time to move on

As everyone knows, Round 2 of ROW80 has come to an end. How have my goals panned out?

At the beginning of the Round, I chose to work on one goal per month:

April: Write the story of my sister’s life and death. I feel that was an epic fail. I put together 13,500 words for it. A lot of the writing was pulled from already written works, such as blog entries and travel logs, even some poetry. I suppose I shouldn’t say it was an epic fail. I just am disappointed with where it ended up. I simply need to find the time to get back at it.

May: Do another edit of my novel set in Africa. I went through it all, can’t honestly say it was a thorough edit as it still needs some work. I’m just so bad at editing. I should study some books on it, I suppose, learn a thing or two instead of thinking I know it all.

June: I decided I really needed some diversity, and went back to a whole list of goals. Well, that did not work so well either. The first and foremost goal was to finish writing the memoir of my second two trips to Kenya. I think that turned out to be more of an epic fail than the memoir about my sister. I don’t even remember working on it all month, but I must have, huh?

Oh, shoot and now I just looked out the window. 

After watching her for a while from my office, 

I went outside and told her that I didn’t want her eating my hostas. I didn’t have the heart to raise my voice or startle her enough to get her to move on. I just kept taking pictures. 

I must have gotten more done when my office was in the basement.

 Oh, well, enough of that, the doe needs to move on and so do I. Let’s just call this Round a wrap.

It is what it is

Well, here we go with excuses again. My daughter came over yesterday, unexpectedly, so we did work on the nonprofit organization, Tumaini Volunteers, but other than that I didn’t get much done, not even house-work. And Friday, the sun was just too welcoming to ignore, so I spent about three hours on my deck stocking up on my vitamin D for next winter (I don’t think it works that way, but I don’t really care).

By my count there is still about three days left in this Round.

Can I get this done:

1)      Finish writing my second memoir, the one that tells the adventures of my two most recent trips to Africa.  Okay, so here’s what happened. I found a contest which intrigued me. I immediately got a great idea for the story I could write for it. So, I still honestly have been productive, just not on my memoir, except that the story was inspired by something that happened on a trip to Africa, so I am really justified in my actions.  

2)      Research finding an agent or publisher for the first novel. Nope.

3)      Decide on a title for the novel.  Nope.  

4)      Promote one of my three already published books once a week. Nope.

5)      Redo my author website. Still working on it.

6)      Work on the nonprofit organization once a week. Yes, finally, a yes. My daughter and I worked on getting stuff ready for what may be our biggest sale yet, on the third of July. My son also called and asked if I could come down to his house next weekend as we will have the opportunity to meet with a church group there.  

7)      Continue with my ROW80 blog sponsor duties. Yes.   

(No color coding, because, well, what is there to even color-code?)

I’m going to say that I will power through this. But today, in addition to needing to vacuum through the whole house, I am meeting a friend from high school for lunch. Yes, I know that is really the priority because life is too short to clean house or to fret over a stumbling writing career. It is what it is.

In recognition of Father's Day, here's my dad with my brother and older sister, well before I was born.

speaking of rows

It’s raining here again. Seems like we can only ever have two days of nice weather in a row.

Speaking of rows, I took this picture in the parking lot of the train depot in Dwight, Illinois. See, even when I’m not feeling productive on my goals, ROW80 is with me. 

What goals have I worked on so far this week?

1)      Finish writing my second memoir, the one that tells the adventures of my two most recent trips to Africa. Yes, I read through the first 13 chapters, not that I was editing them as much as was getting back into it and back to Kenya. Man, I can’t wait to go back. I talked to my daughter last night and she really hopes the two of us can return together next time. We really need to get serious about a time frame for that trip.

2)      Research finding an agent or publisher for the first novel. Nope.

3)      Decide on a title for the novel.  Nope.  

4)      Promote one of my three already published books once a week. Nope, I don’t think so.  

5)      Redo my author website. Yes, I started working on it. Took me the entire night last night to get about half of one page done. Such a slow process.

6)      Work on the nonprofit organization once a week. Nope, other than talking to my daughter about it last night.

7)      Continue with my ROW80 blog sponsor duties. Yes, barely.  

(By the way, green is accomplished, yellow is worked on, red is an epic fail.)

 Not the end of the world, life goes on as do goals. How are your goals coming this Round? Rumor has it there is only a week left!

some venting and a smattering

I didn’t post on Wednesday because frankly, I hadn’t done much of anything. I know I’ve complained about the day job before, but this was truly one of my worst weeks. My schedule is usually 8 to 7 on Mondays and 8 to about 5:30 the next three days, with Fridays off, and about a half hour lunch every day. This week I worked until 5:30 on Monday, until 8:00 (!) Tuesday, until 5:30 Wednesday and 6:30 Thursday. I was so exhausted by the time I got home Thursday night. And it’s not just the hours, but the stress of dealing with patients who this week all seemed to be having many more problems than usual. And our manager is continuing to threaten to take away my day off. Knowing that I have Friday off is usually the only thing that gets me through. Even working only four days a week, I don’t know if I will make it another five years to retirement, not if I have many more weeks like this.

But enough venting.

What did I manage to get done on my list of June Goals:

1)      Finish writing my second memoir, the one that tells the adventures of my two most recent trips to Africa. I worked on three or four chapters. Because I already plopped my journal entries and blog posts about the trip into the manuscript, my word count is pretty skewed, so I can’t go by that.

2)      Research finding an agent or publisher for the first novel. Nope.

3)      Decide on a title for the novel.  Nope, but I need to pick out the best ones and start asking opinions.

4)      Promote one of my three already published books once a week. Yes, once on Twitter.

5)      Redo my author website. Nope

6)      Work on the nonprofit organization once a week. Posted some stuff on our Twitter account.

7)      Continue with my ROW80 blog sponsor duties. Been just barely keeping up.

Ok, so just a smattering of green. I’m looking at my calendar right now, telling myself, it is wide open, you will make up for lost time this week.

Is that what you keep telling yourself?

Here’s what I did accomplish on Friday. It almost made up for the rest of the week. 

not an overachiever

Okay, so I haven’t dove into my new monthly list of goals yet. What can I say? 

Hubby and I took off Friday morning to spend the weekend in Iowa at his brother’s. We went to the Rhubarb Fest in the tiny town of Aledo, Illinois. (No, we didn't go by train.) It was pretty cool. And since I didn’t get home again until this afternoon, it meant not much got done on this list.

June Goals:

1)      Finish writing my second memoir, the one that tells the adventures of my two most recent trips to Africa.

2)      Research finding an agent or publisher for the first novel.

3)      Decide on a title for the novel.

4)      Promote one of my three already published books once a week.

5)      Redo my author website.

6)      Work on the nonprofit organization once a week. Ok. Yeah! Here is something I did this week. I signed up to have a booth at an Arts and Crafts Fair on July 3 to sell our Kenyan merch. And I have also recruited three people to help with it.

7)      Continue with my ROW80 blog sponsor duties. I haven’t been an overachiever, but I have read and commented on other blogs.

But June hasn’t even really announced itself. I mean, I just now turned the calendar in my kitchen.

How about you? Has it sunk in yet that it is June already? 

new month, new goals

Yeah! Here it is June already. Time to roll out a new monthly goal, but I suppose first I should report on my May progress.

Last night, around 10:15, I finished my third edit of my novel. It came in at 72,697 words in 39 chapters. I started it on January 17, 2011, after having a dream about a lost African boy. By March 1, 2012, I had written 16,024 words and started attacking the manuscript more seriously. It took me until November 23, 2014, to finish that first draft, coming in at 71,295 words.

How do authors ever make money doing this??? Somehow I need to pick up the pace, don’t you think? At this rate, it took me almost five and a half years to write this novel, so if I sold it tomorrow, I would have to get like $162,000 for it to say I could make a living just by writing books. Yeah, coz I am sure I will ever make that much money with my writing.

Anyway, on the upside, I finished this my third draft. Probably not my last draft of it, but it is closer to be presentable. I just read somewhere that 93% of the people who start writing a novel never finish it. So I am at least in the winning 3%.

But enough of that. What have I got on the agenda for June?

I am going to try to be more disciplined this month, as I already mentioned, I think I need more goals.

Here they are in order of priority (or maybe just whatever order strikes me)

1)      First and foremost, finish writing my second memoir, the one that tells the adventures of my two most recent trips to Africa.

2)      Research finding an agent or publisher for the first novel.

3)      Decide on a title for the novel. I have a list of prospects which I may share in the near future to get some opinions.

4)      I have totally neglected my first three books, so will promote them somewhere once a week.

5)      Speaking of promotion, I need to redo my author website. I think it needs to be totally revamped. It is pretty bad right now.

6)      Work on the nonprofit organization once a week. When my kids got home from Kenya the second week of April, it was easy to be all fired up about it, but that fire has died down to embers and needs to fanned.

7)      Continue with my ROW80 blog sponsor duties. 

There is certainly more I want to get done this month, but I better not scare myself off right off the bat. 

Also need to finish editing the 900 pictures I took on vacation in April.