New Year's goals

First of all, HAPPY NEW YEAR! It's 2015, a new year with a lot of potential. It's that time of year when people think of what they want to accomplish. It's the season of the New Year's resolutions.

I don't believe in setting New Year's resolutions. They're made with sincerity, but some people just can't seem to follow through. Some of them are too vague to really have anything done. Others are complicated and too huge to tackle without some sort of plan. Those too fall by the wayside.

I do set goals though. I figure out the small steps to take to achieve them. I don't always achieve them. In fact last year's goals went largely unaccomplished. But this year I hope to do a lot better than I have before. I don't have very many goals but I think they're important ones. At least as far as my year should go. I thought I'd share them with you, in the hopes that by putting them down somewhere I can hold myself accountable better.

Goal #1 – Mend the faults in my character that lead to nothing but trouble for me.

Steps – Identify the faults, pick one to focus on until my habits change. Move on to the second one without letting my work with the first one fall to the wayside. Rinse and repeat until I've finished as many as I can in a twelve month period.

Goal #2 – Get a story or two to the query phase.

Steps – Identify which story/stories I want to query. Edit it/them. Find beta readers to look it/them over to find where I made my mistakes. Edit again with those suggestions in mind. Ask beta readers to take one final look at them. Pull a final edit.

Goal #3 – Query one or more of my novels.

Steps – Finish editing the novels. Write my first query. Read through the Query Shark archives to see her advice on other queries. Refine my query. Have someone else look it over. Once finished, research agents and their preferences. Adjust my query to fit those requirements. Send out the query letter with the other requested information.

Goal #4 – Continue working on my mental issues.

Steps – Update my insurance information with the doctor's office. Talk to my med manager and let him know when the meds don't seem to be working. Follow through with seeing my counselor weekly. Work on the things my counselor suggests that are supposed to strengthen me.

These may look overwhelming, but I have them broken down into steps and I think if I focus on each step separately I'll manage it.

Do you make New Year's resolutions? Do you set goals? How do you go into the new year?

Talking NaNo

It's October. October 3^rd to be precise. October is a good month. We're finally getting into our fall weather here. Pumpkin spice everything is coming out. I've got a month to prep for NaNoWriMo. And I got married on Halloween twelve years ago.

I'm not going into my anniversary post yet. That's being saved for the end of the month. What I mostly want to talk about now is NaNoWriMo. This year I'm doing something different than I normally do. I'm taking time to make notes about the world, the environment, and the characters. Furthermore, it's not in my comfortable realm of fantasy. It's not in the world I've taken years of painstaking effort to create. It's going to be science fiction.

I've given it the designation of dystopian cyberpunk. Because that's kind of what it is. The world is covered by mega cities now and life takes place online as well as in the real world. In fact, if you can afford it, being online is a lot better than being offline. I'm not going to give too much away, though I'm tempted to do character sketches at some point this month just to help me cement the idea of the characters in my mind.

This one is going to be tricky because there are three main characters. I'm either going to have to write it 3^rd omniscient so I can head hop as needed. Or I'm going to have to split chapters between the three of them. I haven't decided yet. I've been using 3^rd limited for most of my stories for years. So far, there's only been one story I wrote in first person. I can't seem to find it now. It was a rather interesting short story. But I don't use other POVs. Which means I'm going to be trying something new as well as writing a story out of my regular comfort zone. This should be fun.

Are you doing NaNoWriMo? Do any of my followers not know what that is? If you don't, go here and take a look. For those of you who are doing this with me this year, what genre are you writing? Are you going to totally pants it or are you planning a little ahead of time?

What would you like to see

Writing a blog is hard work. You have to think up a topic, write coherently (and hopefully well) on the topic, and post it for the world to see. It's recommended you end your post with a question, or at least encourage discussion in some way. Some people say set topics for each day so you have guidelines. Others say writing whatever you feel like and to hell with guidelines.

I tend to wander all over the spectrum on things like this. I used to have scheduled days. Then I started going random again. Then I tried a new schedule. And now we're back to being random again. I'm really not sure what I'm doing honestly. I hope I at least somewhat entertain you, offer interesting thoughts, and maybe provoke a little conversation now and then.

So...what would you like to see more of on my blog? Do you want to see more snippets of WIPs? More discussions on the world of publishing and my writing? No politics. No religion. I will rant about things occasionally but I'm not turning it into a regular post. Would you like a set schedule? Or are you fine with my rambling posts about whatever I feel like?

Tell me what you think you'd find interesting and I'll see what I can do.

Death to 2013, Welcome 2014

Last year was not one of the most pleasant years I've had. I started having seizures. I spent quite a lot of time in the hospital. I had to change a bunch of medicines multiple times before I found something that would help me, and I'm still not sure about one round of meds. I'll have to wait and see if they keep working. I started having sleep issues where I didn't get much sleep during the night. I got that taken care of too finally. Himself and I started having worse problems than we were having before, a lot of which came from lack of reasonable communication on my end. We're working on that now.

I don't do New Year's resolutions. I look at those as promises you intend to break. Instead I set goals each January and try not to forget them during the year. My first goal is to continue with my improvement on the communication between Himself and I. We used to do a lot better than we do now, and I want to get that back.

My second goal is to finish and query Marked. I've been working on this story long enough. I want to complete a viable first draft by the end of January. Edit it in February. Get it out to beta readers (anyone interested in being one? I need some.) in March. Make more edits in April. Get it back to beta readers in May. Do a final edit in June. Let it sit until August. Pull it out and make more edits then. Start writing the synopsis and query letters in September and October. Get them read and edited by other people to make sure they look good. Read the Query Shark archives to get some ideas. November send out my first wave of queries and participate in NaNoWriMo. December continue work on my new novel as I wait for news from the agents I submit to.

It's an ambitious year but I think I can do it. I'd love your help if anyone wants to beta read or be a copy editor for me for some of my goals this year, if you would like to do it. I know it'll be a lot of work and I'll really need to focus to get to each of my goals. But I am determined to do this.

Happy New Year everyone!

ROW 80 Round 4 Goals

I know, it's not like I don't have a bunch of stuff already going on in my life right now (being on a LOA from work, health issues, financial issues, roommate issues...the list goes on and on) but I decided to give ROW 80 (#ROW80 on Twitter) a try. I thought, after reading up on what it was, that it looked like a great thing for me. I'm good about setting goals but not so great on following through with them so some accountability might help me out here.

WRITING:

1. Finish Aran's story.
2. Start/finish Jaelon's story.
3. Start/finish Taereah's side story.
(All three of the above are short story/novella "histories" for characters in my novels. I've already finished one last month.)
4. Start on one of the novels.
5. Get ready for NaNoWriMo in November, and reach the 50k goal for the first time in the last few years.

JOB:

1. Get my mind prepared for going back to work Nov 1.
2. Go back to work.
3. Work on my CBT to keep myself sane and stable while I'm at work.
4. Apply for new jobs.
5. Get additional help job hunting from vocational rehab.

PERSONAL:

1. Stay on my meds.
2. Work with my counselor to treat my bipolar and my PTSD more effectively.
3. Walk at least 15 minutes every other day.
4. Read more.
5. Spend time away from the computer.

December Goals

My husband and I got into a long discussion the other day while both of us were battling our depression.  One of the comments I made is I no longer wished/hoped/dreamed for good things to happen because let's be honest: my life hasn't exactly reflected very many positive things lately.  Everything good that's happened has been unlooked for so daydreaming about the good stuff that can happen has gotten me absolutely nowhere, except even more depressed.

My husband looked at me and said, "So?  Stop daydreaming and start DOING.  Make some goals for yourself."  That's how he's managed to lose weight over the last few months.  He set his goals, set the steps for those goals, and he's actually succeeded.  This has inspired him to set other goals and work towards them.

I am not a goal-driven person.  I'm a "go with the flow" type of person.  However, that hasn't been working out so well for me.  Going with the flow means I'm circling the drain.  And I don't want to completely get flushed by my depression and by how badly life drags me down some (most) days.  So...I've decided to set a few goals.  Mostly to do with my writing, since that's where I've lost the most focus lately.

Now I'm sure you're wondering why I'm mentioning them to you, my dear followers.  (And even if you're not, let me have my delusions. *grin*)  The simple truth is: I'm lazy.  Without someone to keep me in line and demand a report of my activities I'll set my goals and then ignore them and fall down again.  I'm closer to achieving my first goals at work which will lead to me getting OFF the phones the majority of the time and into something more like management (which is what I want).  My manager is forever checking up with me on this, making sure I'm doing what I need to do.

So I'm going to use my blog as a way to account for my actions - along with the usual rants, whines, ecstatic exclamations, social commentary, etc.  I've got some goals I'm setting for December and I will be updating once a week (probably on Saturday or Sunday) with how I'm doing on accomplishing these goals.

So...my list of goals for December are:

1. Finishing the first round of edits on ONLY A NAME.
2. Start & finish the holiday themed short stories I've been meaning to write.
3. Make some progress on CRACKED WORLD, which has also stalled because of my inability to focus on my writing.
4. Find something POSITIVE to tweet/blog about every day instead of focusing on how bad everything is going.  (I probably won't blog about the positive things EVERY day, but I might make a list when I do my Sunday goal check posts.)

So, next Sunday expect to have an update of how I'm doing on these goals.  Also, if you follow me on Twitter, I'll be posting a bit about my goals there too.  So hopefully someone here will keep me honest and be after me to keep up the work on my goals.  After three months of this, I probably won't even need the watchdogging because for humans it takes 3 months for something to become habit.  So if everything goes well, by March I'll have this down as a habit.

Wish me luck!