Meilo’s World – Page 3 – Meilo Zaborowski: Author

No hesitation, no delay

The new job is going super well. My coworkers are really chill and nice, the higher ups are helpful and just want me to succeed, and there’s a good balance of expectations and freedom. I’ve never been happier about coming in to a new job.

So far I don’t forsee a huge conflict with my writing, considering I will still only work Monday through Friday. But we’ll see.

Goal 1) Revise TAP 2

My Goal: Finish one lesson every two weeks (roughly)
Where I planned to be: Lesson 5, 32 scenes in
Where I am: Lesson 5, 46 scenes in
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:

This lesson is a little tough. Trying to suss out the true conflict and meaning of each scene. So far no issues, at least.

I have come up with some good additions this week, ways to make some of the scenes flow together better. And I have a scene in mind that will probably get cut.

And now I’m gonna be itching to cut and add for weeks, ugh.

(Show us the way)

Late post is late, but I finally got a job offer yesterday! What that means for my writing, I don’t know yet. But I’ll work it out.

Goal 1) Revise TAP 2

My Goal: Finish one lesson every two weeks (roughly)
Where I planned to be: Lesson 4 complete
Where I am: Lesson 4 complete; Lesson 5, 11 scenes in
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:

Lesson 4 is one of the few lessons that is not only hard to measure progress on, but honestly doesn’t take much work. It’s actually kinda fun to lay all my index cards out and look at the various threads I’ve weaved together without really trying, sussing out what they actually are, and pinpointing where I went wrong with them.

Lesson 5 is quite a bit more work, digging far deeper into the conflict of each scene than probably anyone else would care to, which is part of why I started on it early. But it’s a great exercise to see which scenes are rock solid, which could use some help, and which missed the boat completely. So far, I haven’t had any of the latter, so let’s hope it stays that way.

Light ’em up

It’s officially day two of 2022, and I totally meant to make a post yesterday but I never finished it. 😔 I’m going to blame sick brain because Chris and I are stuck at home with the ‘rona. (Why do I always get sick around Christmas/New Year’s?)

The good news is, I started Lesson 1 of Holly Lisle’s How To Revise Your Novel with TAP 2 yesterday and read through 10 scenes today.

So, on to the goal!

GOAL 1) Revise TAP 2

My clear target is: Revise TAP 2 (final title pending)
My reachable deadline is: December 31, 2022
My working days are: Fri-Sun
My method of measuring progress: Scenes, page count, and lessons
My end goal: Have a revised novel ready for content edit
My daily goal, and number of available days: Depends on the lesson, roughly two weeks per lesson, 3 days a week
My leverage — WHY I need to do this: Gotta deliver on my promise of a sequel, amirite?

Guess who’s back, back again

Holy shit, where has the time gone? I meant to take a break for a few weeks and… it turned into a few months. Whoops.

So what’s been happening? I moved into an apartment with my boyfriend(!!!), I graduated from TSTC with my AAS in Cyber Security, we got a husky puppy (his name is Atticus and he’s gorgeous), I got my Network+ certification, still haven’t found another job yet, and my mental health has been slowly circling the drain. I’m seeing a therapist and my primary doc has put me on Prozac, which I’ve been on for just over 3 weeks. It’s been… a lot.

But part of my healing is gonna involve me getting back to writing. So here we are. Goals, y’all!

GOAL 1) TAP 2 (ACTUAL TITLE PENDING)

My clear target is: Finish sequel to The Atheist’s Prayer
My reachable deadline is: December 31, 2021
My working days are: Fri-Sun (maybe Tues?)
My method of measuring progress: Word count
My end goal: Finish the damn thing (preferably 50,000 words)
My daily goal, and number of available days: Write 500 words, 3 days a week. So 1500 words a week. At least.
My leverage — WHY I need to do this: To further my name as an author and hopefully sell more books. I’m also losing my ever-loving mind right now and I need to get back to writing regularly because it’s one of the few things that keeps me sane and functioning as a relatively normal human being.

And since I actually have been writing here and there in the interim, here’s my progress so far.

Goal 1) TAP 2

My Goal: 500 WPD, 1500 WPW
Where I planned to be: 27,000 words
Where I am: 27,239 words
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
My extended absence notwithstanding, I’ve made some good progress. After I hit the midpoint, I took some time to map out a good chunk of the rest of “act two”, or at least lay out the skeleton (which if you’ve been with me for a while, you’ll know this is my modus operandi at this point). For some reason, looking at the hefty wordcount I have left to go is far more daunting than looking at the estimated number of scenes left… which is obviously a much smaller number. Go figure. -eyeroll-

Everything happens so much

Between trying to wrap up the last few weeks of school, applying for jobs, and all the other personal stuff I’ve got going on, I unfortunately have decided to put writing on hold for the time being. It’s not ideal, and I hate to do it, but I just need everything to settle down a little. I will reevaluate my goal and a potential due date hopefully in the next few weeks.

…This isn’t to say that I won’t be writing at all, though. I just…don’t have the spoons to hold myself accountable to a word count for a set number of days a week. And the further behind I get, the more it’s gonna stress me out, so yeah.