The Plan for the Next Month or So

It took just a little over two months to complete, but I'm finally done. Lord's Curse has been set back to my editor with all the changes that needed to be made settled in and I have to say that I'm really pleased with the way the story is going now. I knew there was a problem with the beginning when I sent it to her, but I couldn't see where. Now, the story is a hell of a lot tighter and way more awesome. I don't know how long it will take her to edit it, but I am looking forward to the break in editing.

What am I doing in the meantime? Well, the first thing on my docket is also the least writerly. The last month I started dropping off cleaning my office and in the last two weeks stopped cleaning in favour of editing altogether, other than the small things that I needed to do to keep my house functional. The end result is that my office had turned into a pigs sty. I had no less than 7 totes of random stuff sitting stuffed around my office, all filled with junk that just needed to be out of the way right then and every single surface that I can put things on has been stacked and packed with no rhyme or reason. Add to that the fact that my office cleaning had been put off from last year when I first brought up the desk from downstairs to be my new art desk and you're most of the way there. 

Not my office... though the amount of books is nearly correct. 

At this rate, it will take a few days of going through everything, deciding what's staying and what's going before I everything is at the level I want it organized. Let me know if you want a walk-through after it's all done. I can totally do pictures and set that all up for you. 

Other than that, I have a few writing things I'm working on. I have a short story my hubby requested of me, about a villain getting betrayed by his evil friends. I have book four of the Kitsune-Ken series to finish. I probably won't finish that before I get my novel back. I'm expecting to finish it during the Camp Nano writer event in April. The other thing I'm doing is these blogs and the technical writing for the Lord's Curse. I need a back cover copy, a few different ways to write it for advertising and all that. If I manage to get on a roll and all of that gets finished, I'll start working on either editing my novelette I finished a year and a half ago. Or maybe start editing book 3 and planning book 5... It feels like those will be so far in the future that I don't want to spend too much time figuring out what's up. 

Besides which, all of it could change in just a few minutes as soon as I get my novel back. The important things are to have the back cover copy and a few of the adverts ready for when I get it back. As soon as Lord's Curse is back in my hands, this is the final edit aside from the proofreading one, so everything will get put aside for it again. 

Either way, I'll keep you updated on where I am with getting that book out to you. 

Business Planning

The worst thing about September is that the cool weather starts coming in and when you're already stressed, you catch bugs every week or so. Last week, I caught a minor one that didn't do much more than kill my concentration. This week, I caught something that has taken me out for two days.

Thus, I'm a bit behind on my numbers. To get back on track, I'm updating my business plan for the next four days.

I have mentioned my business plan, yes? Basically, it's just me writing down what my goals are for the year. I write them in loose strokes, and the closer I get, the more I refine them. This month, my goal is 15,000 words, 1 short story, 8 blog posts and quite a lot of editing, 4 short stories and my novel.

As I mentioned I'm a bit behind on my writing, 2,301 words worth, as of this morning. I have finished my short story of the month, a little vignette for my husband called Nala's Tale, a story about one of his characters slaves in our Pathfinder (evil) game. So, I have just over 4k to do, in four days. Even sick, I can try to do 1,000 a day. The whole reason for leaving my current daily word count at 500 is so that if I fall a bit behind, I can still play catch up, after all.

On the blogging front, I have only completed five blog posts, if you count this one, which is a bit short of the eight I wanted. On the other hand, I should get one more this month and that will bring it up to six. Still lower than I'd like, so I'll have to try harder for next month.

The last thing on my business plan is editing. Normally, I try to separate out editing months and writing months, but I decided to put the two together this month and see how it worked out. The first thing on my list was editing my novel. I'm not done it, but since only one person has gotten back to me with comments so far, I'm taking that off my list and will move it into October. The other editing I wanted to get done was four short stories, I have looked over 2 of them and am halfway through editing one. Both of the other ones I looked at need a nearly complete rewrite, which may become a task for next month, but I should be able to finish the one story I'm halfway done before the end of the month.

So, what have I learned? Well, mostly that I need to either up my word count, or lower my editing amount, while I figure out how to increase my speed. Part of that speed will come as I do it more often. Part of that will be higher when my tendinitis isn't acting up and I don't have any sick days. However, I prefer to leave room in my plan for life to butt its nose in and mess everything up. It saves me from some of the guilt of not meeting goals since at least some of it(like my novel not being edited) was really beyond my control.

Do you have monthly goals? How do you keep track of them?