ROW80: Keeping up the momentum
I’m still barreling ahead with progress on Drawn. It hasn’t been as prolific a week so far, but I’ve managed to exceed my daily minimum by at least a few words every day and I’ve got more than 14,000 words down of the story. It feels good to blow way past my daily goal, but giving myself permission to just meet the goal and not try anything fancy is important too.
One of the reasons I haven’t been writing quite as much this week is because I started stripping wallpaper at our house. We’re aiming to move in by the end of April, which means we have a LOT of work to do on the painting front. I want to get all the wallpaper off the walls and have them ready to paint by March 24, the same due date I’ve given myself for Drawn. I will feel a lot better once I know that we can attack things with paintbrushes as soon as the estate sale is over, which should be coming up in a few weeks. In the meantime, I can knock out a lot of work. It’s a little intimidating because I’ve never done any home improvement or repairs before, having always lived in apartments. But it’s exciting…especially planning out the paint and floorplan for my very own writing and craft studio!
How are your goals coming, fellow ROW80ers? Happy Leap Day!
Dodged a bullet: a word to the wise about backing up
First of all, I should know better. I’ve gotten lazy about backing up my websites on a regular basis since I did some housecleaning on my server and moved to a new computer at home. But despite my tech nerdiness, I almost had a disaster.
Last night my site went down–all my sites, in fact, since they run off the same place. I frantically dialed tech support and something was wrong with that particular server. I figured it would be back up before I went to bed…but it wasn’t back up until almost lunch time today.
I was fortunate in that I hadn’t lost anything. Nothing here is so important or precious that I’d have been devastated if it were lost, but I would have certainly been upset and annoyed, both with my host and myself. I haven’t had any trouble or downtime with my host in almost a decade, which is a great track record, but I’ve grown complacent and not been putting up that extra bit of security by backing up my blog.
There are a number of easy ways you can back up your blog, and if you’re using WordPress many of them are available as plugins. I myself use wp Time Machine and I just set it up to back up to my Amazon S3 account. If you don’t know what Amazon S3 is, it’s scalable, flexible storage that you pay a small fee to use ONLY the space you’re taking up at a time. For me that currently equates to less than 10 cents per month. You can also use wp Time Machine to back up to Dropbox (which I couldn’t get to work) or FTP. I even have mine set to back up every time a new event (like a post) occurs. So as soon as I publish this little PSA, a new backup will be sent to my archives and I can rest assured that if my host ever goes out again, I’m covered.
Moral of the story: back up, back up, back up. Just in case. You won’t always be as lucky as I was last night.
ROW80: Rocking weekly goals like a boss
I love the incredible feeling of accomplishment that comes from meeting your writing goals. I said I was going to kick it into high gear, and I did. To recap, my goals for last week were as follows:
- Write at least 1,000 words a day on Drawn. More on Tuesday for sure at my writer hangout.
- Set a plan to meet for writing and editing Drawn for the submission call.
This week I ended up writing over 12,000 words. Monday was the only day I didn’t meet my bare minimum goal, and Friday was the only other day I wrote under 2,000 words. The story is flowing so well, and it’s so fun to write. I’ve never written a contemporary romance before, but I love my characters and their voices. I’ve been excited to go to the keyboard every day, and doing it even when I’ve been too tired because I am THAT eager to keep the story moving forward. I even managed to get a bit above my minimum goal on Friday, when I had a migraine. That is a huge accomplishment for me, because even thinking can be difficult when a migraine has taken hold.
I did it all to stay on the plan that I set for myself on Tuesday. I figured out how much time I think I’ll need for editing and a quick run through from my crit group, and planned backwards. I am using David Gale’s awesome tool WriteTrack to keep track of my word count, because it recalculates your bare minimum to reach your goal date based on the amount of writing you log. Right now my bare minimum is down to 1,030 words a day to complete 40,000 words by March 24, but if I keep to my current pace I should finish at least a week early. I’ve been shooting for at least 2,000 words a day, but it’s nice to know that as long as I get about half that, I don’t have to worry.
My goal for the week is simple–keep plugging away on Drawn. I want to get at least my bare minimum per day but am shooting for more like 2,000 words a day to keep my momentum. I’m also planning on setting up a new website for my romance alter ego and doing some blogging. But the main goal and total focus is those words. I am determined to make that anthology call and getting the words on the screen is the only way that’s going to happen!
ROW80: Full steam ahead
I am feeling SO GOOD about my current writing project. It’s a contemporary romance with a geeky focus–my domain, if you will. It’s so fun and easy to write right now. Tuesday I got 2200 words, easily exceeding the goal I set for myself and making up for not getting a chance to write on Monday.
Because I am a crazy girl who loves concrete goals with high stakes, I heard about a submission call for an anthology that this story fits in perfectly…so I’ve decided to go for it, even though that means I need to have the story written and edited in about six weeks. It’s for novella length pieces, so that guideline helps me tell the story in a more compact way, which challenges me to tell it in a better way.
I want to make this happen. Badly. Because I want to point to this story and say, “I finished that. I submitted it.” I’m excited about it and only mildly terrified, which I’m sure will rachet up as the due date looms closer. But by my calculations I figure if I stay on the 1500-2000 words a day track, I’ll be done and have plenty of time for edits.
I am also making housework headway…I’ve been a tad stressed with a lot of work projects on my plate, so I have been relaxing my brain by turning on a playlist and Cleaning All the Things. I bought new cleaning supplies and now my kitchen is sparkly clean. I plan on working through the rest as the week progresses.
How is your week going, ROW80ers? Any big news?
ROW80: Time flies when you’re busy as hell
Bless me writers, for I have sinned. It’s been over two weeks since my last check in. How is that even possible? I feel like I blinked and suddenly February is almost over.
The good news is that while I’ve been gone, I got some writing done. I’m a few thousand words into Drawn Together and I am having fun. I’m also writing a TON for work, so it has been hard to turn it back on once I’m home and relaxing. One small drawback of a writing-intensive day job—you aren’t always jazzed about spending your free time trying to make the muses behave. 
This week, however, I will be kicking it into high gear. Drawn is pretty perfect for an anthology call that’s been pointed out to me, which means I have to finish a draft pretty darn soon in order to have it edited, critiqued, and edited some more in time for the submission date. I may not make that, but I’d like to try. Eeek! My goals just get loftier. You’d think I would learn.
Outside of writing, we are just getting more and more ready to move. I can’t wait to be out of our apartment and into our house…especially because of the sweet writer’s den/craft room I’ll have! Do you have a special writing room or area? It will be so fun to set mine up.
So, here are this week’s goals:
- Write at least 1,000 words a day on Drawn. More on Tuesday for sure at my writer hangout.
- Set a plan to meet for writing and editing Drawn for the submission call.
I also want to do at least one chore a day that gets me inching closer to being packed and moved! What are your goals (writing and non-writing) for the week?
ROW80: Not so fast, apparently
Let me say this first…I am still feeling VERY positive about this week. Seriously.
With that said, I have not accomplished even a smidgen of my weekly goals so far.
This week has been another high octane one at work. In addition to my daily job of marketing and social media, I’m doing the PR for a new client alongside my boss. I really love PR and how enmeshed it is with social, but it can be time consuming and very quick turn. I spent hours today writing, editing, and editing some more. I’m happy with the results, and more importantly, the client is. But I’m burned out for today. The past two nights I’ve been busy until late and then just fallen into bed, exhausted.
Tonight I don’t have to pull a late one, and I’ve had the opportunity to relax, to do a few chores, to let my brain rest. It’s all I can do to even type a blog post. And you know what? That’s okay. My book will be here tomorrow.
authoress of urban fantasy and paranormal, grammar nerd, serious geek
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