Writing Update: A Free Semester

I'm finally getting back into the swing of things. I'm typing up my outline and changes on my computer and I'm getting everything ready for when I actually start editing again (tomorrow). I fell behind a lot since the beginning of the year. I'm not even close to being finished. School and work kind of took over my life. I do work full time and I have to maintain my grades for the scholarship I got. I'm 27 and still in school...but I did switch my major. Now I'm working on my degree in Early Childhood Education rather than English (though, sometimes I miss it).

After a really terrible winter/spring semester, I decided to take the summer off of school. It will give me more time to work on my revisions and push toward my end goal. Since I fell behind, I decided to push my deadlines back to sometimes more reasonable. I want to be finished with the revisions by the end of the summer. That is the absolute latest.  I know when the Fall semester rolls around, I'm going to struggled with balancing my time again. Some of my classes are demanding and I have to give them priority.

So, other than that, I'm also going to be working on getting the next chapter of Spliced up and possibly work on the next installment of District Pluto. I don't plan on publishing these professionally. These are just stories that I wrote for a challenge or for experimental purposes. They are still stories I would want to share. Maybe one day I'll take them down and fix them up for publishing but not any time soon.

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.

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.

Progress Update: Overdone

I hardly finished anything this month. Yeah, it's the beginning of my disappearing time and the fact that I'm still here doing this is amazing on it's own but I'm going to continue to try to finish through this. I think I'll be able to finish editing one short story.

Honestly, I have a feeling that I'm just getting a little tired of doing the same thing over and over again. I need to balance out my writing and editing times a little better. So, at the end of the month, I'm turning my focus to writing. I'm actually really excited about the novel I'm going to write. It might not be complete by the end of April because it's going to be a long book but I need a break from editing. Now, this won't stop my from finishing up Call of the Piper or another short story from District Pluto but editing won't be my main focus.

Maybe for the rest of the year, I need to work on balance.

Progress Update: Nothing

With everything I did this month, I only have 15 hours of editing. I really need to crack down on this but I don't know if I can. I think I'm going to have to re-plan my mornings. If I can get a could hours of editing in the morning, I should be fine for the rest of the day.

I won't get muddled with other things if I start then. So, my new goal will be to wake up earlier and fit in a few hours. This first story is taking much longer than it should. Thankfully, my next story won't have as many scenes to add. I just wanted to make the obstacles seem like more of a challenge since it was kind of lame before.

The planning for my other story is coming along. I can't decide on a setting. I'm leaning toward one and it's going to take a lot of world building if I want to do it that way...I just might because it will be fun. I do love some world building. If it ends up taking too long to plan, I'll just write it for NaNoWriMo.

Progress Update: Not Going to Plan

So this week started off strong but fell pretty rapidly. I managed to get 5.5 hours of editing finished. That got me through all 26 pages. I'm in the middle of taking the mark-ups and adding them in. Unfortunately, I have to write a few scenes in and I'm having a hard time figuring out where to place some of them. There are some places that I know I'm going to have to go back and fix several things before it has some kind of flow.

It's not going to plan. I wanted to finish the first short story this week but I procrastinated. It is around the time I normally have a fall out with everything I'm doing at the beginning of the year. I'll just have to put in as much editing as I can tomorrow. 

As far as writing goes...I'm not sure how many I wrote but I didn't write the 7 pages I wanted but I did make some progress. I just need to think of where I want this to go. I didn't plan ahead. I should have. That is something I'll have to work on.

I started planning out a novel for April. It's my month for a break. I'm pretty excited about this new novel. It is untitled as of now but I will get one as soon as I know what I'm doing.

Progress Update: Beginning of a New Month

 

Yesterday was the start of a new month and, for me, it started off pretty well. I managed to get 2 hours of editing in with the new method of editing I'm doing. Frankly, this is working a little better than my other method even though, I'm pulling a few things from that method.  I still haven't found a sure way of editing yet but I have a long way to go.

This month is the month I work on my District Pluto series. I've come to the conclusion that I'm going to need more short stories in the series to help people understand the world a little better. It's best to understand the world. 

I'm pleased with my progress so far. Editing short stories is going to be much easier than editing a novel. Baby steps, I suppose.

I'd better get my 2 hours in for today and write a page in my handwritten stories.

Progress Update: Getting Ready For More Editing

Weekly Progress

Editing Hours: 4

Words Written (Typed): 8,915

Pages Handwritten: 2.5

Summary: It wasn't my best editing week but I did manage to get in a fair bit of writing. I need to write some more to catch up with Hush.

That list and summary should be enough to tell you how my weekly progress went. Next week it will be March and I'll have a whole new project to edit. I know I'm not even close to being finished with Call of the Piper but, that's too bad. I planned to edit District Pluto for Editing Month (March). These are short stories so they shouldn't take as long as Call of the Piper but it will still be a pain in the butt.  

  

When I'm done editing District Pluto, I'll go back to Call of the Piper, if not sooner. There are 5 short stories and my goal is to have at least 1 of them completely edited by the end of the month. I'm thinking that it's time to switch it up. My muse needs a rest. I've been editing the same novel for almost a year. These short stories shouldn't take too long to edit. I hope it won't take too long to edit. 

Now, I'm about to go backwards a bit. I already mentioned my plans for next week (next month) but I didn't say anything about Tell a Fairy Tale Day! That's on Thursday. I already made stuff for my crafting blog for this. I get way too excited about days like this. There are a few I have marked down in my calendar. 

Overall, I'm ready to start a new month. I'm hoping to post more during the month of March, not just progress updates or blogging circle posts but other things that are writing related and less boring than my progress updates. 

Progress Update: Slacking

This week hasn't been a good week. So far, I only have 11.75 hours of editing and that isn't including today. Hopefully I'll get that count up soon.

My current novel is kicking my butt. I'm basically rewriting the whole thing and that's where it's dragging me down a bit. My new plot line keeps changing, not in a bad way, I just keep adding things. That's what I get for not giving myself room to move things around so I have to track my scenes a bit differently than I usually do. Maybe I should bust out my index cards but that motivation just isn't there.

I did read through my Hourglass series though and started marking places that need to be changed. I just needed something different to read. I won't be editing the Hourglass series until later but it will happen this year hopefully.

I'm hoping this week will be a better week. My goal is 10 hours of editing. That's all I want to get in. It is possible if I stop being so lazy.

Progress Update: Getting Organized

My progress hasn't really been great for the first week of February. While I'm getting places with both my editing and my writing, it's a bit slow. Part of the reason is because I need to get organized. I'm currently making a planner that suits my needs but I also have something for blogging. Eventually, I want to start doing more than just boring updates on my progress. There are the blogging circle prompts which are fun but I think there should be a little more.

As of right now, I have no idea what those posts are going to be about but it will happen. I want to work on better graphics for my posts and maybe some book reviews or random research topics I find interesting. I already have a crafting blog to post my fun stuff on but I'll think of some content to make this more interesting for me.

This coming week might be slow with progress. My goddaughter is due any moment now and I plan on being there when she is. But, then again, I might not be with my best friend in her daughter all week. They are going to need time to adjust and I don't want to get in the way.

I think getting a little behind on my editing will be okay this week because I think getting organized will help with that. I have two planners, one that travels with me and one that stays at my desk. I really want to make the most of them and hopefully create some kind of schedule for my life.

Maybe next time, I'll actually talk about some real progress. 

Progress Update: Writing By Hand

Today, I have no idea where I stand when it comes to editing. I haven't plugged in my chart yet but I did most of it by hand. There are times when I get really distracted with things around the house. So, I think I need to clean my room and get focused again.

I did get pretty far with writing by hand but I'm not sure how much was written. So, I'm hoping for a better week.