50k words and I feel like I'm dancing on Sunshine!

          This week, I managed to hit 50k on my novel! I must admit, I am damn impressed. It's a lot more than a month, but I am quite comfortable in the knowledge that I am only able to keep up that level of writing over a smaller period of time and that I need a break afterward. If I sound to you like I'm justifying, I am, slightly. I feel bad that I can't seem to keep up that level of writing on a permanent basis. In the meantime, I'm left not reaching my goals. On the other hand, today helps to remind me that even if I'm taking more time than others or even more time than I want. It may take me longer but I'm still getting there.

          One thing I did have to remind myself and accept was that I am not writing to reach a certain number of words, but that I'm trying to tell a story. Somewhere along the way, I forgot that and then I started looking at my novel and realizing that I probably don't have enough story there to reach 70,000 words. It was hard, but I eventually reminded myself that it was the story that mattered, not the word count.

          After coming to terms with this, I realized I probably only have another 12,000 to 15,000 words left on this novel. I'm so close! I'm sorta hoping that I will be able to make it before the end of the month. I'd love to start off April with a week of intense reading and then starting to edit and making my novel bible for the first book. I'll keep you updated either way! 

What I've Been Up, Two

          Hey everybody, I have a novel update to chat about today!

The idea for the character Kuzunoha first came from a character I made for a roleplaying game. Here is the mini I painted for her. The sword is way too long for a wakizashi though.

    

          Since I'm hoping to publish the first Kitsune-Ken book later this year, I knew I'd have to get on writing the next volumes since this is going to be a series. The first book follows Kuzunoha Tanami, the bastard daughter of a rich merchant family, while she works to find independence from her sister, going on a very literal treasure hunt to find it.

          The second book continues with the same characters (though with a few new viewpoints added), as they leave their home town of Hidalgo for the city of Kevettika, the capital of the neighbouring country Kessel, where some documents found in the last book suggest that the Tanami family may still kin living there. 

          Of course, all of your favourite characters will still be there. Jocelyn, Richard, Salla, Skylla, Himiko, Kuzunoha, and you'll find new characters to know and love!

          So, why am I writing the second book before I've even edited the first book, and more importantly, why am I taunting you with updates about it when you can't even go out and buy the first book yet? 

          Well, I knew that I would need at least two to three months between writing a book and editing it. I didn't want to leave the characters without doing anything with them for that long and I didn't want you to have to wait double that for the sequel
. Thus, writing the second book and then editing the first, followed by writing the third, then editing the second and so on and so forth. As soon as I've edited it, I'm going to send it to a professional editor and then set a date for publishing. At that point, I'll begin looking into covers and all the rest, while doing any changes that I need to make as suggested by the editor.

          As for the second part of the question? Well, that should be obvious. I taunt you because I'm a writer... and that's sort of our schtick. 

          Keep an eye out for updates, and the occasional rocking scene here.

What I've Been Up To (Part One)

          It has been too long since I was last here! Which, unfortunately, is what happens when you get sick and are sure that you must have updated just before you got sick... Bleh. I must admit, most times I get sick, I just get a bit annoyed for a day or two as my muscles all ache and I don't get enough sleep. This time, I was actually laid out for a day and the only reason I didn't end up taking time of work was that I was able to hold off until my I-Day came up.

          Enough about me being sick though, since that isn't a fun conversation. Lets do an update! I've been writing, pretty darn consistently this year. I did end up having to lower down my weekly goals though. I had originally set myself up for 10k a week, which while awesome, was way too much to sustain while holding down a full-time job.

          Your mileage will vary, since we all write at different speeds, but I looked at how I was feeling at the end of the first week and I was miserable and behind in my count. So, I did the adult thing and looked at changing my goal to something more reasonable. I finally settled on 7k a week. A thousand words a day is still challenging while being reachable. If I'm truly on the ball, I can do 1k in an hour generally... but lets face it, much more often, it will take me double that or maybe even triple that on a super bad day.

          I know many friends of mine will look at that goal and think, "Wow, so low?" but the truth is that I am a really slow writer. And this is about creating a schedule I can follow and achieve my goals while this reaching. This weekly amount, does it.

This is a picture I drew years ago. She came from the idea of a kitsune onmyiodo dressed like a miko.

          Just to let you guys know where I'm standing right now, my new novel that I'm working on (Kitsune-Ken II; the sequel to the book I wrote for Nanowrimo - more about the plot for the new book later as well) is currently at 21,224 words. Since today is January 23th, I should hit 23,000 today. As you can see, I'm still a bit behind, but I'm going to try to get myself completely caught up today! I'll let you know in my next post if I succeed!

          This blog post is going a little bit long, so I'll cut off here and do the rest of my updates in a future post (probably on Wednesday). Until then, tell me how your goals are going? Are you holding to your resolutions?

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!