Do You Want to Read an Update? It Isn't Just an Update...

          Wow, I did not realize that ten days had passed since my last post. I should have, but this cold I caught has driven me to the brink of exhaustion. So, I apologize for that. I'm finally getting better and so I figured I should really get on with my next post. Which is part self-congratulations and part gift from me to you.

          First off, a quick update on my plans from now to the end of the year. My novel has been self-edited and sent to my beta-readers. First responses have been overall positive, with one asking me flat-out when the sequel would be ready. I'm hoping to have full comments from them in the next day or so which will allow me to go through it once more before I send it to a professional editor to go over.

          Yes, I have arranged for time with an editor for Hunter in early November. I don't know how long that process will take overall, but given any chance, I'm hoping to have it out and available for Christmas this year. It will depend on a lot of factors and with this being my first time going through the process, I could be severely underestimating the time needed for it. In any event, as soon as I have news on that front, I'll let you know. I'm hoping to give you as much time as possible to get excited for its release before it comes out!

          I will also be working on a new novel for Nanowrimo, the third book in my Kitsune-Ken series (I wrote the second earlier this year). I'm expecting it to be another 65-75k words, so I'll probably have to finish it in December (though I'll be a Nano-rebel and start it early if I have it ready before November 1rst).

          For those of you planning on doing Nanowrimo with me, I got bored a few months ago and put this together.

          The picture is from Frozen, though I'm uncertain of who originally created this version. If you find out, please let me know so I can attribute it correctly. You can customize it pretty much however you want to match your total, the year or whatever. My idea was to use it as a single sheet to keep you motivated since you update it daily. Really however you decide to use it, just have fun.

2016 Goals

          2016 is right around the corner and I really want to talk about my goals this year... mainly because I think I've got them figured out. It took me a while since I needed to do revisions on it, but I finally figured out a very simple way of doing my goals for the year. I took a free excel calendar of 2016, and added three columns to the side of it. Because I am a whiz at naming things (see, sarcasm) I have titled each of these exactly what they are; Period Goals, Weekly Goal Expected and Weekly Goal Obtained.

          My period goals are the big things I'm looking to accomplish and how long I want to spend on them. Things like writing new novels, editing those novels and such. I have stuck to working on one project at a time, since in general that works a lot better for me. I can do the base checks of other stuff, but this way I know what I want to concentrate on at any given time. From there, I split up my base goals into sometime obtainable in a week. I could do these things faster, however, working a full time job can sometimes be the death of us so I've decided to make a modest goal that keeps me working and stretching without killing myself trying to make insane gains. I can adjust these week by week during that time as well, so if I can a killer week and write 17,000 words, I can scale down the following weeks to account for that. I can also do the opposite to cover for horrible weeks where say

I get sick and am only able to edit 10 pages instead of 25.

          Either way, I will have the Weekly Goal Obtained to show me how well I did. If I hit my benchmark for that week, I'm going to make it green as well as adding in my number. If I knock the ball out of the park, I can put it in a glorious light blue or something. If I didn't make my goal but was close I can make it yellow or if I failed utterly I can make it red. I can also put my excuses in there... an explanation of why I did miserably so I can tell later if that was valid and I need to account for it next year or if it was a one off that I need to count in the "sh*t happens" folder.

          And that essentially is my calendar for the year. Have you ever tried to work out Year-In-Advance? Do you find it helps you at all? If you don't, how do you decide what you're working on and when? Let me know in the comments, below!