Starting with the Top 5

Last week I told you we'd talk about prioritizing the GOALS and breaking them down into manageable units. The Top Five were:

1 - Finish rough draft of Winter's Peace

2 - Finish rough draft of Autumn's Healing

3 - Finish rough draft of Death By Design

4 - Finish rough draft of Gangster's Lady

5 - Enter/ place in Arkansas Writers competition (multiple categories)

I'm going to reverse #1 and #2... putting Autumn's Healing first.

Autumn’s Healing was my Nano 2010 Novel (see pretty button to the right). It has a ways to go from being finished, but it’s closer so I want to do it first.

Before I go any farther let me explain something I learned by trial and error last year. Some writers can write all day, some early morning and others late into the night. Me, I’m an Evening Writer. I can work on shorter pieces throughout the day, but my novel-length comes later in the day. I don’t know if it’s because I have to get the daily stuff out of the way so I can focus on the other world or what.

I word sprint with a group of writers on Yahoo Instant Message. That means we meet in a conference room, someone is in charge of the timer and we write for a set period of time. We take a health/ stretch/ food break at the end of the period and then go again. You can find out more about how this works at Endurance Writing.com. Most recently our time sprints have run in 45-minute increments with 15-minute breaks. When we would do these all day on Friday – beginning at 9 a.m. CST and ending twelve hours later (with a lunch/ dinner break somewhere in there), I documented my word count for each sprint. The later the day, the higher the word count would climb.

So I work on short pieces like blog entries and short stories for contest entries during the day. Then about 4 p.m., my brain switches to longer length mode. I pull up the manuscript file and will sprint from about 4 p.m. if I’m home alone (6 p.m. if Bob is home) until 9 or 10 o’clock. Sometimes I sprint with the group. Other times I just bury myself in alone. I do know that I get a much higher word count during sprints. Sprinting is like Nanoing in minutes. You don’t take time to puzzle things out… you just write. The puzzling things out comes later.

So this will be my process for the Top 5. Short stuff like those contest entries during the day and noveling at night.

Now the big thing. I said we’d talk about a Time Line. Time Line’s are important. If you don’t set a deadline for something you’re more apt than not to do one of two things. Either you’re going to drag it out, thinking it still needs ‘something’. Or you’re going to keep putting it off, never finishing it so you can move on to something else. But how do you set a deadline?

For editors, this is easy. They know when things have to go to print. With that date in mind, they know when they must have it in their hands. Setting SELF-IMPOSED DEADLINES are great practice for when you have to meet that editor’s deadline. If you don’t train yourself to meet a deadline, it is my opinion you’ll never see publication. That simple.

Autumn’s Healing needs approximately another 15,000 words. If I make myself pull up the file and work five nights a week, at a minimum of 1,000 words per night, that’s only 3 weeks. Less than 1 month to finish the rough draft of Autumn’s Healing.

But, I already know I’m having my granddaughter for two weeks in March. Grandpa can occupy her part of the time in the evening, but she likes her TV time with grandma before bed –and we’re sleeping together on the hide a bed. So my nights will be cut short.

Because Bob will be home he can help sometimes, but we’re also going to be going/ doing stuff with her so my daytime writing will be hindered too.

So I’m going to say Six Weeks to finish Autumn’s Healing. That takes me to April 2nd.

See how I did that. Don’t groan but it was all MATH. I knew how many words I needed to finish, how many words I average in an evening AND knew ahead of time of an obstacle I’d have to over come. I entered everything into the equation and came to a solution I can work within.

But what if you don’t know about an obstacle? One that drops into your path like a reindeer on a bad test flight?

Unless it’s something critical, you can count on something coming down based on how your life usually runs. Factor in a cushion. Tack on an extra week if you think you might need it… but try to stay to the original configuration. Remember; short of a death in the family, editors don’t have time for whiney excuses. Practice now how to work around obstacles and still meet your SELF-IMPOSED deadline.

So here I am.

Autumn’s Healing by April 2nd

Arkansas Writers Entries due postal April 30th

I’m hoping to enter 9 categories. That gives me 1 week per entry INCLUDING polishing.

Stay tuned for my progress. On April 4th, I’ll set the new deadline for Winter’s Peace.

Until then….

Keep Writing! Keep Submitting!

GOALS

I know most of you set New Year Resolutions or Goals about six weeks ago. So did I, in a way. I mentally decided in my head what I wanted from 2011. But I never wrote anything down. Which is odd because I've always been very GOAL oriented and a visual person.

When I sold Christmas Around the World, House of Lloyd, and UndercoverWear Daywear and Lingerie I always made a big poster to hang on my office wall. The poster would coordinate with whatever promotion the company was having at the time. I'd have a big graph or pie chart depicting what I needed in sales per month and how many bookings it would take (based on my previous sales figures) to reach my target. For me, although the commission was nice, it was always about the INCENTIVES.

My first incentive with Christmas Around the World was earning a 7' Blue Spruce artificial Christmas tree. Live trees always made me miserable during the holidays so artificial had to be my tree of choice. If it was going to be fake, it needed to at least LOOK the part. That was 25 years ago. We finally retired the tree this year.

My other top incentive was a White Fox fur coat from UndercoverWear. I worked really hard to earn the coat. Then my mom got sick and I had to cancel several shows to care for her. My supervisor knew how bad I wanted the coat. She worked to earn TWO. One of them she sold to me over the course of 4 months at $50 a month. She made a little extra money and I was still EARNING the coat. I still have the coat but it doesn't fit the same as it did 15 years ago :-D It will again, someday. That is another GOAL I have.

So how do I go about accomplishing my GOALS? By breaking them down into manageable steps.

Take the coat for instance. I intend to be back in it by next winter. Where I'm going to wear it in the Ozark mountains, I have no clue. But you can bet when I get down to size again, I'll find a place LOL To do that, I need to lose 1 pound per week. That isn't a lot of weight in the grand scheme of things. But we all know shedding pounds is never as easy as it sounds. So I'm watching my portions, trying to eat healthier and posting my thoughts on another blog... Living Through Weightloss because it is about LIVING through anything we set out to do.

But what about my writing GOALS?

There are several things I want to accomplish this year. So today I'm going to list them. Over the next few days/ weeks, I'll break them down and we'll talk about progress.

1 - Finish rough draft of Winter's Peace

2 - Finish rough draft of Autumn's Healing

3 - Finish rough draft of Death By Design

4 - Finish rough draft of Gangster's Lady

5 - Enter/ place in Arkansas Writers competition (multiple categories)

6 - Enter/ place in ORA competition

7 - Enter/ place in Ozark Creative Writers competition (multiple categories)

8 - Get staff position with Scrapbook News and Review

9 - Speak to at least one group or conference (I'm scheduled for 2!)

10- Win Nano

11- Polish one of the rough drafts.

12 - Publish at least 4 freelance articles in the craft and/ or historical travel genres.

That should keep me out of trouble, don't you think?

In my next post we'll break the top 5 down into manageable GOALS with a timeline to accomplish each.

I'm counting on you to keep me on track. I'm always happy to return the favor. Tell me what I can do to help you.

Write like your life depends on it - for a freelancer, it does!

Getting back to business

Nano is over for another year, the holidays are behind me and now it’s time to think about my future. 2011 is already starting out promising with offers for me to speak, the potential for freelance in an area I love and the light at the end of the tunnel for the first two books in my Seasonal Sisters Series.

I almost completed the first draft of Autumn’s Healing, the second in the series, during NanoWriMo. It was an AWESOME feeling to write over 51,000 words in twenty days. I wrote on a blank page every day. The temptation to edit was almost non-existent. There’s always something you want to ‘tweak’. Temptation is a fact of life. But being in the moment of the story made it less of an issue.

Now I’m taking part in my local writers’ group JANO project. Just like NanoWrimo, we are expected to write 50,000 words over the course of the month. The two variances are that we have an extra day (meaning our words- per-day goal is slightly less) and that we can work on an existing WIP. We only count the NEW WORDS we’re tacking on to the existing project. Sounds easy, right? HA HA HA

With over fifty thousand words into Autumn’s Healing, I realize I only need about another twenty-five thousand to finish it. With that in mind and being seventeen days into JANO, I find myself wondering where to go. I’ve not written but about two hundred words towards the completion of the WIP. Do I start the next book in the series? Do I keep going with the positive outcome of having the completed first draft – don’t worry about hitting the 50k mark?

Every evening I sit at the keyboard with the intention of adding words to the story. Yet I find myself frozen. Not by writers block (something I don’t believe in) but what I’ve decided is more about a defeatist attitude. I’m focusing too much on JANO and not enough on what I do – Write a Good Story!

So with that in mind, I move forward… I think.

The Insanity is about to begin!

Yep, Every November 1st, thousands of people have pledged to write the great american novel. How? By joining NanoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month - www.nanowrimo.org

For 30 days, people of like minds (or out of their minds) will attempt to write 50,000 words over the course of the month. That comes out to 1,667 words per day and does NOT allow for Thanksgiving off. Writers write every day - right? Well... we're suppose to. Life (and lately in my case, illness) gets in the way. But November is suppose to be a No Excuse month.

Okay.. we'll see. I've charted my course, sent goody packets out to 5 of the many friends who join me on my thread - TheCauldronCafe - (you'll find us on the Forums page under Writers Groups and Clubs.) I've added my word count widget to the right side of the page so you can cheer me on. If you think I need a good swift kick - feel free to post a comment for that too.

I will have my granddaughter for 1 full week of Nano but by then I should be at least half way through the 50k and will be able to write a couple hours every night after she goes to bed. I can write six to eight pages in two hours, right? Sure!

Here's to what I hope will be my first SUCCESSFUL NanoWriMo!