ROWnd Two Goals and Focus

For the April Fool’s Version of these goals, done with best my meager high school and semester college French, please look here:  Welcome to ROWnd 2: Goals

Hello!

It’s that time again.  Time for more Round of Words in 80 Days goals.

Focus:

Last ROWnd, didn’t go the way I hoped.  I spent more time socializing online than writing.   This time I intend to focus on my fiction with adjustments.  While CTSS is still on the menu, I intend to spend a bit more time finishing the NANoWriMo novels from 2009 and 2011 that form the backstory for two of my main characters, Alanii and Atyriia.

Morning Glory 92011

Day off:

I also intend to cut down my online time this round.  In fact, I’m declaring Monday a day of no computer every week.  Scheduled posts will go out those day–I intend to continue the Your Inspirations guest posts at A Garden of Delights as long as I can (yes, that is a request–please contact me if you are interested in doing one, or if you even have ideas for one you’d like to see).  Sorry, no new quips or insights, and no replies until Tuesday.

I hope this inspire me to get some work done on other pieces I’ve been trying to develop for my stories: drawings of characters, buildings, and landscapes.  The extra mental exercise of working with pen and paper again calls to me.

(And for those of you who know my obsession with 750words.com and wonder how I will make my daily word count, I’m playing the classic gamer-geek trick of “it’s not tomorrow until I go to sleep”.  I intend to stay up and post my “Monday words” after midnight, then not clock back  until sometime Tuesday.)

Upcoming:

As promised in my last post, I have several changes to my blogs planned.  The first will be to join with several other ROWers who have combined their blogs into one.  Stay tuned for A Garden of Possibilities to come to you sometime mid-May.  Incidentally, May is also going to be the month I will be attempting the A to Z blog challenge.  After some thought, I have decided, that if I still end up being a sponsor for this session of the ROW (I did end up being a day late with my bio and post that Kait requested, so who knows…), then I want a month to build into the process.

Of course, I’m intending to sign up for MayNaNoWriMo, so….

Eh!  That’ll be easy in comparison.  Writing stories and fiction are the things that stir my soul.  They make me smile and bring me happy dreams.  Writing blog posts bring me nightmares….  (though I LOVE absolutely LOVE reading other people’s blogs).

Speaking of blogs….  I’m nowhere nearly as bad off as Gabriela Pereira at DIY MFA, but I count my total subscriptions (counting RSS-feeds on the two computers, email digests, and generic Blogger/Google subscriptions) into the mid-350s!  That’s too much.

So please don’t be disappointed if I unsubscribe you.  Actually, I’ve been moving all my subscriptions to RSS  for a while anyway so they ending up in my junkmail folder every time websites change their settings.  Don’t worry!  I still will stop over on occasion.  I like following cow trails, wandering along comment chains, so if you like to comment on other people’s blogs, and say cool and interesting stuff, chances are, I’ll find you.  After all, that’s how I found the ROW80 challenge in the first place.

And I like following blog hops…  so if you’re involved in one or ten, chances are, I’ll find you that way too.

So to put these goals into a more concise form:

1. Work on former NaNoWriMo “novels” from 2009 and 2011, both of which made their word count but were never finished.
2. Do NO computer work on Mondays
3. Cut down blog subscriptions to a level where I can manage them — no more than thirty I think, and move all to RSS feeds

I’m including these goals with my daily minimum of 750 words, 500 of which must be on the NaNoWriMo pieces (and this time, it needs to be NEW STORY, because last ROWnd  I found that it’s easy to spend all 750 words on character creation, plotting and speculation without writing a single new page of the WiP)

I’m also reinstating several of my goals from last ROWnd with adjustments:

1. As before, I will reassess my goals at the end of the week and adjust accordingly.  I found this had been the best tool for keeping myself on track during Round 1
2. I again wish to devote time to better learning how to use the creativity tools (examples being: my camera, Photoshop, mind-mapping software, etc) at my disposal.  It worked out well for a few weeks last ROWnd.  This time I will give myself longer than a week for each new tool.  That unrealistic push made it hard to really learn what I was doing as I tried new features out.  I’d like to become more skilled, even if it ends up that I only learn one new thing this whole ROWnd.
3. I will walk one mile every day, three days a week (no hassle, just down to the corner and back).  I also will do10 minutes of stretches and  3 sets of 11 repetitions with free weights.
4. Dance every day…  fell off the wagon near the beginning of March, and it was mood depleting.  I need to resume this just for my own joy.  (which means I really need to act on the Day of Cleaning part of Natalie Markey’s guest piece Kristen Lamb posted.  There is no room…
5. Type in 10 pages a week.  That’s only two full pages a day.  Less than an hour’s work, and worth every minute
6. Create a Time Line of my story worlds…  I dropped the ball on this completely.  No longer!
7. Spend minimum 3 days a week with either #teamsprinty or the #wordmongering crowd for an hour
8. Edit 2 pages of story a day (may as well include my successes)

That’s it.  That’s plenty really–more than I probably need, but it should work out well.  Much of the focus is on getting my S____ in order, albeit detailed to death.  I’m hoping that using precise goals and some table-clearing, I can avoid what happened to both myself and so many other ROWers last Round.