writing goals – Page 38 – Meilo Zaborowski: Author

Goal Update 4/11

GOAL 1) PUBLISH SKOS

My Goal: Spend at least 10 mins, 3 days/week minimum
Where I planned to be: Spent at least 30 mins
Where I am: No one’s paying attention anyway
On Target or Behind: On target?

How’s It Going:
I am SO DAMN CLOSE with these covers, I’m telling you. While I’ve been waiting for all the feedback to come through this week, I’ve been scouring the internet for typography tips, and anything book cover related. Because while I’ve almost pinned down the image part, the main complaints I’m getting now are typography related. And I’ve discovered that the ins and outs of typography are… well, subtle and tedious.

I did rediscover an old bookmark to Matthew Butterick’s Practical Typography. I don’t know when or where I found it, but it’s just been chilling in my bookmarks for who knows how long. I will say it was an interesting read, and may prove useful later (which may have been past-me’s thinking as well), but not so much for my current issue.

YouTube tutorials. It’s all about the YouTube tutorials…

GOAL 2) REVISE SYCU

My Goal: 2 Lessons per month/ 1 Lesson every 2 weeks; 3 chapters per day
Where I planned to be: Lesson 6, through chapter 9
Where I am: Finished Lesson 6
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
*thumbs up* This lesson went faster than I expected. Since this was all about characters, and I technically did most of the work finding them in Lesson 2, I didn’t even have to read through everything this time.

On to the next.

GOAL 3) SURVIVAL

My Goal: 500 WPD, 1500 WPW
Where I planned to be: 3000 words
Where I am: 3002 words
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
I’m still loving this. It’s stupid and crazy and I haven’t even gotten to the fun parts yet. I feel like I’m doing a great job fleshing out the characters in such a short span, or maybe it’s just in my head. Either way, I love them already, and I can’t wait to ~~make them suffer through hell~~ take them on an interesting adventure!

Snippet time!

NOTE: The following material is a copyrighted excerpt from raw, unedited first draft, which may contain typos and spelling or grammar errors. Please do not point out corrections or make suggestions as I will not see them during revision. Please do not quote this material, as it may not survive to final draft.

“Dude, that’s just a… oh my god, that’s a massive cow.”

Aaren scrambled to his feet, wanting to look again but not wanting to get too close, settling for clutching at one post of his bed and peering around Brandon’s shoulder. Sure enough, the hulking frame of a solid black cow nearly filled the small, grassy area outside their window, almost too long to stand between the trees. Its head was down, calmly grazing on the grass, but its back was almost level with the floor under their feet.

“Allow me to rephrase: that’s a massive bull.”

Aaren glanced at Brandon. “How can you tell?”

Goal Update 4/4

Goal 1) Publish SKoS

My Goal: Spend at least 10 mins, 3 days/week minimum
Where I planned to be: Spent at least 30 mins
Where I am: Hopeful
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
So, in case someone missed it, I got the edit notes back from Matt the other day, and they were overwhelmingly positive. I’m still a little speechless about it.

There are a few things he’s right about and I’ll definitely need to fix, most likely with his suggestion. A few others that I’ll have to think about. A couple I’m not sure how to fix because his suggestion was good, but still wrong for the story, but I know they need fixing now.

As much as I’d like to do the fixes on paper, unfortunately due to the whole COVID-19 thing and our printer having been sent out to pasture a while back, I’ll have to deal with doing them on the computer. Or maybe I’ll come up with something. I’m still reeling.

Also, he said in his opinion, it’s pure urban fantasy. And I think I’m gonna go with that. So I wasn’t too terribly off-base with the genre, and I can continue working toward that goal with covers. Which I think are going well.

Goal 2) Revise SYCU

My Goal: 2 Lessons per month/ 1 Lesson every 2 weeks; 3 chapters/13 scenes per day
Where I planned to be: Lesson 5 finished
Where I am: Lesson 5 finished!
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
Lots to think about. But it’s going. That’s about it.

Oh, and uh…

GOAL 3) Survival

My clear target is: Write 50,000 words
My reachable deadline is: Dec 31, 2020
My working days are: Mon, Wed, Fri (i.e. my usual work days, so this will have to change when I go back to work. But for now…)
My method of measuring progress: Word count
My end goal: Finish a novel (preferably 50,000 words worth)
My daily goal, and number of available days: Write 500 words, 3 days a week. So 1500 words a week.
My leverage — WHY I need to do this: If I’m gonna be a paid author, this is just part of the gig. And I really want to be a paid author.

And since I already started on this…

My Goal: 500 WPD, 1500 WPW
Where I planned to be: 1500 words
Where I am: 1544 words
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
~~Ignore the title, it probably won’t be the final one.~~ Two scenes in and I love this already. It’s a little clunky and I may have to hammer out some details, but I’m not gonna let it bother me.

First draft is always crap. First draft is allowed to be crap. Because I know now, thanks to Matt, that I can make it shine.

Goal Update 3/28

Well, I got laid off Wednesday due to COVID-19 causing loss of business. Bossman said he’d appreciate my return when he reopens the branch, so it’s only temporary, but. For how long, we don’t know. I’ve applied for unemployment in the meantime, hoping for some kind of income, even if it’s… meager. Gotta pay my phone and insurance bills and feed the cats, yanno.

School is restarting face-to-face classes next week via Google Meet. So we’ll see how that goes.

GOAL 1) PUBLISH SKOS

My Goal: Spend at least 10 mins, 3 days/week minimum
Where I planned to be: Spent at least 30 mins
Where I am: Contemplating
On Target or Behind: On Target?

How’s It Going:
I got some really great feedback this week on the forums. Not that the covers I posted were all that great, but some of the advice. I’m still not hitting the mark for genre, and it probably has something to do with the photos I’m using/my criteria for photos I’m using. Someone had the brilliant suggestion to just make random covers that have nothing to do with my novel for practice, to take my writer hat off, so to speak.

In other news, I finally got the okay to email my manuscript to Matt! He said he’d get back to me no later than next Friday. I can’t wait!

GOAL 2) REVISE SYCU

My Goal: 2 Lessons per month/ 1 Lesson every 2 weeks; 13 scenes per day
Where I planned to be: Lesson 5, through scene 38
Where I am: Lesson 5, through scene 40
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
Slogging through. Nothing amazing. Lots to fix.

More free time, new work?

So I have this story idea that started off about 10 years ago as an alternate universe fanfiction. I got the opportunity to talk about it with Holly at the beginning of 2018 and she pointed out that if I wanted to use the idea for a novel, I had to fix my world, because it was tragically broken. Which it was, absolutely.

Literally the night before I got laid off, I couldn’t get this old idea out of my head as I tried to go to sleep, and how I could rework it to fix the world. I tried to ignore it – I’ve got enough going on right now, right? And Holly always says the best ideas will come back to you when you need them – but a little after I got the phone call, it all came rushing back.

I’ve run the idea through the beginning stages of How to Write a Novel to develop the concept a bit more. I won’t be setting any goals just yet, other than I’ll probably start in on the writing by the end of next week.

And, of course, any goals I do make for this will need to be modified as the situation changes.

Goal Update 3/21

GOAL 1) PUBLISH SKOS

My Goal: Spend at least 10 mins, 3 days/week minimum
Where I planned to be: Spent at least 30 mins
Where I am: Screaming
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
Listen, I’m still screaming about being next in line for my content edit. Holly said she’d get back to me in at least a week, depending on how well Matt’s current edit is going. So hopefully sometime next week? I’m excited and nervous all at once but I just… idk. I know parts of it probably still suck, but I hope there’s also parts that are really good. And that the latter outweigh the former.

Man, I’ve worked on this thing for so long, and now it’s come down to this. It’s a weird rush.

In cover news, I made another four and posted them on the forums for critiques. Covers are hard. We’ll leave it at that.

GOAL 2) REVISE SYCU

My Goal: 2 Lessons per month/ 1 Lesson every 2 weeks
Where I planned to be: Lesson 4, roughly halfway, can’t really do this one by chapters
Where I am: Finished Lesson 4; Lesson 5, 12 scenes in
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
Lesson 4 was rough, but not as bad as SKoS. It was a little easier to separate everything out because I wrote… incredibly lean, somehow, even though out of the three novels I have now, this one has the highest word count. Most of my scenes are plot-centric. So that’s a thing. And I’m ahead of schedule now, yay!

So I didn’t mention it, but I came up with 75 scenes in this, so that will be how I measure progress for Lesson 5. This is the lesson I get to go through my conflict scene by scene.

And, uh. It’s not pretty. But that’s okay. It can be fixed.

Goal Update 3/14

Due to the coronavirus bullshit, I’m now on extended spring break. Which I guess is good for my writing work, but I’m still upset. I like going to my Cisco class. And I still have to do my Linux work because it’s online anyway.

GOAL 1) PUBLISH SKOS

My Goal: Spend at least 10 mins, 3 days/week minimum
Where I planned to be: Spent at least 30 mins
Where I am: Confused
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
Surprisingly, my last round of covers went over really well on the forums. I’m not quite there, but I’m getting damn close, and that’s something.

Although, some of the conflicting critiques are… hmm. First my colors are too subdued, now they’re too bright. And I have all the elements in there that supposedly indicate urban fantasy, but these covers don’t “feel like UF”. And it seems like every font I’ve used is wrong, even the ones that are supposedly good for UF. Idk what you want from me.

GOAL 2) REVISE SYCU

My Goal: 2 Lessons per month/ 1 Lesson every 2 weeks; 3 chapters per day
Where I planned to be: Lesson 3, through chapter 16
Where I am: Lesson 3, through chapter 16
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
…heeeeeeey, macarena!