkling Watch Book 1 a day – very dissappointed

This one sort of stalled. Despite all my hopes for this novel (to be explained in a later post) it seems that I’ve actually lost the will to edit it right now. I’ve got a large chunk of it done though so I don’t feel too bad about not doing it. I’m more annoyed with myself for being inexplicably lazy about doing this.

· Finish and edit The Feral Diaries; Book 1 – middle ground

Originally I planned to write one entry a day and then go back and edit. I’ve not been doing that though. I’ve written a couple of entries but mostly I’ve been working out the logistics of what my characters are doing as well as going back through the entries I’ve already written and figuring out what I need to build on more. Oh and I’ve been working on a blog post to tell you all about it.

· Plan The Feral Diaries; Book 2 once a week – a bit meh.

I haven’t done much planning at all for Book 2 yet. I think a lot of that comes from the fact that Book 1 isn’t finished so I don’t really have an idea of where my characters are going to be by the beginning of Book 2. I have managed to get a little bit of outlining done for events that I want to happen in that book so I’m going to count this one as a success, barely.

· Outline and plan o.S.a.M twice a week – fail

I haven’t done any outlining on o.S.a.M all week. Not a single bit. I plan to do a bit today and providing I don’t get too tied up in writing The Feral Diaries I will hopefully have something to count as this week’s planning/outlining.

· Blog at least twice a week. – win
I’m pleased with myself for this one. I managed to write both a RoW80 post and a general post about my thoughts for the week and I actually put it up there. So this is a big win for me – two posts in one week that weren’t both RoW centric. Haven’t done that in about a year I don’t think.

And now on to one of my secret personal goals. I managed to get around to altering the appearance of my blog, as you can probably tell if you’re reading it. Before I wasn’t happy with it, it was all so blue and purple. Now though it’s a bit more attractive, if a little dark. I’m planning on talking with some friends who know about this stuff and hopefully I’ll have a new, better design soon. Fingers crossed.

Check in 2

                So it’s been a week of ROW80 and so far I’ve not really kept to my goals. It’s sad and quite unfortunate. I’m not quite sure what’s going on with me if I’m honest. I get all these ideas when I’m at work and sorting out the paperwork while wearing rubber gloves that make me feel like I should be giving someone a prostate exam (yes you read that right. I have to wear rubber gloves to sort paperwork. Long story for a whole other blog post) but as soon as I get home and sit down to write all these ideas go out of the window. It’s not because I forget the ideas either, I make sure that I write them down as soon as they’ve properly formed. I’ve even been figuring out some difficult parts of the plot for my current novel while I’ve been fiddling with my paper work.

                I have made a start on a new novel however, writing the opening paragraph and working on notes for the plot. It seems to be more of a young adult novel, brought on by reading too much Garth Nix and Jenny Nimmo. I don’t mind though as I seem to be focusing on the supernatural and paranormal anyway. In terms of art as well I’ve started a couple of pieces, mostly for the Sketchbook Project but I’ve still not gotten around to actually finishing them. There is a little time left in today so who knows I may actually be able to quickly finish one piece at least and I can count that as actually succeeding in one of my goals.