2017 Goals

Writing Goals

• Finish Editing Novel with HTRYN
• Publish Novel
• Publish Dowsers on Wattpad
• Edit Hourglass
• Be more active in writing communities.

These are some really big goals that I need to hit, and this is just for my writing, not anything else. Yikes. I'd better get my life organized and break it down a bit.

I want to publish this year. That is my biggest goals. It's scary and exciting to think that I'm pushing myself to get to this stage, but that is just the general goal. It's a pretty big process that I have broken down into parts that I'll be doing as I edit. There are some things that I won't be able to do until after I finish editing but for the most part, I have everything broken down. I have tasks that I need to do.

First and foremost, I need to edit.I have a novel that needs to be published in June. I need to edit everything. I'm almost done with the editing process so, it's all about finishing, come January.  I want to edit my novel Hourglass because it's going to be my next novel I publish. This also coincides with my finished editing with HTRYN

Publishing Dowsers...yeah. It might be a little later but I have another story I can start posting in January called Spliced. It's a Sci-fi retelling of Beauty and the Beast. This will be available on Wattpad.

I have several writing communities that I'm a part of. I would like to be more active in them this coming year. Actually participate in assignments/challenges.

That is basically my goals for next year in a broad term.

Editing Process: No Longer Procrastinating

So, last week was a bit of an eye opener for me. I was so busy that I wasn't able to complete everything I needed to complete. My work schedule was ridiculously busy and I just couldn't find time for everything . So, I decided to pick up the pace a bit.

I've edited my short story and I'm currently sending it to my critique partner/beta reader who will look over it for me. If you're a writer and you don't have a critique partner or a writing buddy willing to pick apart your story, then you need one. I really appreciate mine.

I've started working on Dowsers again because it needs to be finished by the end of the year and I won't have a lot of time in November to do it. There is that.

My Western for my writing assignment is coming along pretty well. I still have a lot to work on with that. I'm going to be cutting a lot of it and fixing it that's for sure.

Hopefully, I finish Dowsers soon. I know the more I continue with these lessons, the fast I'll get through it. That's what I need to do right now.

The Editing Process: Slacking

So, this last week kind of sucked when it came to editing. I didn't work on Dowsers at all. I instead worked on The Survival Agreement because it needed some work. I'm going to have to get started on editing my short story for that contest. I really need to get things done.

Basically I'm slacking. I did finish planning my two novels and created the cover art for it already. I'm actually pretty happy about it. I put aside my editing to do this so I really need to get back on track.

The Editing Process: My Ending Sucks

Does editing ever make you want to rip your hair out? Because that's what I'm feeling this week. I'm still on lesson two of How To Revise Your Novel. This novel is really long and I feel bad for the people who wrote an even longer novel.

Basically, I've come to the conclusion that the ending part of this novel sucks and that it's going to need a massive overhaul. Well, the whole novel needs an overhaul but the ending needs one especially. It's awful. The ending shouldn't be awful. I think I have too many fillers and info dump because I was rushing to get this over with.

This is probably another reason why I don't actually want to publish this novel, Dowsers. I don't think I had much inspiration writing it. Hopefully the editing will go well. I plan on posting the first chapter by 217 on Wattpad.

The Editing Process: Pushing Ahead

I don't think I've mentioned this before but I've been using Holly Lisle's How To Revise Your Novel course to edit my novels. For Dowsers, I'm only on lesson two of the class and have been on lesson two for weeks. Not because I stopped. The beginning lessons tend to take a lot more time than some of the other ones.

Dowsers is also a very long novel. And the longer the novel, the more work I'm going to have to put into it. Currently, this novel is at 122k words. Printed, that's 177 pages (normally) and that isn't separating my chapters onto a new page. It might not seem like a lot but if you ever take this class, you'll realize just how much time it takes.

I'm not going to lie, it's totally worth it. I was reading another novel I took through the process (and still need to finish) and it's way better! I mean, leagues better. I put it on my kindle to read and I'm going to finish editing it after I finish Dowsers.

I'm hoping that Dowsers will have the same results as my other novel. So far, I'm picking apart my novel and seeing all of my plot holes and other things that were terrible. And I have to keep going with it if I want to get it done on time. I have so much more to do. 

The Editing Process: Knowing What Went Wrong

Dowsers is one of the longest novels I've written and decided to edit. There are a lot of mistakes that I need to fix before this reaches other people. Aside from the normal grammar and spelling mistakes I have, I found several things wrong with my main and sub plots.

Going through it once was enough to force me to understand where I went wrong. Thankfully, there is no insta-love. Or love triangles (I hate them). The relationship between my characters is important for their development because my characters have problems. Don't all characters, though?

I do need to redo the ending. I'm terrible at writing endings and beginnings. This is something I'm going to have to work on because it's the most important part of the book. I can't having it being lame. That just won't do.

There is also a matter of my antagonist being slightly bipolar. He really shouldn't be that way. I mean, he's good at acting because that how he gets what he wants, but he isn't bipolar. So, that is on my list of things I need to fix.

Now, the plot. I've been playing with some other options that my plot has to offer to see if they work better. It might. I might have to figure out what works best - which offers the strongest plot. It's going to be a lot of work, but it will be worth it in the end.

Pretty soon, I'll have to do some trimming...and adding. Adding is the hardest parts editing but it has to be done.

Second Edits - Done!

Finally! Finally my second edits are done for District Pluto: The Survival Agreement (formally known as The Sacrificial Son). I've even created a checklist for what needs to come next. My third and final round of edits (which is mostly a syntax edit) should be over quickly before I sent it out to Betas. Then I'll be editing two projects at once. The next story in the District Pluto series, Morality Sentence and my stand alone novel Dowsers. I'm hoping to get some of these out to Betas by the end of the year but I have a feeling that Dowers will take me a long time to edit but I really need to get back on it.

One thing I noticed when doing this second edit was that my characters were weak. While typing up my edits, I tried to fix this but I don't know how well I did. I guess I find out when I start the last round of my editing. If not, then hopefully my betas can help me with how they read. It occurred to me that my characters didn't even have the barest of description so I had to add that in. That was a struggle.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with the outcome of this short story/novella (possibly a novelette). I can already see the improvements compared to my very first draft. I finally have a name for it too, as I stated above. It's no longer Sacrificial Son, it is now titled The Survival Agreement. I already have the cover art made (and fixed). Actually, I have two. I have one that I picked out but I'll also ask the people who are my betas - if they want to. I'm not going to force that on them. I already have one in mind.

The Editing Begins

This week was pretty good. I'm currently 44,148 words into my novel. After it went astray for awhile, I finally got it back on track. Thankfully, I'll be able to edit those scenes out later this year when I decide to edit it.

I recently printed out my stand alone novel Dowsers for editing. I just started editing it so it should be fun. I'm pretty excited about editing this one. I'm not sure if I'll publish it but I'll enjoy it, at least.

Well, other than that, that's all that really happened for me this week. Reaching 750 words is getting harder and harder. I might change my goal to something lower. Maybe 500 words next month. 

Keeping Up with 750 words

This week was a bit tricky. My work hours make it a bit harder for me to fit in my writing time and with my class starting on Monday, it's going to make it even harder. 750 words a day becomes hard. Though I managed to keep up with it on top of the things I had to do for work.

I can't say how many words I wrote for this week, but as of right now my monthly total stands at 30,121 words. With editing, I clocked in my 10 hours for the month. Now, I'm going to prepare to work on it in February. I need to print everything out.

As far as reading goes, I'm not doing too well in that department. The book I picked isn't really holding my interest which isn't good. I'm going to push myself through it to see how it goes.
There is a whole list of books I want to read this year and I'm stuck on the first one.

Overall, it was a pretty good week.

WriYe Goals

WriYe Blogging Circle is back. Hopefully, I can keep up with it this year.

Goals:
What’s your Wriye Word Count goal and why did you chose it? What are you going to be focusing on this year? What are you doing differently this year compared to last year

Bonus:
Set your intention for this year. Share it with us!

My WriYe word count goal for this year is only 300,000 words. It's not a large goal but a more reasonable one for me this year. I decided to aim low so I could actually reach my goals (both writing and personal). My main focus this year will be writing my novel series. It's a 5 novel series, the first two novels are already planned out.

Another thing I'm focusing on is editing. I still have that short stories series that needs to be edited, but after the 3rd short story, I need to rewrite the other two and add several more 10,000 word short stories to go with it. There are just so many things that need to happen with this project that I realized it won't be finished any time soon. So my main editing focus is a stand alone novel called Dowsers (for now, at least). I wrote this novel two years ago and it currently stands at 122,000 words. There is a lot of work that needs to go into this novel.

Last year, I focused mostly on editing. I didn't get very far with that. In fact, I think I only finished about 2 1/2 stories. I'm pretty sure I wrote more than I edited. My goal is still pretty low for word count but it's manageable. That's what I'm going for.

My intention for this year, in terms of writing and editing, is to prepare for publication at some point. Currently, I know I'm not ready for publishing, since I don't have a single story that I would share with others. Hopefully, soon, I'll be at that point.