Time is a construct, and nothing quite drives the point home like the shortest month of the year in the third year of a pandemic, with a highly anticipated game release capped off with the start of a war in Europe.
God damn.
And yet, here we are, living our lives and talking about dreams and goals. Call it futile. Call it resilient. Call it whatever, I guess. I’m just caling it past due. Let’s get this show on the road!
February
- Spend at least 16 hours with Victoria
- Prep Tavi Query Letter and Synopses
- Read four books
How'd I Do?
- Spend at least 16 hours with Victoria
- …. *sobs*
- Prep Tavi Query Letter and Synopses
- Yes! I’m doing some more revisions this week, but rough drafts were finished and even revised some in February!
- Read four books
- Close! Three books and most of a fourth. Not too shabby!
Total Word Count: 3,541
Hours Check
Here’s how I spent my time in February:
- Kivu Lacus Edits: .5 Hours
- These line edits sat in my inbox, lurking. Terrorizing me. They took almost no time at all and weren’t remotely critical. Open the email, folks. Rip off the damn band-aid.
- Victoria Rough Draft: 4.5 Hours
- This is nowhere near my goal for the month. But it IS a vast improvement over the prior month. Onward and upward?
- Reading: 14 Hours
- Not bad! A little less than last month, but still a solid amount.
- Willamette Writers Meetings: 9 Hours
- A little less time spent here as well. That wasn’t consciously done, I just haven’t been as interested in some of the meeting offerings lately.
- Website Management: 11 Hours
- More time spent here! That’s nice. That means that I’m (mostly) posting with some consistency. Hurray!
- Short Story Submissions: 1 Hour
- A slow month for submissions. It’s pretty typical for things to move slowly in publishing, so this number isn’t a metric that reflects on me as much as it does short story market response times, haha.
- Podcast: 5 Hours
- Recording takes ~2 hours, and editing takes that long PLUS all the changes and clicking and, well, editing.
- Tavi Query + Synopsis: 5 Hours
- Let me tell you… it felt like much much longer than just five hours spent on these documents.
- Agent Research: 6.5 Hours
Total Hours: 56.5
Huh. Fewer hours spent, but more words written? Interesting. Was a just more efficient? Seems unlikely seeing as I’ve spent 50+ hours in Horizon Forbidden West already. But, if I can manage to pull myself away long enough, there are some things I want to accomplish this month.
March
- Write 7,000 words of Victoria
- Look. I keep bitching about how hard this book is to write and how I’m unmotivated and yada yada blah blah bullshit. I didn’t learn the lesson from Kivu Lacus line edits: rip off the band-aid. If I’m struggling to get motivated to write the book, then the answer is to just. write. the. freaking. book. So that’s what I’m gonna do.
- Real Talk™: If I don’t finish this rough draft before the weather gets good enough for frequent hikes and kayaking, I will not finish it until the fall and that just isn’t acceptable. I have a girl’s trip to a geodesic dome in Eastern Oregon for spring break, and the goal is for us to get out in nature during the day and create at night. I’m hoping to hammer out a lot of this book during those three nights.
- Look. I keep bitching about how hard this book is to write and how I’m unmotivated and yada yada blah blah bullshit. I didn’t learn the lesson from Kivu Lacus line edits: rip off the band-aid. If I’m struggling to get motivated to write the book, then the answer is to just. write. the. freaking. book. So that’s what I’m gonna do.
- Read 1 short story a day
- This is a March tradition/challenge. Read a short story every day. 31 stories sourced from all kinds of places. I have a few anthologies from the library, I have a few key magazines queued up, and a couple anthologies I own and just haven’t finished reading yet. This is a joy of mine every March, even if I never come close to actually reading 31 stories.
- Tavi final revision + proof read
- Beta reader feedback is trickling in and I have a bit of work ahead of me. Generally things seem good, and they mostly caught little things (grammar, setting, inconsistencies, etc.,), so I’m feeling good going into this.
- Finalize Tavi Query Package
- The query letter and synopsis are similarly close to being done. I got some great feedback from my mentor and from my critique group and I’m hoping to hammer these out later this week. I want to put a big ol’ check mark next to this on my to-do list and get on with my life.
Yeah. This is a lot. But so much of my 2022 timeline depends on getting as much done by April 1st as I possibly can. I am already DYING to go hiking (the high tomorrow is a *balmy* 49º) so as soon as that weather shifts even slightly close to 60º my free time will be spent hiking, planning hiking trips, shopping for hiking gear, and daydreaming about hiking. This is another one of those sneaking focus control deficit issues. I KNOW I won’t be able to focus on drafting fiction once the weather shifts, so I have to get these projects done before that happens.
I am racing nature, and in Oregon that is a dangerous bet. Wish me luck.
BZ
