Much Success

I’ll have to make this short and sweet. My kids are on the way over to shovel off our roofs; there has to be three feet up there and even though the experts say that our roofs were built to hold a ton of snow (or something), I still get nervous that one morning I’ll wake up with all that snow in my bed. In which case, I probably wouldn’t wake up.

Here are my goals from this past week. You may or may not remember that green highlight is goal accomplished, yellow highlight is worked on and red lettering is a failure.

WRITING     

1)        Write 500 words on the story “Where the Dogs Bark.” 783 words written.

2)        Post three times to “The Dino Chronicles.” Yup.

3)        Post here once.  Yup.

REACHING

1)              Research self-publishing my novel, “The Truth Beyond the River”, on Amazon. See #3 below.

2)              Write a “thank you” section for the end of “The Truth Beyond the River”. Nope.

3)        Research places to submit my novella “Finding Justice.” I did start researching places to submit this. Even though novellas are one of my favorite types of fiction to read – quick to finish – it sounds like it’s challenging to find a place to publish them, mostly because they can’t make as much money as a novel. Which leaves me thinking that I could self-publish this through Amazon, as a way to get my feet wet for the novel. I still just shy away from that, feeling it is like giving up on getting published “for real”. See what I decide in the next week or so.   

4)        Contact one place where I might give a presentation and hold a book signing. Nope.

READING

1)        Read half of the novel I am currently reading, “The Carpenter: A Retelling of the Story of Joseph of Nazareth.” At 51%.

2)        Read five other blogs and comment on three of them. Read six and commented on five.

REMAINING

1)        Scan and empty another photo album of old pictures. Yes, even though my scanner started making people’s faces look funny so I reverted back to taking pictures of pictures.   

2)        Clean the closet in my office. Yes. What a mess. I even pawned some stuff off on my daughter. She’s got a big house with like three empty closets. Let’s fill those babies up for her, right?

Yikes! Nothing I tried could make this look any better. 

My senior picture, scanned years ago with my old scanner. Can't figure out what's up with the new scanner. 

Looks like quite a bit of success. Let’s see if I can keep it up for next week.

WRITING     

1)        Finish writing the story “Where the Dogs Bark.”  

2)        Post three times to “The Dino Chronicles.”

3)        Post here once. 

REACHING

1)              Research self-publishing my novella “Finding Justice” on Amazon.

2)              Design a cover for “Finding Justice.” (I think I may change the title too.)

3)        Write a “thank you” section for the end of “The Truth Beyond the River”.

4)        Contact one place where I might give a presentation and hold a book signing.

READING

1)        Finish reading the novel I am currently reading, “The Carpenter: A Retelling of the Story of Joseph of Nazareth.”

2)        Read five other blogs and comment on three of them. 

REMAINING

1)        Scan and empty another photo album of old pictures.  

2)        Clean the desk and file cabinet in my office.

How about you? Getting after those goals and finding success? Or thinking about cutting back a bit? It’s your call.

and away we go

Last week (and the week before) I didn’t post any weekly goals or goals for the Round. I only shared my year-long goals. So, I know this is cheating, but here’s what I did this week and I’m counting it all as goals achieved. Because, somewhere in the Round of Words in 80 Days it clearly states, “the writing challenge that knows you have a life”, and since this has been my life the last couple years, I’m starting out on a good note.

WRITING     

1)        Post three times weekly to “The Dino Chronicles.”  Done.

2)        Post here once a week. And done.

REACHING

1)        Work to self-publish “The Truth Beyond the River”.  I finished yet another read-through of it. Still found a few mistakes; hope that was all of them.

READING

1)        Finish reading “The Chaperone”. Done. (I kinda like this whole way of doing goals.)

2)        Read five other blogs this week and comment on three of them. I read six other blogs and commented on three. 

(Random tree I thought I should take a picture of in 1980.) 

REMAINING

1)              Work on the box of old pictures in my office.  I emptied one of my old photo albums, scanning 40 old pictures.

2)              Clean off the desk in my office. Done. What a mess this room is! I just keep piling things on the desk with no regard as to whether or not I need to keep those things. Should have a year-long goal of keeping my desk under control.

Okay, so enough of that nonsense. Time to stop gloating and march back to reality. Looking at my list of goals for the year, I realize that I just need to start whittling away at them. So, here are tweaked versions of some of those goals, which I hope to succeed at this week.

WRITING     

1)        Write 500 words on the story “Where the Dogs Bark.”   

2)        Post three times to “The Dino Chronicles.”

3)        Post here once.  

REACHING

1)              Research self-publishing my novel, “The Truth Beyond the River”, on Amazon.

2)              Write a “thank you” section for the end of “The Truth Beyond the River”.

3)        Research places to submit my novella “Finding Justice.”

4)        Contact one place where I might give a presentation and hold a book signing.

READING

1)        Read half of the novel I am currently reading, “The Carpenter: A Retelling of the Story of Joseph of Nazareth.”

2)        Read five other blogs and comment on three of them.  

(Really random - the top of my dresser,
my senior year in high school.) 

REMAINING

1)        Scan and empty another photo album of old pictures.   

2)        Clean the closet in my office.

That looks like about it.

How are you doing so far this Round? Reaching those goals or still revising them (as I am).   

Goals for all of 2020

A bad sign when the park bench looks like this. 

I am still trying to decide what I want to accomplish this year, where I want my writing path to take me, or if I want it to continue sitting on a park bench as it had been doing most of 2019. Before I dive into weekly goals, here, I need to look at the big picture.

All right. Here it is, my list of goals for the entire year. Of course, this list is open to continuous tweaking.

WRITING     

1)              Edit the novella “Finding Justice”.

2)              Finish typing the novella “No Body Found”.

3)              Finish writing the short story “Where the Dogs Bark.”

4)              Finish writing the novel “Ice Cream Spies”, previously called “Old New Spies”.

5)              Start the second book in the “Ice Cream Spies” series, once I finish the first one, of course. (As if that is going to happen!)

6)        Post three times weekly to “The Dino Chronicles.”

7)        Post here once a week.

REACHING

As if any book signings were a success

1)              Self-publish “The Truth Beyond the River”.

2)              Submit twelve pieces, somewhere, anywhere.

3)              Attend two book signings.

4)              Give one presentation.  

5)        Redo my website. 

READING

1)        Read twelve current novels, two novels from the “classics” list, two nonfictional (self-help?) books and one devotional.

2)        Read an average of five other blogs per week, commenting on three of them.

Traveling partner

REMAINING

1)        Travel to Cambodia in the fall. I’m so excited about this! This has been on my bucket list for over 45 years!

2)        Empty my box of old pictures.  

3)        Finish my family tree.  

4)        Clean out all of the closets in my house.

5)        Keep my weight right where it is. It took me most of last year to lose that five pounds to even make the weight I wanted. Now to keep it there. 

What do you think? Any of that sound attainable? After my last few years of long lists of failures, I’m going to really work at this in 2020.

Wish me luck!

How about you? Does your list of goals look achievable? Realistic? Overly energetic? 

Recapping 2019's goals and a lists of failures

First of all, let’s recap those abysmal goals from 2019. I’m looking this over and thinking to myself, “Did I really come up with these goals? What was I thinking?”

Oh, well, it’s 365 days I can’t relive; let me just spill it.    

WRITING     

1)    Finish the proposal for “The Truth Beyond the River”. Finished 6-26-19

2)    Edit “Finding Justice”. Hmm? Hardly even remember writing this.

3)    Finish typing “No Body Found”. Didn’t touch it.

4)    Start the next novella to go with that series. I had ideas for four novellas to put together - the two above, one with the working title of “Ghost House” and one more that I can’t remember. Hmm? Don’t remember this goal either.

5)    Finish writing “Old New Spies”. This is a lofty goal indeed. But I will give it a shot. At least I wrote four chapters. Yea, Me!

6)    Continue posting three times weekly to “The Dino Chronicles.” Pretty close.

7)    Continue posting here once a week. Not so close.   

REACHING

1)    Find an agent. Submitted proposal to Diana Glaz 6-26-19, which was, by the way, rejected in September.

2)    Publish “The Truth Beyond the River”. If I haven’t found an agent or a publisher for it by June 1, the end of the year, I will self-publish. I have not found an agent and have given up getting one. Hope to self-publish a few months into 2020.

3)    Submit fourteen pieces. Not even close.

4)    Redo my website. Not even looked at.

READING

1)    Read fourteen books, two from the “classics” list. Have read 23 books, four of which were classics. Finally a goal that I smoked.

2)    Read an average of five other blogs per week, commenting on three of them. Not sure, but kinda don’t think I made it.

REMAINING

1)    Return to Kenya in the fall. Done

2)    Empty the box of old pictures in my office. No, but I did work on it.

3)    Finish my family tree. This has already consumed a lot of my time this year. When does this ever end?

4)    Clean out all of the closets in my house. Last year’s ridiculous goals was to get the whole house as clean as possible. I don’t know how that could happen, so I’m trying to be more realistic. And by cleaning, I mean – empty all the junk out of those puppies. Cleaned a few.

5)    Keep my weight at 140. Last year I was going to get in the best shape of my life. Didn’t know how that would look, so am being more specific. I got there, stayed there for a couple weeks, then the holidays happened. Argh. But I’m still counting this!

That’s it for now. Next Sunday, I’ll come up with a revised and doable list of goals for the year.

Hoping that you did better in 2019 and are looking forward to a 2020 full of success!