JuNoWriMo 2014 Goals

JuNoWriMo

Signups have begun for JuNoWriMo. They're having a drawing for writerly goodies for which you gain entries for signing up and spreading the word.

I got carried away writing my profile bio at the site so I'm making it my JuNo intentions post instead.

I've been writing stories for fifty years, beginning with picture books at age six which were basically captioned pictures.  (No wonder I love making LOLcats!)  The Adventures of Abraham Penny, begun at age nine, was the most complex picture book story with the most pages. It followed an intrepid penny given as change to a young boy buying candy who puts it in his pocket and later when pulling out his marbles Abe falls out, rolls into a gutter, is picked up by a tire, found by the older boy washing his Dad's car who uses it to play the game tossing pennies at the wall and looses it to another boy who pays his sister to deliver a note to the neighbor girl....after another half dozen or so such adventures a young girl on a ferry drops Abe overboard where he spends a long time on the ocean floor before he is eaten by a fish who is eaten by bigger fish who is caught by a boy fishing with his father who later puts Abe on the train track to be flattened by the train and then punches a hole to thread a leather strip through and wears it for many years....

And so it began...

Throughout my teens it was poems, Star Trek fan fic, a story of a preteen girl whose parents adopted twins (a bit of wish fulfillment there), and Lever of Love a novel of a sixteen year old girl with five siblings whose mother was expecting and while her father was incommunicado as an undercover narc cop the mother has a fall goes into a coma so the girl must care for her siblings but then she is kidnapped as a lever against her father and it turns out it was her own boyfriend...

In my twenties it was poems and the storyworld building for a sci/fant trilogy beginning with The Wailing Womb. As well as Sip the Light Prismatic about a young woman poet married to a marine (yeah, I was married to a marine at age 21) and continued efforts on Lever of Love.

In my late twenties and into my thirties while in college it was more poems continued work on Lever of Love, Wailing Womb and Sip the Light.  For a creative writing class I began Of Cats and Claws and Curiosities--the first Faye story and the first in what became the Fruits of the Spirit storyworld into which I folded Lever of Love, Sip the Light,  and half a dozen short stories both finished and begun.

In my early thirties I wrote several short stories including  Blow Me a Candy Kiss which I'm aiming to make my first self pub as an experiment.  I began the structural rewrite for April Camp NaNo and am still working on it.  I began Rag Doll Babies and Million Dollar Maybes another Faye Story at that time too but didn't finish it until after I turned forty in 97.  Several more short stories and novels were begun in the late 90s.  A few of the shorts were finished as well as a couple dozen poems.

FOS storyworld continues to obsess me and swallows up nearly every story I start.  As it did most new stories I began in my forties and nearly every Wrimo novel I began since 2004. It now has well over 100 significant characters in over 40 stories (some are chapters in the 16+ novels) following 7 generations of several families who founded a religious sect in 1888 into the present.  About six of the short stories (chapters) were what I considered finished but I'm going to be rewriting them now that my writing has matured and in light of the big breakthrough I had recently.

JuNoWriMo 2014 Goals

The plethora of stories already in my fiction files is why I'm a bit shy about starting yet a new story for JuNo this time and plan to add new words to existing stories as I apply the advice from Les Edgerton's Hooked--identify the inciting incident and write or rewrite it, identify the story worthy problem hidden in the POV character's psyche, decide on the resolution scene and write or rewrite it, storyboard the existing and intended surface problem scenes, deciding if any no longer belong or new need to be added now that the story goals have clarity.

If I'm not done with the Candy Kiss rewrite I'll continue working on it in June.  And if I were to make an exception to the 'no new story' preference it would likely be for the Greg POV story taking off from where Candy Kiss leaves off.  And that doesn't really feel like a new story.

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For All Intents and Purposes: ROW80 2014 Round 2 Goals

A Round of Words in 80 Days
Round 2 2014

The writing challenge that
 knows you have a life

My goals for Round 2 are still in a state of flux as my husband (time & goals management coach) and I work out what is reasonable to expect.  My tendency has always been to set my goals so high that I was guaranteed to fail.

Ed has flipped the priorities from the projects to the time-management and self-management issues.  Opposite to the way I've always looked at it.  He is going to work with me on project management as well but not until I have the top six on the self-manage list in place.

Tho in a way he has already begun because he worked with me on setting up my Bloggiesta goals and Camp NaNo goals last weekend.  The self-manage goals plus the Camp NaNo goals combined become the foundation of ROW80 Round 2.

ROW80 Round 2 Self-Manage Priorities:

Ed says these have to be in place and on autopilot to support everything else.  So that's my goal for Round 2--that by the end the routines are in place and the habits formed for:

• - TIME MANAGEMENT -- establish a structure to my days that supports the following five and makes room for the writing goals
• - SLEEP 
• - MEDS
• - HYGIENE 
• + NUTRITION 
• + EXERCISE 

ROW80 Round 2 Writing Goals:  

April Camp NaNo Goals:

• A structural rewrite and several edit passes through my 6K word short story, Blow Me a Candy Kiss, to prep it for self-pub.  
• And adding material to the story file for another story or stories involving the same characters as working with the draft reminds me of past plans or triggers new ideas.

May:

 Creating the ebook formats for self-publishing Candy Kiss.  

Publishing Candy Kiss. 

Continuing to develop the material for more stories with Greg and Iris.

June: 

Will be whatever I settle on for my JuNoWriMo goals. Possibly continuing to work with Gregg and Iris' stories. Especially if I have a second one nearly complete in rough draft..  But I'm not holding myself to it at this point.  There is also the Book Review Back Log concept. Or the AWAI copywriting course exercises.

You can follow the coaching story through these posts:

• Report Card the full priorities list
• 150th ROW80 Check-In see top check-in under spread sheet or skip this and see top 2 in #151
• One Big, Bad Want an on theme quote on and LOLcat with musings
• Getting Kitted Out shopping for items to facilitate the self-care goals
• 151st ROW80 Check-In
• Oops! I Mismanaged My Time Again! where I learn 'caught up' is not a synonym for 'plenty of time for goofing off.
• Friday Forays in Fiction: Spring Challenges setting goals for five spring challenges using Ed's principles
• I Tried It My Way where I share the list of personal challenges that created the need for a coach.  This is second in a series.  The first is in ROW80 #151 check-in.  Future ones will take several of the items one by one and describe the full impact it has on my life and how it interacts with the other challenges. 
• April Camp NaNo First Day title says it all.  Almost.  I also expanded the goals stated in the Spring Challenges post.
• Turning Up the Heat Under My Feet in which I confess I'd slid of the wagon and things were falling apart again.
• Friday Forays in Fiction: Camp NaNo Reconsiderations   another revisement of goals.  This time to step them back and shift emphasis

I made that linked list mostly for my own convenience as I'm tired of scrolling down the all posts list looking for the one I need to link to in the latest episode.

These posts are helping me define the problem so I can establish where I stand,  develop hypothesis for possible solutions, and revise goals as trial and error reveal what works and what doesn't.  

As I continue posting about it both inside and outside the ROW80 check-ins it helps hold me accountable, give me a sense of not being alone and a record of the journey I can look back over as the months pass and review my progress.

I welcome any suggestions from anybody regarding solutions to similar problems with time management that have worked for them.

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Friday Forays in Fiction: Spring Challenges

hello mai purritteez
see my 1st caption of this pic here
with my poem Prioritizing Agony
both with the same theme as this post

There are four challenges I'm joining this spring.  That I know about so far.

It is not the first time for any of them.  I always seem to go into them with sparkling expectations and excitement but by the 1/4 mark I can already see I'm not going to meet my goals then the remainder of the challenge is tainted by demoralization, stress, and desperation.

And at the end, in spite of all that I did accomplish that would not have gotten done without the challenge and community support, I come away with a pervasive sense of failure.  Not just failure to meet my goals but personal failure as in Looser or Fool, Clown or Fraud.

So this spring, in the spirit of the time-management coaching goals my husband has in mind, I am running my goal concepts past him to get his observations, suggestions and explanations of what makes a reachable goal and how each of my concepts would impact both the goals weeks, months or years out and the already in place goals for the foundation of self-care we are working to put into place to support the other goals, dreams and aspirations.

It is very important that I don't sabotage what we have already got in place or set myself up for another experience of failure.  Thus it is better to keep the stated goal a reachable challenge--doable but only by pushing myself a bit.

UPDATE: I added Bloggiesta Saturday morning because I found out it was currently in session this weekend only after I'd posted.

SPRING 2014
March 27-30

Bloggiesta -- The Blog Improvement Fiesta  SPRING 2014: March 27-30

I found out just before midnight last night (Friday) that Bloggiesta was on this weekend and I'd already missed two days.  The last one I participated in was fall of 2012 because I keep missing them by a few days to a month, learning about them by stumbling upon someone's Bloggiesta posts after it was all over.

I need to find a way for the information to reliably reach me ahead of the fiesta.  Now that Bloggiesta has its own hub blog maybe it also has a newsletter or subscribe to post form?  [DONE]

I almost decided to let it go but I'd been needing a Bloggiesta for the impetus and info it provides along with the community support and the sense of accountability provided by publishing the 2DO list.

I had to wait until I was able to consult my time management coach (aka my husband) before I could publish a 2DO list though as I'm utterly convinced that I could not make a list that would not sabotage the success we built up this past week. See final paragraph of the top section.

During this morning's (Saturday) vid chat Ed immediately saw the importance for me to participate.  He said it was analogous to a college course or seminar in blog management and would tie me into a community with the management expertise in an area he was not up to speed on but that was essential to my aspirations to self-publish and freelance among other online biz concepts I have.

So after conferring with me on the most urgent tasks he helped me create this list:

Saturday:

• Update Friday's Spring Challenge post to include Bloggiesta
• Sign up on Bloggiesta blog
• Finish the structural rewrite and fine edit of the draft for Saturday's post which was promised in Tuesday's post for Wednesday and then postponed because I mismanaged my time Wednesday
• Post Saturday's post, I Tried it My Way and link it on the fb fan page and twitter. Share fan page post with fb ROW80 Group (those whom I made the promise to on Tuesday)
• Subscribe to Bloggiesta post via email. (yeah. I just added that. It was not on my radar when discussing with Ed this morning)

Sunday:

• Prep and post the Sunday Serenity post.  Link on the fb fan page and twitter. 
• Prep Monday's IMWAYR? post and schedule it to go live after midnight
• Clean up the Joy Renee on the Web section removing defunct links and adding new
• Clean up social media section and add links to SM I signed up for after the last time this was done..  Most urgent is to get small discrete buttons for a more professional look. I would like that section to take up no more screen real estate than a credit card
• Clean out old and defunct buttons and banners in the challenges section of the sidebar and replace with current ones.  The five in this post at minimum
• Break my lurking habit and interact socially in the Bloggiesta community by commenting, asking a question, do a mini-challenge, or participate in the twitter conversation
• Update Camp NaNo profile to reflect the goals for April Camp

Wrap up:  I didn't get the sidebar work done, nor the mini-challenge and socializing,, nor Monday's post to give me a day out from under the pressure.  But I did spend a lot of time exploring the mini-challenges both current and archived.  I focused on organization, sidebar, social media and monetizing.  I don't think I'll wait for the next Bloggiesta to continue reading and then applying what I learn. I may even add blog management goals to my ROW80 for the next two rounds at least.

Camp
NaNoWriMo

Camp NaNo --  Kickoff at midnight (12:00:01) April 1st.  That's Monday night folks!

This is different from the November NaNo in which the majority of participants comply with the original challenge of a 50K novel in 30 days.  For the NaNo camps you can choose your own writing project in any category or genre.  And establish your own word count and/or other measurable goal(s).

My original idea was to

• Create a backlog of 15 book reviews ready for posting from the many I have in progress or from other books I've already read.
• Rewrite and edit my 6000 word short story Blow Me a Candy Kiss
• Complete all the writing exercises for my AWAI  copywriting course

I'd only got as far as listing the first one when Ed said he needed to think about it overnight.  Two days later he said 7 reviews was a reachable goal.  It took a detailed explanation of his logic before I agreed.  Its not that I couldn't do more just that I shouldn't state more as the goal so that I would get the rush of success when I achieved it and again for every extra one.

But then I told him that I had also been thinking about a structural rewrite and fine edit of Candy Kiss.  Which would entail two to three passes through the 6000 words and likely a bit of expansion up to an additional 2-4K.

That's when he said Drop the reviews and do that!

I was reluctant and it took a lengthy explanation of his reasoning before I agreed.  The most salient point he had was that I had set as my first goal in my first round of ROW80  Spring of 2012 to get Candy Kiss prepped for a self-pub experiment and not only is it still not done, it is a pivotal task in the establishment of my dream of self-publishing my writing.

He would like to see me actually publish it by the end of the month as he believes it is important for me to get the ice broken on that and realizes that the hardest part of that challenge is the emotional work I'd have to be doing as I write and edit in order to be ready to take the plunge when the time comes.

No, I didn't even bother to share my intent to add the AWAI exercises.  I dropped the idea as his reasoning on the others was convincing and I could see it ruled out adding anything else as his estimate on the time investment required for the Candy Kiss project was well above 30 hours.  I would guess 20-30 hours per pass through the manuscript.

A Round of Words in 80 Days
Round 2 2014
The writing challenge that
 knows you have a life

ROW80 --  A Round of Words in 80 Days -- The Writing Challenge That Knows You Have a Life

Altho this is modeled after the November NaNo it is four rounds a year of 80 days each with brief hiatuses between.

It's about flexibility and learning to adjust goals as needed.  You can work on any kind of writing project or multiple projects but your goals must be defined such that they are measurable.

Since I knew how crazy word count often makes me I started off in April 2012 to use time investment goals and as of January this year I use a Google Doc spreadsheet to keep track and then share both a screenshot and a link to the chart itself in check-ins.

My goals for round 2 this year will combine the goal of regaining the ground I lost as reflected in the spreadsheet in March by the end of April with the goals for Camp NaNo in April and JuNoWriMo in June along with the Time Management, Self-Management and Project Management goals Ed is coaching me on which are all designed to support my writing and entrepreneurial goals.

Add caption

Dewey's Read-a-Thon -- 24 hours of reading, sharing, mini-challenges, prizes, cheerleading, bloging, social networking...

There are no goals for this one other than to enjoy it and go with the flow. It will depend on my mood when the time comes what the ratio between reading and the other possible activities will be

I used to pride myself on my ability to stay awake the full 24 but that is no longer a given.  Unless I have had a solid week of good sleep (7.5+ per night) I shouldn't even try.  But even then I would have to do it without fudging on my med schedule which is tricky with the bedtime Trazadone which I'm rarely able to resist more than an hour.

JuNoWriMo 2012

JuNoWriMo -- Begins June 1.  It's a little more flexible than NaNoWriMo which encourages you to start with a fresh story and write a 50K novel as it allows for continuing with a WIP while counting only the words produced in June.

I thought I remembered that it didn't have to be a novel or even fiction but I can't find that mentioned on the site today.

I was hoping to transfer my Book Review Backlog concept to JuNo but if that isn't possible I'll save it for July Camp NaNo and choose among:

• put another short story through the rewrite and edit wringer
• wander around my fiction files adding words to character sketches, character monologues, scenes, back story and NaNo messes drafts
• select a previous NaNo mess draft and do a structural rewrite aka clean up the NaNo mess
• select a previous NaNo mess draft that is likely to need another 40K to complete and start working where I left off at the end of its NaNo
• start a fresh novel from the long list of story seeds I have backloged

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