New Year, Same Old Things

It’s that time of year when I look at how the last year went and how I want the new year to go.

2022 started with the best surgery ever, even if it did really throw me for a long loop as far as recovery but the difference in before and after is nothing short of amazing. I did learn a lot and make a lot but I didn’t write a lot. I did finish my disabled magic granny saves the world book – currently pitching it to agents but I’m worried it’ll be a hard sell given the age and illness of my main character – only time will tell.

I’m hoping 2023 brings me back to writing on some kind of real schedule and brings me back to blogging on some sort of schedule too. I’m really hesitant to do a real goals lists – it’s been a fair bit since writing was anything like a priority. I’m hoping to change that again this year. I really need more hours in my days, dagnabit.

Hopefully I’ll be around more. Hopefully I’ll have actual books news more often too. Hopefully I’ll have other fun news too – one never knows and there are irons that look both interesting and plausible.

Every year I pick a word – I’ve had maker years, learning years, brave years, prepper years, all kinds of years. Last year was apparently a rest year. I think I might have needed it. I have always said that I didn’t think I was put together correctly and between the rheumatoid arthritis, the fibromyalgia, and the way things have been after the hysterectomy – I’m pretty sure I was right all along. All those years that I could have felt so much better if literally any doctor had asked the right question. Next year is NOT going to be a rest year.

The word for 2023 is really a phrase. Forward Motion. Even if things move slowly, the point is that they move forward. That means writing on the regular again. That means posting more here. That means reading more (though seriously – Braiding Sweetgrass was the best book I read in 2022, hands down). That means maybe hopefully seeing a new thing happen that I can’t talk about yet that isn’t about the writing or the making. That means more soap making (cause I really love it). That means getting back to the things that fell by the wayside in 2022.

I’m shutting the door on 2022. Watch this space. Good things are afoot and this year, 2023, is going to rock.

End of Year Wrap Up

So, 2020 is just about done. I don’t much feel like celebrating, more like watching it leave from between my fingers, just in case it has something else up it’s sleeve. I’m pretty sure none of my goals for this year managed to get accomplished but that doesn’t mean this was a year without accomplishments. I did sort of start a business, after all. And I took a number of classes related to that. And I’m looking at more of them. Learning is fun!

I’m keeping my outlook lifted for 2021. There’s no sense in approaching a brand new year with doom and gloom. I might be being a little more cautious though. Would I like to get to do craft fairs and events again? Yes, yes I would but I’m also immunocompromised so I have to be cautious.

I had a couple of acceptances this year – though one project fell apart and I haven’t heard back on another one – I do have a serial coming… aliens and terraforming, a little bit of intrigue, and the opportunity to use a little bit of all the weird geological information that lives in my head.

I didn’t manage to win NaNoWriMo this year – there were too many things going on and nothing was cooperating. I’ll get back to the story though – it’s got some great potential. I am still working on my hedgewitch story’s rewrite. I am still working on finding the other books a good home. I did rerelease Guardian of the Gods and Hardwired Humanity so that they’re available again – HH has some new stories in it too.

Overall – instead of 2020 being a doing year, it was a learning year. In some ways, I learned more than I ever wanted to about humans and just how many out there lack empathy, common sense, and any sense of responsibility. I also learned that, while I am pretty much made for isolation as long as I have the internet, most people aren’t. I’ve always been a bit of an odd duck though. My house was very fortunate this year – there weren’t many upsets and only a few close calls. I know how lucky we are – so many others lost so much.

I am hoping to do more things outside my house in 2021 and I’m cautiously optimistic. I’m hoping to add new lines to my business (including perfumes!). I’m hoping to get another book written and one or two books sold to publishers. I’m hoping to see my youngest go back to in person school as we’ve done virtual this year. I’m not doing word count goals, weight goals, health goals or any of that. I don’t do resolutions. This year, I’m just going to hope I find new and interesting stories to tell, things to make, and things to learn.

I went in to 2020 with big plans. I’m going in to 2021 with big hope. Fortunately, hope isn’t something anyone can put in lockdown. So long as we can all just wear our masks and get our vaccines when we can and are advised to, we can move forward. I don’t think normal is a thing to aspire to at this point, we’ve all seen how broken normal is now.

I hope you have a bright, happy, and hopeful 2021 too.

2020: Looking Forward

2019 was my brave year and I worked hard to keep at that. I don’t want to let that momentum die but calling 2020 another brave year would take some of the special from how hard I worked to make that one word matter so much to me this past year. I went in search of a new word and found two instead. 2020 will be my year of persistence and resilience, a silver lining kind of year.

 

Ain’t Nothing Gonna Break My Stride

 

 

My goals this year are simple. Create – whether it’s books, short stories, poems, art, or crafty things, preferably, it’ll be some of each. Learn – I have a very long list of things I want to learn how to do this year. I might not get to all of them but it won’t be for lack of trying. I still plan to work on my health stuff but that’s not really a goal anymore, that’s self-preservation and completely unavoidable. I’m really looking forward to my first rheumy appointment of the year because something’s got to change. I need to be able to actually do stuff without ending my day in a puddle of ouch under the electric blanket (though my dog really seems to like that last part). I have some finished books I’d love to see find a home, same with short stories and poems. I have some crafty things I hope to find homes for too. Most importantly, I don’t want to lose the momentum from the bulk of 2019 (December not included as I pretty well took the month off).

Looking forward, I think this year will be a good year for me – full of growth and hopefully a smattering of success across all facets of my life. I hope it will be the same for all of you as well. Ain’t nothing gonna slow us down.

2019 Wrap Up

End of year posts always make me look forward to beginning of year posts. I like shiny and new things and I’d rather look forward than back. At the start of this year, I decided it would be my brave year and I’ve kept to it a lot of the time, even when it was very uncomfortable for me to do so. What feels brave to me is probably most people’s tuesday so I’m not going to crow about actually peopling on multiple occasions. I had a LOT of rejections this year and only a handful of acceptances but those acceptances meant a lot to me (one of my favorite stories is coming out in February or March sometime from Breaking Rules Publishing in their Horror anthology so keep your eyes open for All the Pretty Janes!).

My goals for this year actually came through pretty well. I wanted to write two new novels – I wrote one new one, fiddled with three, and rewrote an older one (that is now pretty amazing). I wanted to write 12 new short stories and I managed more like 8 brand new ones but also 5 reworked and un-trunked shorts. I wanted to write about 24 new poems and I definitely did that but most of them will probably never see the light of day.

I did some more crafty events and self-published my poetry collection. I worked on a lot of things that it’ll take time to see returns on – the publishing industry is only fast when you do it yourself which is not my goal for these projects.

Health wise, I’m still the same weight and actually hurting more than I was last year but I’m doing my level best to still get as much as I can done. I figure I’m still in good shape though as I don’t need my cane all the time or even but rarely – just when I’m standing for long periods.

I’ve read some great books this year and am in the process of reading two more and then I have a book to review that my brain has been too mushy to do – but that’s what January is for! After Christmas I’ll work on my goals for 2020 and they probably won’t be too terribly far off from the goals for this year. And after Christmas I’ll share my mama-made presents for the kids this year – both of them turned out really freakin neat and I’m getting super antsy for christmas to see if the kids think so too.

Writing Wednesday: Goals and Accountability

A lot of people approach a new year with lofty goals and a list of things they want to do but many times, those lists and goals have floundered by week three or been completely forgotten by week 8. It’s most obvious in places like gyms where the sudden influx of people thins out observably. I have zero experience with that but my husband does the gym thing very regularly and he’s always a little annoyed the first few weeks of the year when his gym has too many people even at 5am.

I have the daily goal of 1500 words per day but there’s no one who will know, notice, or care if I flub it for three weeks straight (as I have through all of December). Sometimes I have a very hard time keeping myself accountable when there’s no real consequence for not keeping to my goals. When I have accountability in the form of deadlines, I do better (at least as long as I can actually type). Even posting here to the blog isn’t really any sort of accountability. I do miss my Dad a lot at times like these as he would often text me and ask me how many words I’d written that day.
When you’re setting goals, it is all too easy to set these big lofty goals – write five books, publish 80 short stories, lose 50 pounds – but if you do that often enough, you’re going to get discouraged. Even if you KNOW you’re setting an improbable goal, not reaching it is a blow. I did this exact thing for years and my confidence suffered greatly for it. Hell, I’m still suffering the effects of it.

Sarah’s Rules for Goals:

1. Make them attainable. Many small goals can be better for the psyche than a few lofty, hard to reach ones.
2. Do not make goals of things you can’t control. If attaining your goal is dependant on the actions or opinions of someone else, it’s more of a wish than a goal.
3. Make your goals measurable. It’s a lovely thing to want to write more but what exactly is more? Give yourself an actual number or page count or even by chapter but make it something you can track and measure and not a whispy idea of a goal.
4. Celebrate each small goal when you’ve achieved it. Every long journey is made up of small steps. Sometimes we get so lost in the big picture that we forget how awesome it is that we’ve made it this far (I am especially guilty of this!). This is especially effective if you have no accountability except to yourself.

Tips on Accountability:

1. Find an accountability partner who understands your goals and whose goals you understand so you can help each other better and touch base frequently.
2. Reward yourself for reaching goals. I find that negative reinforcement doesn’t work nearly as well for me as positive reinforcement so, treat yourself to that cake or that prize when you’ve reached your goal and you’ll be more likely to hold yourself to a greater standard.

I’d love to hear your opinions and ideas on this too!

Looking Forward to 2019

I’m planning on keeping 2019 all about one thing – Forward Motion. It might take all I can muster somedays but so long as I manage a few words, a few steps, whatever forward motion I can find on a day, I’m going to call it a success. I know me well enough to know that I’m going to fail a few days and that’s ok so long as I don’t have too many of them in a row. There are so many things I would like to do this year, like every year.

Writing Goals: 2 new books, 12 short stories, 24 poems. One passion project that should run here on this blog every other Friday I think and I’m really hoping you all enjoy it too! If things go well, maybe this year will see a bit more of Leilani’s story. That’s my hope in any case. I’m not going to do the word counting this year though last year I did a really great job of it for 10 and a half months, it didn’t turn out to be quite the spur I needed. Certainly, I’m hoping for a good acceptance rate for my submissions but I don’t really control that part so much so that doesn’t really make for a good goal.

Health Goals: Find a medicine that works so I’m not hurting as often. Lose some weight. It would be better if I could force myself to stop worrying so much about the shape of me but some things are just ingrained at this point but, finding a way to not eat my feelings would be a good start.

Life Goals: The hard part about goals is the accountability thing – I’m not really accountable to anyone. I don’t have a 9-5 where I’m held accountable by an employer. I’m horrible at keeping myself accountable and that’s something I need to get better at. I think keeping myself accountable will be a big goal of mine this year. I’d like to really be more productive in general – with the etsy shop, the writing, and most definitely the promoting (I’m not always great at that part!).

I’m hoping that 2019 will bring good things in greater volume than 2018 did and certainly everything has been a step up from 2017 so there is that!

2018 Is Just About Over

And I am so glad but it’s not quite done yet. Before it does finish out, there’s still a few days and during those few days, Hunter’s Crossing, Christmas In Bear Ridge, and Eldercynne Rising are all currently on sale on Smashwords starting at $1.25. It’s the perfect time to give my books a try if you haven’t yet!

By the end of every year, I’m glad to see it go. Part of it is that I look at the new year like a great big shiny new notebook that still smells like clean paper. It’s clean and new and shiny and has all the potential to be the best one ever. Sometimes the previous year was just really that awful. It happens but not nearly as often as it seems in my end of year posts. This year maybe wasn’t as productive or successful a year as I’d like to see but a lot of that is my health – I’ve spent a chunk of the year struggling to type, I had a pretty big bump in my depression this year that I don’t think I’m really out of just yet actually, and I’m finding that the medication is working a bit less effectively lately so I’m hoping January brings some changes and some relief. It’s nowhere near as bad as it what but sometimes, at the end of the day, it’s all I can do to crawl into bed and even my very light down comforter is so heavy on my feet that I can’t find a comfortable place.

I did write two books this year – one of them being Christmas In Bear Ridge and the other I’m working on polishing up but I hope next year sees the sequel to Hunter’s Crossing coming out. I did start sending out poems and short stories again, which is nice. I had one big acceptance for a DnD expansion book that was a LOT of fun. I wrote some poems this year that I think are better than anything I’ve done in a long time and I should be hearing back on soon.

I lost my Cas this year and I miss him a lot but I’m comforted some that he came home to me to say goodbye instead of doing what cats tend to do. As sick as he was, he came home so I would know and so I could help him. That means more than I have words to explain.

My favorite thing this year was the look on my oldest child’s face when the tour guide opened up the very real secret passage in the House of Seven Gables. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anyone as excited as he was in that moment. He was a child again for that quick climb up and it was absolutely marvelous. It wasn’t a thing that could be bought or repeated but it was the most amazing moment.

 

Writing Wednesday: The Importance of Goals

Today is the first of August already! Since that’s the case, I’m going to make my Writing Wednesday Post and my July Wrap Up and August Goals the same post as they feed off each other a little bit. There are two sorts of goals: the big, long-term goals and the short, attainable goals. These are good for any step in life and essential for knowing what you want. Not every writer wants to be published or make a career out of their writing.

My long-term goals are absolutely to make a career out of my writing. I want to be able to help put my kids through college and retired to Salem (or some other pretty ocean community but the ocean is key here). My goal is to make a career out of it, my wish is to be award winning and well reviewed. I consider goals to be things that I can control and wishes to be things I can’t really control at all. I know what I want to accomplish with my writing so I can set my short-term and annual goals to reflect that. If I didn’t know where I wanted to end up, setting small goals would be a lot more like spitting in the wind. Goals should be measurable, attainable, and, to some extent, controllable. A lot of people mistake wishes for goals. I have a very long list of life wishes to go along with my very short list of life goals.

Short-term goals are easier. Writing so many stories in a month, losing so much weight in a month, finishing so many poems in a month or a year. With the right spreadsheet, they’re super easy to track also. I sometimes have a hard time holding myself accountable to my goals but I’ve gotten a lot better at it this year. In some ways, I think my health issues have made me really look at what I want to accomplish in my life and really start working at it. Perhaps it really was a bit of the kick in the ass that I needed.

I didn’t have much in the way of goals last month because I needed to get Christmas in Bear Ridge finished, which I did. I also got it accepted and contracted and it should be coming out this winter from Boroughs Publishing Group! I missed 7 days of writing one of which was a health day as I could not type much yesterday, I had the best writing day I’ve had in years the day before that though clocking a massive 6804 words on the day, and I had a total of 24897 words which was a few thousand better than June. I’m back to working on Hunter’s Hell and I got a new idea that I’m going to tackle maybe for Nanowrimo this year. I sent out four submissions, including Bear Ridge and two queries, got one rejection, one acceptance, made 4 art pieces, made 4 sales over at my revamped Etsy shop (now: The Crow and Dragon) and put up a few new things with more to come. It’s been a really good month. I didn’t lose any weight but I think we might finally be getting back to human functionality. Again, it’s been a really good month for writing.

I peopled a lot at the beginning of the month for my father-in-law’s birthday and got to see a lot of people we rarely see which was nice. But I lost my kitty-baby a few days after. It’s weird not to have my Cas perched on the windowsill when I’m doing dishes or looking at me like I’m a lunatic when I have my kitty-ear headphones on. My dad‘s birthday was yesterday, too. He would have been 70. It’s been a much less good month for the personal side of things.

In August, I’d love to double that word count but I don’t see that happening until the kids get back to school so I’m going to put the goal at 30,000 words, 6 submissions, and 6 art pieces. I know that’s doable.

What are your goals? When you think about what you want to do with your writing, where you want to go with it, where do you see yourself in ten years? Twenty? How do you get from where you are now to where you want to be? Roads are always a little easier with a map, aren’t they?

May Wrap Up, June Goals

How on Earth did it get to be June already? This year is going by much too fast. The kids are nearly finished with school which will make getting any real work done a little more difficult but not impossible. I’m planning on getting Bear Ridge completely finished by July. I did manage to get the Zero Draft finished and now it’s a matter of taking the bones and making them flesh and teach them to dance. Hopefully, it’ll be as good as it I think it will.

It’s been a relatively great month overall. I don’t really have any good news to share yet but I’m hopeful for some of that in the next few months. I didn’t quite make my goals for this month but there was definitely an improvement. I made 5 separate artsy things (2 of which went up on NestingDragon), I sent out 5 submissions (a very long way from my old totals but I’m wading in instead of jumping), I only missed 8 days, I went to 1 convention, attended 1 performance of my oldest child in Footloose, voted in local and primary stuff, and I wrote 25,196 words, up about 5000 from last month which makes me happy and I’m over 120,000 words for this year so far. I’m still not meeting my daily word count goals but it’s getting better every month and I’m more than ok with that.

On the health front, I think I’m getting closer to having it either under control or adjusting to the pain enough to work through it. I went hiking and my problems were more about my utter lack of fitness than my RA which is both awesome and awful. I know this last year has been really hard as far as getting moving so I’m trying not to be too hard on myself but it’s also really hard to get that fat-fairy in my head to shut her mouth – you know the one that reminds me I’m still fat because that’s a thing that can change overnight /s. I figure, once the kids are out of school, we can go to the park a few times a week and walk around for a while because I much prefer walking through the woods to walking on the sidewalk – it’s so much nicer on my feet, ankles, knees, and hips. Plus, there’s shade. I’ll get where I need to be eventually.

It’s harder to keep goals in the summer on the writing front and right now, it’s not about the word count so much as it is about getting the book done well and right. Edits don’t add a lot of words usually. They will a bit this time around while I’m adding flesh but my only goal for next month is to finish Christmas in Bear Ridge and get it right, clean and pretty, and readable so I can get it turned in. I’m not worried about the art, the crafting, or learning to use GIMP (though I’ll take any links or tips and tricks on that for after the book is done). In the end, June won’t be a letter grade sort of month but a pass/fail. I either get it done or I don’t.

Accountability has always helped me stay on track, that’s why I keep making these posts. By writing up my goals and my successes and failures, it gives me the motivation to do better, to keep striving a little harder to get it done. Hope you all have a happy and productive June!

April Wrap Up and May Goals

Happy May!

So, April wasn’t exactly as productive as I’d wanted it to be but I did take some time off to recharge a little and I’m still having memory issues so, I’m not actually disappointed in myself. In fact, I’m pretty happy with myself.

Submissions sent in April: 2

Total words written in April: 20056

Days missed: 12

Art projects completed: 1

I might have more missed days than last month and fewer words but I have more submissions sent, more art finished, and I went to a convention and had a few family days in there too. Maybe I’m not where I want to be but it’s still more than it could be!

Goals for May: I’d like to double that word count. Actually, I’d like to double all the things except for the days missed, that one I’d like to halve. I also have an upcoming interview, figuring out this summer’s craft fair schedule (I’m definitely doing at least one!), and other neat and interesting things. I’m going to end up with another category that I’m not sure exactly how I’m going to quantify – it’s art but it’s different than my crafty art, it’s something else and I hope to do some really interesting things with it. But I don’t want to talk about it too much before I figure out if I can actually do it well enough to show it off.

Health wise, I’m doing pretty good. I have one foot that just always hates me but the rest of me is getting really good at compensating for that foot (and I have a really neat cane for when I can’t). My levels are leveling out but not quite where they’re supposed to be yet. We’re giving it a few more weeks before adding or changing stuff. I hope it just settles out. I don’t want to get used to a whole new set of side effects when the worst I have now is the memory issues (as long as I’m drinking enough water anyway).