This week has been all about holiday stuff and writing. There were two work parties, which were held during work–the best kind! On the home side, I still need to get stocking stuffers, but otherwise, my Christmas shopping is done, and the last of my gifts arrived from Amazon yesterday. So all I need to do now is wrap them.
I also got the Christmas cards out–hopefully in time for them to arrive on or before Christmas Eve (with the exception of one that goes overseas–they’ll understand). The cards arrived from Shutterfly last week, but I put off sending them because I wanted to do a holiday newsletter, which I haven’t done for the past couple of years.
It’s hard to believe Isis looked like this when we got her in April–now she’s over 80 lbs!
I didn’t feel like I got a lot of writing done, at least in words added, because I was doing a lot of editing and deleting, to make the newer stuff fit in with older stuff. (I have new respect for writers who write out of order!) But when I added it up, the new words came out to over 4700! And that’s in addition to those that made up for the ones I cut, which is probably 1000 more. Let’s not talk about what my house looks like at the moment. 😀
What I read this week: I wanted to pick up some nonfiction, so I read one of the books from the NaNoWriMo Story Bundle I got last month, Million Dollar Productivity by Kevin J. Anderson. This was fairly short–so you can get back to writing!–but had some good tips. I found it especially interesting how the author manages to write a half million words a year on his fiction while also editing anthologies, doing several cons and workshops a year, and he revises his fiction too. What he does is go on long hikes, and dictates his fiction, then sends it to a typing service, at times to the tune of over 10,000 words/day! 😯 But most of his tips work for any process, no matter when and where you can write. Recommended!
I am close, but not finished with the novel, and it’s promising to have an exciting end, so I’ll come back to that next week.
ROW80 Update: This week marks the end of ROW80 for Round 4, and for the year. Actually, the end falls on Christmas Day, but I normally only post on Sunday, so I’ll give my end-of-round update now. My primary goal was to finish my current WIP and get it to the beta readers. That has not happened, in large part because it just keeps growing larger and more complex. Just this week, I identified three more scenes that need to be added, one of which I wrote this past week, and started another (see note about about writers who write out of order!). My other goal was to write five days out of every week. There are 11-1/2 weeks in 80 days, and I hit this seven weeks. Looking at it monthly looks better: I wrote 21 days in October, 22 in November, and so far 17 in December (and haven’t written yet today as I tend to do more writing at night). I didn’t mention it in my blog, but I also wanted to establish a more regular writing routine and most of all, have more fun with my writing, and I consider both of those a success! So even though I didn’t meet my main objective this Round, I consider it to be one of “failing to success,” as Dean Wesley Smith likes to say. His discussion on that is very worth reading, especially if you want to increase your output and have more fun with your writing.
What about you–how’s your year-end shaping up? If you’re participating in ROW80, how did your round go? Your year? Or heck, even if you don’t do ROW80, how did you do with whatever goals you might have? Have you ever failed to meet a goal, yet still consider it a success? Please share–I’d love to hear from you! And if you celebrate Christmas, have a wonderful one!
Jennette Marie Powell writes stories about ordinary people in ordinary places, who do extraordinary things and learn that those ordinary places are anything but. In her Saturn Society novels, unwilling time travelers do what they must to make things right... and change more than they expect. You can find her books at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Kobo, iTunes, and more.