Tag: writing goals

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My Camp NaNo Project: The Regonia Chronicles

Are you doing Camp NaNo? I wasn’t sure if I was going to this year or not until I made a goal on the Nano website before bed at 4:00am on April 1st.

Which… might not be the best time of day to be setting goals. Since I’m a night owl, that’s really still an hour before I would normally go to bed, but still.

Now, for those of you who don’t know, Camp Nano is basically NaNoWriMo Light.

NaNoWriMo consists of a bunch of writers buoying each other’s spirits as they each try to write 50 thousand words in a month (November).

Camp NaNo takes place in April and writers get to set their own goals for the month. It can even be editing rather than writing.

So, way too late at night for goal setting, I decided that I’d shoot for adding 20 thousand words to The Regonia Chronicles. Not a bad goal, considering the mild sleep deprivation that prompted it.

The challenge will be doing this alongside prepping release stuff for Allmother Rising and editing A Blessed Darkness. I guess I could make an editing goal, too.

But anyway, 20k words isn’t a bad goal.

By and large, I usually have no idea what’s coming in my books. I don’t exactly plan them. If I did, I would’ve known that The Regonia Chronicles was going to be multiple books rather than just one.

But I sorta have an idea of what’s coming for the next little portion.

Climb a mountain. Hope to avoid lightning storms while on said mountain. Avoid alien abduction while attempting to forge an alliance with a warrior tribe that fears you’ve brought a disease from the stars.

You know. Normal, every day shit.

So, maybe since I know what’s coming (to a degree) I’ll be able to just bust right through those 20k words.

But in all likelihood, a million complications will come up and draw out the progression of it all. Maybe someone will fall off a cliff.

*shrugs*

We’ll see.

I’m hoping to finish writing this series this year and finish the editing by next spring in order to maintain my publishing schedule. As long as it doesn’t blossom into too many additional books, that should be possible. Right now, it’s looking like three or four plus a novella prequel.

I *think* I know the general plot of the rest of book three and most of book four. And there are a few additions and adjustments that need made to books one and two.

But for now, I’m just going to concentrate on the 20 thousand words for this month.

Are you participating in Camp NaNo?

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Work in Progress: Updates and Quarantine Goals

Hi, guys!

Well, I’ve officially joined the ranks of the “unessential.” I work at a tire factory, and several car manufacturers shut down for a short time. So, we stockpiled until our warehouse was full, and now we’re laid off for a couple of weeks.

Which means I now have a shit ton of time to work on my books.

As such, I’ve set a couple of goals for myself over my two week lay-off. Since the original purpose of this blog was accountability, I’m going to share these goals here, and we’ll see how it goes.

  1. I want to finish my first draft of my current WIP, officially titled Allmother Rising. I’m currently sitting at roughly 56,700 words, up 3,300 from last week, and have about 6-8 chapters left.
  2. I want to finish this round of edits on Where Darkness Leads. I have 85 pages left, but it’s basically a rewrite. It’s an older WIP, and I’ve learned so much since I wrote that one.
  3. I want to make some serious progress on my TBR pile. It’s gotten unreasonable of late, and I have so many worlds to jump into.

As of last Monday, I had a fourth goal for the shutdown, which was to complete another full round of edits on A Heart of Salt & Silver (official title).

But I started it that night, and burned through the entire fucking thing over the course of 4 days.

Yes, it’s a more recent work, so I made far fewer mistakes. (Still made some, don’t come at me. I know I’m not perfect. Just fewer mistakes than with older WIPs.)

But I also got sucked in.

Like…I gave myself a proper book hangover. Honestly, I just want to go back and do another round of edits on that one right now, just so I can be in that story again.

The fifth goal I was going to set for the shutdown (deciding on a cover option for A Heart of Salt & Silver) isn’t necessary anymore, either. I had a couple drafts prepared, sitting on my computer. But I was so caught up in that story that I ended up coming up with a new one from scratch that I love even more than the previous variations.

So, I’ll only have three goals for the next two weeks. Finish writing Allmother Rising, finish this round of edits on Where Darkness Leads, and read an absolute fuck ton.

I should probably restrain myself from doing yet another round of edits on A Heart of Salt & Silver until after those are complete, but goddamn.

Lol.

Now, it may seem crass or impolite to be so wrapped up in my own story. But you know what…I don’t care.

We need to be proud of our books.

We need to be confident in what we’ve done.

I know it isn’t perfect. That’s why I’m editing it.

But I fucking love it. Just like I love all my books. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t fucking publish them. I’d hide them away and pretend they never happened. They’d just be weird files on my computer, buried in a file within a file within a file within about four hundred levels of file inception.

But they’re not.

I like them enough to share them with others, which is saying something because I’m not typically a confident person who shares what they’ve made with others. I never have been.

So, while I’m certainly not bragging or saying my work is better than anyone else’s (because I’m not saying that), I’m excited with how all of these projects are turning out so far and with the growth I’ve made over the past few years.

Editing Where Darkness Leads alongside A Heart of Salt & Silver has shown me just how much I’ve learned and how far I’ve come.

So, to all my fellow readers, let’s knock out our TBR piles.

To my fellow writers, let’s be more confident in our work and the progress we’ve made, all while getting tons of stuff done over quarantine.

To people following along for the sake of my books, first of all, fucking thank you. Second, I fully intend to get all of these books out as quickly as I can, while still striving to produce quality work.

Who knows, maybe I’ll even have time to make some progress on The Regonia Chronicles during this lay-off.

For now, though, I’m going to jump into some edits.

Feel free to share your goals in the comments.

Keep reading. Keep writing.

Be fucking proud.

Later.