Lena Corazon

Flights of Fancy

Tag: to do list

#ROW80: Round 4 Goals

October 3, 2011 / / 35 Comments

It’s here, it’s here! A Round of Words in 80 Days, Round 4, is here!

ROW 80, of course, is none other than the awesome writing challenge that knows you have a life. It’s flexible, because it allows us to pick our own manageable goals, and there’s no penalty for having to switch goals up midway through.

As many of you know, I participated in Round 3 and had an absolutely amazing time.  Publicly posting my goals, as well as progress updates, really gave me the boost I needed to tackle my various WIPs. I’m proud to say that I accomplished a lot, and I wouldn’t have done it without the support and encouragement of the friends that I’ve made.

I want to carry on the discipline that I’ve started to build into Round 4. I have a lot going on in the next few months, and so I’m hoping to use my goals as a way to help me focus on what needs to get done. This time around, I’ve decided to tackle weekly goals, and instead of targeting a specific word count, I’m trying to estimate a certain number of hours that I’ll spend on each goal. I think this will be a bit more flexible, and a little easier for me to complete.

The Goals!

Write, edit, and polish the MA thesis. I have roughly 8-10 hours per week set aside to tackle this project, which is at the top of my priority list for this round.

Write, edit, and develop WIPs. I have another 8-10 hours per week scheduled to deal with my fiction-writing, though I may have adjust the number of hours as we go. For the month of October, my writing time will consist of outlining, plotting, and planning my November NaNo project. I’ll also be editing TELL ME NO LIES, my August CampNaNo story, and toying with an idea for a novella that popped into my head yesterday (not sure how far this third project will go, but there is an outline, and a cast of characters, and an interesting set of problems at stake, so we’ll see). Once November rolls around, I’ll be in full-scale NaNo mode, and my writing time will most likely be consumed with trying to reach my 1667+ words per day.

Tinker with author platform/social media stuff. I’ve made the decision to hold off on declaring a set number of weekly blog posts for the moment, beyond ROW80 check-ins, that is. I’ve just started Kristen Lamb’s “Blogging to Build Your Brand” class (and there are a number of ROW-ers in the mix as well!), which will last through November. The course assignments will help me to further refine my goals and topics for my blog.

Exercise 4-5 times each week. I started making some progress with this goal towards the very end of Round 3, and I’m determined to keep up my momentum during Round 4.

I have a fancy-schmancy schedule that I’ve made myself to help me stay on track, and I’m utilizing Google calendar’s task list so that I remember everything that needs to get done. I’ll also be trying out some techniques to help me stay focused (there are a few that I found here that are really going to come in handy, I think).

I’ve peeked at the linky list to see who’s signed up for this round, and there are almost 100 people listed! I’m super excited to get to know all the new participants, and to catch up with my old friends… and I’m even more excited to party with everyone on Wednesday for our “Rock the ROW” Twitter party! We’ve got loads to celebrate, so I hope that everyone who (1) participated in the last round, (2) jumped in for this round, or (3) just wants to check out our awesomeness swings by.  There will be bubbly drinks and dancing for all! 😉

The details:

  • Theme: “Rock the Row”
    However you want to work that in is great. I leave it to your outrageously creative imagination!
  • Date: October 5th, 12:01 AM to 11:59 PM ET in the U.S.
    This also happens to be the first day of check-in so there should be a ton of ROW80 fun happening around the blogosphere.
  • Party will be held at the #ROW80 hashtag.
    Fire up your Tweet Deck or HootSuite and let’s get jiggy with it.
  • Photo Competition:
    You can start now…we won’t tell. Start digging for or taking photos that reflect the theme. We’ll do our best to gather them and decide on the best to spotlight in a post at the ROW80 blog. One the readers vote, the 1st place winner gets a copy of Kait Nolan’s latest book, Red, in e-book format!!
  • Friendly Blog Competition
    We will also post a mash-up of favorite ROCK THE ROW posts at the Row80 blog.

See you all at the #ROW80 hashtag on October 5th, and in the meantime, visit the other participants and check out their goals!

The End of Summer: A Recap

September 29, 2011 / / 15 Comments

I’ve survived the first week of school, and October is looming before me, cinnamon and pumpkin-scented, filled with the promise of chilly, cozy nights and the inevitable march towards winter.

I really wish leaves on trees changed color where I live. Autumn leaves are so beautiful!

I’ve been a bit remiss when it comes to blogging, responding to comments, and making the rounds through my Google reader, but with my mom in town for a week and a half, and the various challenges related to packing, moving, and doing lots of traveling and sight-seeing, I suppose I was being a little ambitious, thinking I could maintain the approximately three million things I took on over the summer.

Certain things fell by the wayside this month: the awesome Dice Games flash fiction challenge that I had planned on tackling; visiting my fellow #writecampaigners on a regular basis; editing and rewriting TELL ME NO LIES. On the other hand, I’ve had the chance to visit with friends and family, including my mom, my younger sister, and other extended family members.

At any rate, October is almost here, and with school is full swing, I’m reevaluating everything that I have on my plate. I can’t quite give anything up; I refuse to go another semester without writing, and social media and blogging is something that nourishes me in a way that nothing else can. I’ve come to depend on the community and the connections that I’ve made over the past few months, and I don’t plan on walking away from it any time soon.

Instead, what I’ll be doing is retooling the way that I approach my various responsibilities. I’m using Google calendar to create a detailed schedule for myself, setting aside time for writing and social media, time to deal with the mountain of reading I have for class, time to work on my thesis, and time to prep for the sections that I have to teach.

I’m also rethinking how I tackle blogging. While I like the themed days I’ve been trying out over the past few weeks, I think I’m going to have to scale back a bit, at least until l can build up a decent queue of posts. Right now the pace of trying to write and edit daily is way more than I can conceivably handle, so the plan for the moment will consist of ROW80 updates, and one or two extra posts in addition.  We’ll see how it goes!

In the meantime, many fun things have happened in the past weeks. To recap:

Blog Awards!

My fellow ROWer, Em, over at Loves to Read, Wants to Write, as well as Miho Li (who I know from the writecampaign), both awarded me the Versatile Blogger. Sorry for taking so long to announce and link back, you two!

I won’t bore everyone with another list of 7 random things, but I will link back to my original post of randomness.

 

Writing Challenges

The 2nd challenge for the Writers’ Campaign was a doozy, one that asked us to use lots of obscure words that I haven’t seen since my SAT prep days, but overall, it was pretty enjoyable.

My entry is “Imago, Shattered,” and one day if I ever have the time, I am going to expand the scene. There’s much more that happens between Robert and Tessa that I couldn’t pack into 200 words.

I also entered Jenny Hansen’s “Dirty Fighting” contest, where we had to write a 150 snippet using any of the 23 Dirty Fighting Techniques she shared on More Cowbell (I encourage everyone to check out the list. It’s a fantastic resource for building tension in your writing).

My entry, along with 2 others, were chosen for an on-screen edit by none other than the Naked Editor herself, Tiffany Lawson Inman. Tiffany took my little drabble of a tale and kicked it up fifteen notches — so. darn. awesome. Check out the original top 3 entries, as well as Tiffany’s mark-ups — I learned a ton from all of her comments.

Rock the ROW!

Round 4 of A Round of Words in 80 Days begins next Wednesday, October 5th. To celebrate the general awesomeness of everyone who has been involved, will be involved, or has supported those who have participated, we are throwing a full-scale, 24 hour long Twitter party. Here are the details, via Jenny Hansen:

  • Theme: “Rock the Row”
    However you want to work that in is great. I leave it to your outrageously creative imagination!
  • Date: October 5th, 12:01 AM to 11:59 PM ET in the U.S.
    This also happens to be the first day of check-in so there should be a ton of ROW80 fun happening around the blogosphere.
  • Party will be held at the #ROW80 hashtag.
    Fire up your Tweet Deck or HootSuite and let’s get jiggy with it.
  • Photo Competition:
    You can start now…we won’t tell. Start digging for or taking photos that reflect the theme. We’ll do our best to gather them and decide on the best to spotlight in a post at the ROW80 blog. One the readers vote, the 1st place winner gets a copy of Kait Nolan’s latest book, Red, in e-book format!!
  • Friendly Blog Competition
    We will also post a mash-up of favorite ROCK THE ROW posts at the Row80 blog.

For my writing friends who haven’t jumped onto the ROW80 bandwagon, I encourage you to do so. The folks who are apart of this community are some of the most supportive I’ve ever met, and there’s nothing better than having a built-in cheerleading squad, especially as November inches closer. I credit ROW80 with helping me break out of a very long, very painful period of writer’s block, and I can’t wait for Round 4 to start. I’ve got some goals that I’m eager to share. 😀

How’s everyone doing? Are you ready for autumn, or hanging on desperately to summer? (I’m part of that latter category, in case you hadn’t noticed. :p)

ROW80: Starting off With a Bang!

July 4, 2011 / / 5 Comments

Happy Independence Day, all!  As I write this, I can hear the echoes from the firework show over at Stow House, about 10 minutes from where I live.  I took advantage of the holiday to do a bit of relaxing and ended up writing much, much more than I planned, which is a welcome change from the past few weeks.

I ended Round 2 of ROW80 a bit earlier than I had intended.  The end of the quarter, grading papers, traveling, and trying to deal with my schoolwork proved to be a bit more trying than I expected, but that’s why I love ROW80 — I didn’t feel too terrible or guilty taking a brief hiatus from my writing because I knew that Round 3 was right around the corner.

So here I am, tossing my hat into the ring once more.  I’m starting at a pretty strong place: Path to the Peacock Throne stands at 20k words, and while I’m gingerly feeling my way through a bit of a sticky section, I know that with a bit of perseverance and patience, I’ll make my way through the rough patch.  Over the past couple of weeks I’ve also given in and started scribbling down ideas for two other tales: a steampunk tale set in late 19th century San Francisco, tentatively titled tell me no lies, and a fantasy-esque tale in the vein of Anne Rice’s Claiming of Sleeping Beauty and Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Dart, called Strange Bedfellows.  At the moment, Strange Bedfellows stands at roughly 7.5K words, which have poured out of me over the past few days.  I’m not complaining, though!

With that, here are my Round 3 goals:

  • Write an average of 500 words/day on any project.  This means that I’m doubling my Round 2 word count goal, which makes me slightly nervous, but we’ll see how it goes!  I found myself exceeding the original 250 words/day goal consistently, so I don’t think this increase will be too burdensome.
  • Complete Act 2 of Path to the Peacock Throne, and resist the urge to do too much editing to Act 1.
  • Move from brainstorming and world-building tell me no lies to working on the first draft.
And, for fun, some things that I am eagerly anticipating for Round 3:
  • Participating in an online writing seminar, “Steampunk from Aether to Zeppelin,” taught by Suzanne Lazear, from July 5th – July 29th.
  • Celebrating my parents’ 25th wedding anniversary with our first family trip in 3 years, from July 13th – July 19th. (Vegas, baby!)
  • My annual 6-week summer vacation in San Francisco, from August – mid-September.
  • Finishing the first draft of my MA thesis, hopefully by September.
I’m looking forward to another 80 days of creativity, scribbling, and imagining, and I’m also excited to connect with everyone else who will be participating in Round 3!

ROW80: Super-short Update

June 2, 2011 / / 2 Comments

Friends, I’ve had a day. I hit the ground running early this morning with some high-gear multitasking: grading my final set of papers for the week, washing out some clothes in the bathroom sink (cheaper and easier than hauling everything to the laundromat), doing the dishes, and furiously trying to clean up my apartment.  I leave tomorrow (today, really) for San Francisco, where my parents live, so packing and cleaning are essential.

After grading and handling my chores, I somehow found the time to work out, shower, dress, run errands, and then drive to campus for the end-of-the-year department potluck.  Afterwards I hung out for a couple of hours before going to my weekly reading group meeting, which ran over two hours, ending at 9:30.  Then it was back home to do more cleaning and pack.  I have way more than any sensible person will need for a 1 week stay, but given that it has been 55 degrees and raining in SF, I need to have winter and summer options available.  Whew.

At any rate, writing!  I feel like I’ve got whiplash from how fast this year seems to be speeding by; I’m not quite sure where May went, and here we are, half-way through the year!  What has astonished me is how much progress I’ve made with this novel in such a short period of time.  I began writing at the beginning of May, and it’s really taken shape over the past few weeks.  To illustrate:

Daily writing output

Wordcount graph

Powered by WritersDB.com

I’ve done my best to add on a little bit each day since my last check-in, and I’ve found that writing first thing in the morning seems to work really well.  My mind is fresh, I’ve had a chance to “sleep on” the problems or challenges I may have run into the day before, and after a little tweaking here, and a bit of adding there, I end up reaching my daily word count goal without too much strain.

Once I’ve dealt with grading final papers and the like, I may bump up my daily goal to 500 words, since I’m surpassing 300 words so easily.  Now that my confidence has been built up a bit, I can make myself work a little harder.

I’m excited for my 5 hour drive tomorrow, since I’ll be able to let my mind wander.  I’ve got a pocket recorder downloaded on my cell phone so I can record any interesting writing ideas that come to mind.  In the days to come, I’m going to be focused on characterization.  My protagonist, Liandre, has just discovered that her whole life is a lie, and I want to make sure that her reaction to this news is realistic.  We’ll see how it goes!

ROW80: Back in the Saddle

May 25, 2011 / / 6 Comments

Whew, it’s been a busy week with a ton of stuff going on in my non-writing life. I missed Sunday’s check-in, sadly, but I am back for the midweek report!

First, the happenings of real life. I delivered a 45 minute guest lecture last Thursday about my MA research, and it was received really, really well. I have been informed that I am (1) ready to teach my own course (always exciting to hear) and that (2) my MA project is clearly coming together.

I spent the weekend doing a mad rush of grading and prepping for the second guest lecture I am giving (tonight, in fact). I also met with my advisor, who had many lovely things to say about the progress I’ve made with my thesis. Sunday and Monday were spent thesisizing, and I am happy to report that I wrote over 2600 words, bringing up to a total of 12,000 words. I’m nowhere near done yet, sadly, but I have the summer to finish up and pull things together. If I give myself a nightly word limit, the way I do for my fiction, I think I’ll be able to pull this off. 😀

Now, onto writing. Between the stress of school and work and just being bloody tired last week, I found myself in a bit of a rough patch with Peacock. I was flailing about for direction with this coronation scene that I wrote, and while I’ve managed to tidy it up a bit and get it back on track, I know I’m going to have to come back through later on and shorten it up. I’m just not certain that everything that’s currently in there is necessary… but I am challenging myself to wait until the 1st draft is done (or almost done) to start major rewrites and edits.

At any rate, I have broken the 10,000 word mark (never thought I’d actually do that!), and I now stand at 10,222 words. Judging from my wee graph, I almost made my goal of writing 2100 words/week.

Daily word counts

Wordcount graph
Powered by WritersDB.com

Looks like I’m about 500 words short, but given everything that’s been going on, I’m not about to berate myself.  So yay me!

Moving forward, I’ll be hoping to make my way out of the expository stuff by the weekend.  I’m utilizing Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey” (summarized quite nicely here by Eliza W.).  The simplified version, in twelve steps, looks like this:

  1. The Ordinary World
  2. Call to Adventure
  3. Refusal of the Call
  4. Meeting the Mentor
  5. Crossing the First Threshold
  6. Tests, Allies, and Enemies
  7. Approach
  8. The Supreme Ordeal
  9. Reward
  10. The Road Back
  11. Resurrection
  12. Return with the ‘Elixir’

Right now I’m toiling within the “Ordinary World,” which I have realized is actually anything but ordinary.  Rather, it’s in the midst of major change — the death of Liandre’s father, King Roland, the coronation of her brother, Prince Edric, and a whole set of new pressures and challenges.

At the moment, I plan on combining steps 2-4 together: Liandre will meet her mentor in Chapter 3, but when her mentor tries to tell her the truth of her lineage, the princess will refuse to listen.  This will set off a whole set of conflicts that will result in the call being reissued, only this time in a way that Liandre cannot ignore.  From there, it will be time for Liandre to journey across Peridion and over the sea to the country of Vao Artan, a realm she once believed was little more than legend and fantasy.

When it comes to my writing process, I rather feel like I am trying to forge a path through a jungle with nothing but a machete in hand — slashing and hacking wildly to form the beginnings of a road.  I cut through about a quarter of a mile before pausing, pulling out a smaller set of garden shears, and back-tracking to pretty things up a bit.  Once I’m satisfied with my work I can pick up the machete and force my way through the jungle a bit further.  Right now I feel like I’ve done enough manicuring with my shears; I want nothing more than to push ahead and set my heroine onto her path towards adventure.

ROW 80 Check-in: And So It Begins

May 15, 2011 / / 7 Comments

A Round of Words in 80 Days, the 80 day writing challenge, is half-way through Round 2, and I’ve decided to leap on in.  I stumbled upon the writing challenge through some circuitous blog reading last week, and given that I am trying to finally be serious about my writing, I felt the time was right to give it a try.

So here I am, pledging that I will write an average of 300 words/day.  That adds up to 2100 words/week, which is on the low end of the spectrum, but given everything that will be happening over the next few weeks (grading, thesisizing, 2 guest lectures, final exams, etc.), it’s definitely a practical decision.

Honestly, I’ve been doing surprisingly well in terms of word count.  I started tracking my progress last week, and this is what I have to show:

Daily word counts

Wordcount graph
Powered by WritersDB.com

It’s not too shabby, if I say so myself.  I started tracking on Friday, May 6th with my first 1000 word scene.  By the following Friday, May 13th, I hit 7000 words.  I’m not quite sure where all of this energy and excitement is coming from, and frankly, I’m not about to ask.  This is the most I’ve written since I entered my writing slump almost two years ago, and I am incredibly grateful that the art of writing, of imagining, and of creating has returned (knock on wood).

There is, however, much work to be done before I can emerge from the other end of chapter one, including:

  • Brainstorming the culture and history of Peridion, particularly surrounding the role of magic within the world.  The disappearance of magic a few centuries prior to the tale’s beginning (captured here in a mini “codex” excerpt) is pivotal to the actions of my current villain, the royal mage Leopold, and also helps to explain the mysterious circumstances around Liandre’s origins and heritage.  I’ve got a vague sense of what’s gone on, but I will need to solidify what’s happened over the coming weeks.
  • Scribbling the tales and legends that are considered important in the world of Peridion.  What are the stories that every person, commoner and noble alike, seem to know?  Why are they important?  What messages or themes are prevalent, and what can they tell us about the overall psyche and culture of Peridion?
  • Thinking more about birds, and Liandre’s eventual introduction into the world of Vao Artan.  I will be reading Daphne du Maurier’s short story, “The Birds,” and also watching the Hitchcock film based on her tale for a bit of inspiration.  I’ll most likely be posting about it as well, so look for that in the coming week.

That’s about all, at least for the moment.  I am battling a migraine, so this post is neither as long nor as informative as I’d like… but there’s always next check-in.  With that, I am off to pop some aspirin… and to try and scribble a few more ideas for this funeral scene that I am trying to write.

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