Do You Have Goals Update and Celebrations!

 Many thanks to Lexa Cain, Katie, and LG Keltner for keeping this hop hopping, and many thanks to Viklit for starting it!

I'm celebrating everything below in this post, and for this hop, specifically:

1. Shelley Sly's sweet review and interview on Monday.
2. C. Lee Mckenzie's Opening Lines guest post here.
3. Getting done with a novella on Wednesday night at 11:24p.m.
4. Lexa Cain's shout-out for my "Seedling" story freebie. Thanks, Lexa!

 Write 1 Sub 1: I have today and tomorrow to make this happen. Agh. I'm working on a few hint fiction stories because that's the length my brain can handle outside my longer projects right now.

 This is my personal goals banner for the year. And, I've been working on those foundations every day!

Official Goals Update for Do You Have Goals, hosted by Misha and Beth:
1. Finished the novella project.
2. Received rejection letters (at least three, didn't want to count more), but that meant I submitted work, right?
3. Re-subbed a hint fiction story.
4. Re-entered my curriculum project - ultra copy edit time.
5. Really happy with publishing A Jumble of 500+ Writing Prompts and it's sibling projects: A Pocket-Sized Jumble of 500+ Writing Prompts, Jumble Journal 1, and Jumble Journal 2.
6. Relational: I have a few bloggers guesting here next month! But I haven't invited anyone for May yet. (Skipping April for A to Z) And, in the HD/real world, I need to get invitations going for March.
7. Exercise: minor floor exercises: leg lifts, sit ups, etc. No walking/biking allowed by docs yet. Next month.
8. Spiritual: Ash Wednesday talk at my church, Children's Message at a Sunday worship, daily time - most days with prayer as the focus and some Biblical study.
9. Marketing . . . some twittering and regular posting here. Using the free version of the Buffer app for pre-written twitter posts.

So, do you have goals? How do you put foundations under them? And, what are you celebrating this week/month?



If you are looking for a few writing prompts, A Jumble of 500+ Writing Prompts is only 99 cents for e-readers at Kindle, B&N, and Smashwords.

#writemotivation, Write 1 Sub 1, and Celebrate the Small Things

Keeping it short today, hope that's ok.

#writemotivation goals for the month and check-in:

1. Revise ten chapters of Champion in Flight. - um, I've only worked on about 1,000 words this week. Somehow I got caught up in another project.

2. Finish critique of friend's novel. - not yet.

3. Bike 80 miles by the end of the month. - Biked 30 miles last Saturday. Hugely painful but rewarding.

4. Complete Write 1 Sub 1 challenge. - I have the poem I want to submit, but I'm not sure where to submit it yet.

5. Drink 4+ glasses of water each day. - Yikes - only a few glasses each day.

6. Jump in some puddles. - it's seriously dry for Washington state.

7. Ski, laugh, and have fun with journal writing. -  laugh - yes, fun with journaling - some, ski - planned, but not sure I'm going since I woke up with a sinus cold/headache/earache.

 

 

 

Celebrate the Small Things:
1. Unexpectedly, I found myself immersed in my non-fiction project - currently named Dynamic Writing 1 (with 2 and 3 coming next) and wrote 27 pages in one afternoon. These will be writing curriculum guides for homeschool MG and HS students.

I started on this project because I've never been satisfied with the curriculum I've found for my own kids, I have training in writing curriculum as a teacher, and I thought, why not write some books that I might actually use? I've already written some of the pieces of them anyway to use at home and in my co-op classes.

2. Despite being totally distracted by the non-fiction project and grading papers, I did manage to get some work done for Champion in Flight.

3. No plans for Saturday - so my hubs and I might go on another 30 mile bike ride.

 

 

IWSG: Goal Keepers and Upcoming IndieRecon

I struggle to keep goals and stick to them. I want to create healthy habits, and healthy writing habits, but I find myself floundering from time to time (or is that most of the time? eek).

So, this year, I decided to find as many goal keepers and encouragers as I could and join in the fun.

Goal keepers helps us keep track of our goals, they motivate us in the midst of our trip-ups, and celebrate with us when we make our achievements.

Encouragers are encouraging . . . sounds simple, but these amazing individuals share, and encourage us to find, hidden depths of strength.

The best goal keepers and encouragers I know of on the web are:

IWSG: Insecure Writer's Support Group. Yes, you, the Positively Rockin' Ninja Army of IWSG! If you aren't member, you need to join. Alex J. Cavanaugh started this group, and now it's a movement, a place of safety and encouragement. It all started at Alex J. Cavanaugh's blog, but now it has a website and a facebook page.

Celebrate the Small Things is a weekly group that celebrates the small stuff - the accomplishments that help us through our days - getting a load of laundry done, writing a line or two, and even, taking time to rest. These are all worthy of celebrations. Viklit started this group a year ago, and it's still going strong! Again, I highly recommend it!

Write 1 Sub 1 is a challenge group. The challenge is: to write 1 and submit 1 poem a week, or to write 1 and submit 1 story a month. It's tough, but it's been good for me as a writer, and has stretched my sense of what's possible to get done in a week. They have a blog and a facebook page.

#writemotivaton is a group that I just joined, and they are awesome at encouragement and goal keeping. They have a site and are active on twitter. The sign up is monthly, so you don't necessarily have to join for the year, but you can join for a month and try it out. However, as I belatedly realized after January, the posts are weekly . . . I'll have to do a bit better on that this month. 

And I just joined, Misha Gericke's Do You Have Goals? which is a group dedicated to creating and keeping some huge yearly goals. There's a monthly update post on the last Friday of every month.

In addition to all these awesome groups, there's a great event coming up on the 25th for Indie authors: Indie Recon. Check out there site for details on this awesome online three day conference.

So, are you able to stick to your goals? Do you have goal keepers that help you? Know motivators and encouragers that cheer you on and celebrate all the small things with you? If not, I highly encourage you to join some or all of these groups.

Happy IWSG!!!

Write Motivation, Write 1 Sub 1, and Celebrate the Small Things

It's the end of January, and it's time to check in on my goals.
Hmm. Where did I put those things?
I didn't post them by my desk.
I didn't carry them around.
I hid them in a file folder that I didn't recognize on my pc.
oops.

I don't think I get to eat the cookies this month. :(
Here were my specific write motivation goals for January.
In Writing:

1.      Finish Champion in Flight 3^rd Draft. - eek. I didn't finish.

2.      Send the rest of the book to my proofreader(s). - see #1

3.      Write 3 pages in my journal each day and write poetry in the midst of that. - almost - 65 pages of journaling with poetry on Day 30 . . . so I made progress here.

With my blog Blog: Keep with 1-2 posts a week. Trim the size of posts. Done, except for two lengthy posts (including this one).

 Exercise/Life/Health goals:

1.      Smoothie Challenge for January. - almost done!
2.      Bike 20 miles a week on exercise bike and 12 miles a week on outdoor bike. Cross-train. - Does it count that I biked about half of this and cross-trained?
3.      Stretch every day. - about half the days.
4.      Organize my time. Keep goals and lists. - since I lost this list, obviously not!

Yikes. Ok. So how did I do for the Write 1 Sub 1 Challenge this month? Four weeks went by, and I wrote 20 poems (mostly junk), 2 stories, and made 3 submissions. Hmm. I've got the Write 1 done, but the submit part, I'm struggling with. Does it count that I have a planned submission for February 1st all written up and waiting in my e-mail dock to go out? There's a specific submission window for a particular publication.

So, my goals helped me, but were a bit beyond my reach this month. I learned some things. I remembered belatedly that my oldest daughter's birthday does have far reaching effects on my time and writing - especially since I wrote a mystery theater piece for her and 15 friends to act out on her birthday this year - and especially because I love that she loves having big parties. We both get a lot of joy out of planning and creating fun events like that, but it's also time consuming and I need to remember that when planning January goals.

Celebrating the Small Things with Viklit and fellow celebrators:
This week:
1. I found my goal list. :)
2. I ran a half mile with my youngest daughter (running hasn't been possible for a while for me, so this is a huge thing).
3. My poem, "Robot Sonnet," went live at Bewildering Stories on Monday. (And I wrote this one for Write 1 Sub 1 earlier this month)

What are you celebrating today? And how are your goals working out this month?