Tag Archives: goals

ROW80: Funny Misunderstandings

by Jennette,

One day last week, I was eating lunch with the girls at work, when a woman from another department stopped by to say hi. Apparently, she’d emailed one of my coworkers earlier this week about the “snatchin’ shoes” she’d bought that weekend. “I want to see your snatchin’ shoes!” my coworker said.

One of the other ladies’ eyes went round. “You want to see her what!?”

Apparently, she’d misunderstood, and heard “snatch and shoes!”

The conversation degenerated from there, especially when a third coworker described something she’d misunderstood: she’d woken up that morning to find three ducks in her yard fighting. She grabbed her camera and took some video, before she realized only the two males were fighting. 😀

Similarly, I’ve been misunderstanding some of my ROW80 tasks, although with much less comical results. I underestimated the amount of time How to Write a Series Lessons 1 and 2 would take – there’s a lot of work in planning a series, especially when you haven’t written Book 1. (Yet, that’s the best time to plan, so good on me!) OTOH, Lesson 3 dealt with planning subsequent books in a series after Book 1 (or more) is already written, so there wasn’t much for me to do at this point, and it went quickly.

However, I made up for it by (again) underestimating the amount of time proofreading would take. Fortunately, it all evened out.

Here’s how my week’s progress went:

  • Complete print layout and print cover design for Time’s Fugitive – Done!
  • Complete Lesson 2 of How to Write a Series – Done!
  • Three interval workouts and two shorter workouts – uh, two and one. Still need to work on this.
  • Track exercise and consumption – not quite – missed yesterday.
  • Bonus: Upload Time’s Fugitive print book to Lightning Source – no, b
  • Bonus: How to Write a Series, Lesson 3 – Yes!
  • Bonus: Cover for Hangar 18: Legacy

Here are my plans for this week:

  • Upload Time’s Fugitive print book to Lightning Source
  • Complete Lesson 4 of How to Write a Series (which will finish the workshop)
  • Cover for Hangar 18: Legacy
  • Write two guest blogs I’ve promised people – this has been hanging for way too long
  • Three interval workouts and two shorter workouts
  • Track exercise and consumption
  • BONUS: Develop list of things I can tweet about my books
  • BONUS: Write content for author newsletter

Overall goal progress:

  • Release Time’s Fugitive, in both ebook and print – Ebook done. Print almost done.
  • Complete Holly Lisle’s How to Write a Series workshop – in progress, should be done this week.
  • Bonus: Any planning/outlining of new book, beyond workshop exercises – on hold until other goals accomplished
  • Release Hangar 18: Legacy – OR – release Times Two (Time’s Enemy/Time’s Fugitive box set) as an ebook – on hold until other goals accomplished
  • Bonus: Both of the above – on hold until other goals accomplished

I’d love to hear from you! Have you ever heard something you thought you understood – then realized you didn’t? Do you have trouble estimating the amount of time a task needs? How are you doing in this round of ROW80 – or if you’re not a writer, or not doing the ROW, for this spring?

ROW80: Working Through Fear

by Jennette,

Ever have that feeling where you haven’t done something for a long time… it’s something you know how to do, yet when you get back to it, it’s downright scary?

That’s sort of how my writing went this week. I accomplished my fixes and release of Time’s Fugitive, no problem. I did Michele’s cover design (she loved it – yay!). And when I could put off my writing workshop no longer, I dug back into How to Write a Series.

It went slowly at first, because it was making me think things through on my series that I frankly, had no idea of. I had to do some brainstorming. Something I haven’t done much of for my writing in the past couple of years.

Fortune's Foe by Michele StegmanThen I got to the last task in Lesson Two, Part Three, and it stopped me cold.

That task was: “Write scene one of the first book.”

I froze. I procrastinated. I played Spider Solitaire. I farted around on Facebook and Twitter. I read several blogs. I downloaded WriteWay Pro, because I’ve been wanting to try it, and it made sense to try it with a new book. I read through some of the documentation, and set up my book.

My husband left for the AMVETS hall, and I dropped my daughter off at a friend’s house. Then I could delay no longer.

I had to do something I haven’t done in over two years: write new material.

By the time I got a few paragraphs down in my shiny new software, my husband had returned from the AMVETS hall, and turned on the TV. So I put on my headphones and kept going. I will admit, it wasn’t all a real scene – much of it is written in “blocking it out” form, a technique I learned years ago from Liz Bemis, and more recently read about on Rachael Aaron’s blog. I stopped for a few minutes to watch a car chase on Hawaii-five-o (hey, it was a Camaro!), but an hour later, I had my scene sketched out.

Here’s how my week’s progress went:

  • Make fixes and re-upload Time’s Fugitive – Done!
  • Finish book cover I’m designing for historical romance author Michele Stegman – Done! Check it out, above…
  • Complete Lesson 2 of How to Write a Series – partly
  • Three interval workouts and two shorter workouts – uhhh, not so good; I wasn’t feeling well a couple days this week.
  • Track exercise and consumption – also done about halfway.
  • Bonus: Cover for Hangar 18: Legacy

Now I’m looking forward into doing more digging with How to Write a Series.

Here are my plans for this week:

  • Complete print layout and print cover design for Time’s Fugitive
  • Complete Lesson 2 of How to Write a Series
  • Three interval workouts and two shorter workouts
  • Track exercise and consumption
  • Bonus: Upload Time’s Fugitive print book to Lightning Source
  • Bonus: How to Write a Series, Lesson 3
  • Bonus: Cover for Hangar 18: Legacy

 

Overall goal progress:

  • Release Time’s Fugitive, in both ebook and print – Ebook done. Print interior started.
  • Complete Holly Lisle’s How to Write a Series workshop – in progress.
  • Bonus: Any planning/outlining of new book, beyond workshop exercises – on hold until other goals accomplished
  • Release Hangar 18: Legacy – OR – release Times Two (Time’s Enemy/Time’s Fugitive box set) as an ebook – on hold until other goals accomplished
  • Bonus: Both of the above – on hold until other goals accomplished

How about you – have you ever stopped doing something for an extended period of time – then found it scary to start back into it? I’d love to hear from you! What kind of goals are you setting for this round of ROW80 – or if you’re not a writer, or not doing the ROW, for this spring?

ROW80: Two Steps Forward…

by Jennette,

First, last week’s progress:

  • Make final edits, format, and release Time’s Fugitive in ebook – Done!
  • Bonus: Anything on Holly Lisle’s How to Write a Series workshop – No (but it was a bonus anyway)
  • Three interval workouts and two shorter workouts each week – two intervals, one short
  • Track exercise and consumption each week – uhhhh…. similar to the above.

As for that first goal, you know how the rest of the post title goes…

“…two steps back.” Yup, I finished proofreading, made the changes, formatted, then uploaded – then found a couple of mistakes. Not typos, but technical details, revealed by a writing workshop I attended yesterday. Luckily, I wasn’t sure how long it would take for the book to publish on the retail sites, so I’d waited to make a formal announcement. So I’ll be making those changes today, and uploading, then I’ll announce when it’s up. If you’ve already purchased, no worries – this stuff isn’t something that most people are likely to even notice. But now that I know it’s wrong, I want to fix it – because I can.

So for this week, here are my plans:

  • Make fixes and re-upload Time’s Fugitive
  • Finish book cover I’m designing for historical romance author Michele Stegman
  • Complete Lesson 2 of How to Write a Series
  • Bonus: Cover for Hangar 18: Legacy
  • Three interval workouts and two shorter workouts
  • Track exercise and consumption

 

Overall goal progress:

  • Release Time’s Fugitive, in both ebook and print – Ebook done, but needs a couple of changes. Print interior formatted.
  • Complete Holly Lisle’s How to Write a Series workshop – on hold until TF out
  • Bonus: Any planning/outlining of new book, beyond workshop exercises – on hold until other goals accomplished
  • Release Hangar 18: Legacy – OR – release Times Two (Time’s Enemy/Time’s Fugitive box set) as an ebook – on hold until other goals accomplished
  • Bonus: Both of the above – on hold until other goals accomplished

How about you? I’d love to hear from you! What kind of goals are you setting for this round of ROW80 – or if you’re not a writer, or not doing the ROW, for this spring?

ROW80: Measuring Up

by Jennette,

Time’s Fugitive is very close to release! All I have to do is type in the changes from my proofreading, format it, and upload! My primary goal this week is to accomplish that.

Here’s what my first readers (beta readers) said about Time’s Fugitive:

– I could not stop. Very fast paced. Such a convoluted plot. I don’t know how you kept all those threads from tangling! Whew! I feel like I just got off a roller-coaster! What a ride! And I certainly enjoyed it–a lot. Although at times I was thinking what an evil woman you were throwing all that stuff at your poor hero and heroine! And more than once I worried that there was no way you could get them out of the fixes you had gotten them into!

– I am in love with this book! I converted it so I could read on my kindle and I’ve been sneaking it into the bathroom at work to read. LOL! As soon as I finish, I’m going back to read Time’s Enemy. Really, by 1% I was hooked.

– Talk about a roller-coaster ride. And having a baby in prehistoric ohio? It CAN’T HEAR YOU over how awesome it is! This one reads like a thriller–the romance does definitely take a backseat, though it’s still pretty strong in places. This reminds me of the old-school 70’s romances a little–where the heroine went on incredible adventures and went through shipwrecks, strandings, and sometimes multiple partners, and a lot of cheese (it was the 70’s you know) but damn if it wasn’t EPIC CHEESE. Time’s Fugitive doesn’t have any cheese in it, epic or otherwise, but I love the characters, and the settings are aMAZEballs.

 

As for my ROW80 goals, I forgot something last week when I posted last week. When setting goals, it really helps if you set some means of measuring them! And breaking them into doable chunks. I posted the goals for the overall challenge, but I forgot to break it down to the goals for this week. So I’ll just review the results as they relate to the overall goals, and whether or not I considered them to be met for the week:

  • Release Time’s Fugitive, in both ebook and print – finished proofreading
  • Complete Holly Lisle’s How to Write a Series workshop – on hold until TF out
  • Bonus: Any planning/outlining of new book, beyond workshop exercises – on hold until other goals accomplished
  • Release Hangar 18: Legacy – OR – release Times Two (Time’s Enemy/Time’s Fugitive box set) as an ebook – on hold until other goals accomplished
  • Bonus: Both of the above – on hold until other goals accomplished
  • Three interval workouts and two shorter workouts each week – Got the interval workouts, one short workout
  • Track exercise and consumption each week – Done!

And for this week, I’ll break them down:

  • Make final edits, format, and release Time’s Fugitive in ebook
  • Bonus: Anything on Holly Lisle’s How to Write a Series workshop
  • Three interval workouts and two shorter workouts each week
  • Track exercise and consumption each week

How about you? I’d love to hear from you! What kind of goals are you setting for this round of ROW80 – or if you’re not a writer, or not doing the ROW, for this spring?

100,000 Books Sold! And ROW80

by Jennette,

Cool post title, huh? Unfortunately, it’s totally… well, check the date. 😀

That’s about the extent of my joking. But it’s also the start of a new round of ROW80, the “writing challenge that knows you have a life,” and that’s no foolin’. This round ends June 21, and here’s what I’d like to accomplish by then:

  • Release Time’s Fugitive, in both ebook and print
  • Complete Holly Lisle’s How to Write a Series workshop
  • Bonus: Any planning/outlining of new book, beyond workshop exercises
  • Release Hangar 18: Legacy – OR – release Times Two (Time’s Enemy/Time’s Fugitive box set) as an ebook
  • Bonus: Both of the above
  • Three interval workouts and two shorter workouts each week
  • Track exercise and consumption each week

I received edits on Time’s Fugitive from my copy editor last Wednesday, and I expect to finish them today. So then it’s a matter of proofreading, formatting, and publishing! I’m planning to get that done this week, so look for an announcement soon.

My third goal is an “OR” because it’s dependent on others. Hangar 18 is out with beta readers right now, some of whom are new, so I don’t know when I’ll get that back. One thing I learned last ROW, is to be sure and build flexibility into our goals, especially when they hinge on others.

How about you? I’d love to hear from you! What kind of goals are you setting for this round of ROW80 – or if you’re not a writer, or not doing the ROW, for this spring?

ROW80 Recap

by Jennette,

Quick ROW80 update, since I don’t normally do mid-week updates, but today ends the round.

My primary goal was to release Time’s Fugitive.

That didn’t happen. But it’s close! Here’s the breakdown:

  • Finish revision of Time’s Fugitive – Done
  • Send to beta readers – Done
  • Make changes based on beta reads – Done
  • Send to editor – Done
  • Prepare front matter, back matter, product description, and everything else needed before release – Done
  • Format book – nope
  • Develop marketing plan (preferably before release, but probably after) – Mostly done
  • Release Time’s Fugitive – no, but soon!

So what hit the wall? Well, some of those goals were dependent on other people: my beta readers and copy editor. My revisions also took a little longer than I expected, so that set me behind by about three weeks. Then the beta readers also needed more time than I expected – this is a looooong book. So it’s now with my editor. The good news is, she says she’s not finding much! So look for Time’s Fugitive soon!

The next round of ROW80 starts April 2. I’m definitely in! How about you? How did you do this ROW? Will you be joining us for Round 2?

ROW80: Slight Change in Plans

by Jennette,

Another good week! And that was with adding a task I hadn’t planned for – but it’s all good!

A few weeks ago, my friend Michele Stegman put out a call for guest posts on her blog. She wanted to celebrate Valentine’s Day by spending the month of February featuring the real-life stories of how romance writers met their real-life heroes.

So I wrote up my story, sent it to her, and pretty much forgot about it until the day she’d scheduled my story to post. Oh, I went to her blog and commented some of the others stories – there are some good ones! – and tweeted a few, but that’s about it.

A couple weeks ago, she asked me if I’d like to be in an anthology – not a new story (thank goodness, since short stories are something I haven’t really mastered!) but my real-life story, “Looking for Mr. Goodwrench.” It turns out her husband had read some of the stories, and suggested she collect them into an ebook.

Thus was born How I Met My Husband: The Real-life Love Stories of 25 Romance Authors. I designed a cover and helped Michele with some of the formatting, and guess what – I have a new release on my virtual bookshelf! It’s free on Smashwords, and $0.99 on Amazon (although you can download the Kindle format on Smashwords). We expect it to be available on Barnesandnoble.com, iTunes, Sony, Diesel, and Kobo ebookstores soon. These are fun stories that you can read in a few minutes – great while you’re waiting in line somewhere! And there’s an excerpt of each author’s latest release. Did I mention it’s free? So if this sounds like something you like, go to Smashwords, download your free copy, and read how I met my own, personal Mr. Goodwrench.

With my graphic design background, I’m super picky about formatting and of course, the cover art, so this did take me some time. But I still managed to get my ROW80 goals accomplished, because I’d left them flexible, and allowed room for surprises!

Last week’s results:

  1. Review HTTS Lessons 1-5
  2. Send Hangar 18: Legacy to beta readers
  3. Finish budget for RWA chapter (I’m the treasurer)
  4. Set up reader newsletter
  5. Three interval workouts plus two short workouts
  6. Track food intake every day (Still missed a meal or two on this one)

I marked my first goal, review Lessons 1-5 in How to Think Sideways, green, even though I technically didn’t do all of them. I actually reviewed Lesson 1 the week before, and didn’t get to Lesson 5. But I marked it green because I decided I wanted to do her How to Write a Series course before going further with the plans for a single book, because the book I want to work on next is indeed the start to a new series, and I want to do this right. I completed Lesson 1 yesterday, so I count that as being equivalent to a lesson on HTTS. What’s awesome about HTWAS? The work I do for the exercises and worksheets will be the start of planning out my book.

Next week’s plans (I can’t believe this round is over after this week!):

  1. View videos 1-3 for Lesson 2 of How to Write a Series (yep, this is the one that has videos. They’re worth it.)
  2. Complete worksheets for part 1 and 2 of HTWAS Lesson 2 (These are very in-depth and will take a while!)
  3. Request two more beta readers for Hangar 18: Legacy
  4. Write content for reader newsletter and start promoting it
  5. Three interval workouts plus two short workouts
  6. Track food and exercise each day

OR, if my copy editor finishes with Time’s Fugitive, put off items 1 through 4 to get that formatted and uploaded, since that was my primary objective for this ROWnd.

How did you do this week? Have you had to change plans lately regarding your goals? Are you still on target to meet your goals for this ROWnd? I’d love to hear from you!

ROW80: To-do List Balancing Act, and the Weekly Status Report

by Jennette,

This round of ROW80 has brought more learning – never a bad thing!

I learned that I do better if I schedule tasks throughout the week, particularly big tasks that need to be broken up into smaller chunks, like read-aloud editing and type-in.

I also learned that too much scheduled stuff is an invitation to get even less done.

It’s a balancing act – schedule what needs to be, without being overwhelming.

It's a balancing act!

I think I pulled it off this week. I scheduled my workouts (which I always do), and some of my writing tasks, since I’m still in a weird, in-between place there. I didn’t get quite everything done. But overall, I’m happy with what I did.

Last week’s results:

  1. Finish Time’s Fugitive beta reader changes and send to copy editor
  2. Format Hangar 18: Legacy for Kindle and send to beta readers (emailed them, waiting to hear what format they want)
  3. Collect remaining tax stuff for accountant
  4. Read nonfiction book for research
  5. Three interval workouts plus two short workouts
  6. Track food intake every day (missed one day, but getting better!)

So, I am pretty much in limbo for the two current projects, writing-wise. One is with my copy editor. The other is ready for beta readers. So it’s time to – yikes! – work on something… new! To that end, I’m going to jump back into a writing course I bought a year ago, and only got through five lessons before I decided to focus on getting other work out. This is Holly Lisle’s How to Think Sideways.

This week’s plans:

  1. Review HTTS Lessons 1-5
  2. Send Hangar 18: Legacy to beta readers
  3. Finish budget for RWA chapter (I’m the treasurer)
  4. Set up reader newsletter
  5. Three interval workouts plus two short workouts
  6. Track food intake every day (keeping this one on the list, because I’m still going back and entering this stuff the following day, which means I’m probably forgetting a few things)

Last week, a few folks asked about my Weekly Status Report. I totally stole this from my day job a few years ago. It’s pretty simple. I list each active project, with a total of how many hours I spent on it the past week, what my accomplishments were, and my plans for the upcoming week. My time estimates are rough, but this still gives me a good idea of time spent – and will further my case that my writing is a serious business, should the IRS ever come calling. I’ve put an example of it here, in case you’re interested.

How did you do this week? Do you keep track of your weekly progress somewhere besides your blog?

ROW80: Shuffling Along, but A-MAZEballs

by Jennette,

This has been another less-than-stellar week, goal-wise, in which I’m not unlike a zombie.

But mostly, it’s felt like shuffling cards. Last week, my attempt to bring my burgeoning to-do list under control involved simply culling a bunch of stuff, sort of like pulling the twos through eights out of a standard deck of cards before playing Euchre.

I put the deck away each night, and each night, it seemed that gremlins were intent on finding those extraneous cards and shoving them back into the deck. So each day, the deck grew until it was back to being a standard 52-card deck.

No royal flush here!

The other thing I tried doing was shuffling. But shuffling doesn’t remove any cards. Likewise, moving a task that didn’t get done on Monday to Tuesday only increases the Tuesday list. The only solution I can see is to give up the to-do list for lent cut down the list even more, to the bare essentials. I even had a little reprieve last week, when I found my daughter had a band concert I’d forgotten about (i.e., not looked far ahead enough on the calendar). I rescheduled the meeting with the accountant, so I didn’t need to have the taxes done until this week. I was hoping to get them done anyway, but that didn’t happen. So now they’re definitely on the “bare essentials” list.

Last week’s results:

  1. Review Time’s Fugitive beta reader feedback (yes, it came back from the third beta)
  2. Collect remaining tax stuff for accountant
  3. Complete interview questions for guest blog
  4. Read nonfiction book for research
  5. Pick one task from marketing list, and implement it
  6. Three interval workouts plus two short workouts (Did two interval workouts and two short workouts)
  7. Track food intake every day (wow, I ate out too much last week!)

The good news is, that this beta read confirmed for me that I’ve found my Ideal Reader (as described by Stephen King in On Writing). This is the person who totally gets my work and loves it, but is also critical enough to see where I’ve screwed up something, left out something that needs to be put in, or left in something that isn’t needed. And she’s a good enough friend and writer to point all of this stuff out (or, when there isn’t much, to note that fact too, so I wouldn’t think she just fell asleep reading the long passage with no comments). And she didn’t have many comments, something I attribute to having put this book through the Holly Lisle “How to Revise Your Novel” wringer. And she said Time’s Fugitive is “EPIC” (yes, in all caps!) and “totally aMAZEballs!” And that she hated me because she stayed up until 5 AM reading, which is what we all want to be hated for. 😀

The other good thing is that I went through her comments and the other two beta readers’ (they are wonderful, too!) and made most of the changes they suggested, or at least considered them. I have just a couple more to address, then Time’s Fugitive is off to my awesome copy editor.

This week’s plans:

  1. Finish Time’s Fugitive beta reader changes and send to copy editor
  2. Format Hangar 18: Legacy for Kindle and send to beta readers
  3. Collect remaining tax stuff for accountant
  4. Read nonfiction book for research (it’s due back at the library this week)
  5. Three interval workouts plus two short workouts
  6. Track food intake every day (keeping this one on the list, because I’m still going back and entering this stuff the following day, which means I’m probably forgetting a few things)

How did you do this week? Do you find yourself still putting too much on your list to accomplish without burning out? Or have you mastered the shuffle that keeps the unneeded cards out? Or are you shuffling like a zombie? And for the authors here, on the good side of things, have you found your Ideal Reader?

ROW80: Giving up The To-Do List for Lent

by Jennette,

No, not me. I’m not even Catholic. It’s my friend Jim Winter who’s giving something unusual up for Lent: his To-Do list.

Just the thought strikes terror into me. Without my To-Do list, I’d forget half the appointments I make – and I don’t have that many. I’d forget how much I’d planned to write – that evening, or that week. I’d forget to do the business paperwork, until my husband demanded it get done now (which doesn’t work very well). But Jim’s blog post made me think about how lately, I’ve again fallen into the tendency to overload my to-do list. Jim made the radical-sounding choice he did because he ended up serving his to-do list, rather than it serving him. It was removing flexibility from his evenings, to the point where he felt he couldn’t even go for a walk – because he’d planned other things instead. It’s easy to fall into the same trap by overloading the list, which is why I think I didn’t get anything on mine done last week, except the writing (which didn’t even take that long).

Last week’s results:

  1. Review Hangar 18: Legacy for beta reader edits and research details
  2. Collect tax stuff for accountant
  3. Complete interview questions for guest blog
  4. Read nonfiction book for research
  5. Make list of review sites to submit to
  6. Pick one task off of marketing list developed last week, and implement it
  7. Three interval workouts plus two short workouts
  8. Track food intake every day (I’ve been doing this for a while, but really slacked off last week, so it needs to be on this list)

So I made a half-ass attempt at some of these items: I started collecting the tax stuff. I have a deadline on that, as I’m meeting with the accountant this week. I did all three interval workouts, but only one short workout, and only tracked my food a couple days, probably because I know it’s not good (darn Girl Scout cookies!).

So something has to give, but it’s not the to-do list – at least, not the whole thing. Instead, I’m going to limit it: no more than two tasks, besides my workout and writing. I think the reason so little else got done was because it was just too overwhelming. We’ll see how that goes!

Here’s the plan:

  • Review Time’s Fugitive beta reader feedback (hopefully I’ll get it back from the third beta)
  • Collect tax stuff for accountant
  • Complete interview questions for guest blog
  • Read nonfiction book for research
  • Pick one task from marketing list, and implement it
  • Three interval workouts plus two short workouts
  • Track food intake every day

How did you do this week? What do you think of my friend Jim’s radical plan?