S.M. Butler's Blog, page 35

I’ve been going under a drastic reformation these last few months. I started the 365 series, which I haven’t been posting on anymore, but I’m continuing to blog so I’m not too worried about it. Especially since Mondays are dedicated to much the same material, but in a more cohesive and coherent format. And hopefully people get something out of it.

The biggest part of my reformation has been financial. I’ve been living well out of my means and suffering through anemic bank accounts for a long time now, close to three years. So I’m going to talk about money for a few weeks. Basically, I want to help people not get to the point I was at, and realize that a little budgeting goes a long way. Now, I’m nowhere near financial stable yet, but I’m better.

I’ve been doing Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover the last few months. It’s been frustrating, because it’s not a quick fix. It’s a gradual process, so slow I didn’t realize things were changing.

So here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to be making a budget and sticking to it. We’re going to be organizing our lives so it’s not a huge mess anymore. And by we, I mean me, but it’s always nicer to include folks. Feel free to follow along on your own blog too. Just stop by and let me know, because I might learn something too.

The first thing we have to do is get organized. As soon as I have my Home Management Binder all situated, I’ll do a post on that, but right now, it’s still in the learning phase. I haven’t figured out what I need and what I don’t need yet. So I’m gonna use it and play with it over the next six months until I feel like it’s been tweaked and is working the best for me. In the meantime, I suggest checking out A Bowl of Lemons’ blog post on the home management binder.

The first thing we have to do is get all our things together in one spot. This may include:

Pay stubs or royalty statements
Receipts
Bills (including the paperless billing info)
Debt information (credit cards, loans, ect.)
Bank statements

Now find yourself a nice little workspace. Putting my binder together took about four hours to do. I have the following tabs on my Binder:

Calendar
Schedule
Finances
Blogging
Writing
Graphic Design
Cleaning
Menu Plans

You might have others. You might not have the same as I do. I wanted an all in one place for my life management. This means, my home life, my graphic design business, my publishing business, my blogging, budgets, everything is all in one spot to make it easier for me. And I do need easy. If it’s not easy, I run the risk of losing interest in it and I just can’t afford that anymore.

Image Copyright 2012 Suzan Butler

Next week, now that we’ve got our Home Management Binder under control, we will delve a little deeper into organizing our lives.

We’ll start with financials, because that’s where I’m weakest. We’re going to work with something called a “zero balance budget.” It means that every penny on that paycheck is allocated toward something, whether it be bills, gas money, groceries, or movie night. It’s all accounted for.

But more on that next week.

What’s your weakness in organization? Do you live with a budget or fly by the seat of your bills? What advice would you give a person new to organization or budgeting?

Here in the US, it’s Thanksgiving. I have a lot to be thankful of. While this year has been rough for me, no one else has been there for me quite like my family and my friends. I couldn’t ask for anything better in that respect. I look on this year with mixed feelings.

One the one hand, it’s been one of my worst. I’ve had to deal with paying for school, being unemployed, dealing with rejections from submitted work, and my grandfather’s failing health, and my grandmother’s failing mind.

On the other hand, I still have my family and friends. I know that if I fall, one of them will catch me. Who could ask for more?

So this year, my mother is not cooking. It’s the first time in a few years, but my brother’s new wife wanted to use their brand new kitchen to cook Thanksgiving dinner this year. My mom, I think, is excited to take somewhat of a break. She did cook about three or four pies though.

Anyway, it’s a short post today because I can’t quite put into words how I’m feeling this year. I’m thankful and I’m happy that the year is almost over. On the other hand, I’m feeling a little melancholy about it, too. So I’ll leave it, and let you draw your own conclusions.

How are you feeling this holiday? Are you thankful? Dreading time with family? Happy to be doing Thanksgiving at all this year?

Hi guys! Today’s guest is Kristyn Phipps! Give her some love!

Put Your Big Writer Pants on

I’m reading more and more about people giving up and quitting. I understand that life gets in the way and things come up that you don’t foresee coming. People are losing loved ones, family problems, work-related issues and other issues seem to be calling the writers away from their writing challenge. I hate it for them, but I understand that life happens and it gets in the way.

But for those of us that just don’t feel like writing – we aren’t in the mood – need to put on our big writer pants and keep going! We have a story to tell, and if allow something like our feelings and moods to determine when we write, we may never get the story written. I’m a perfect example of this.

I, too, have lost my writer bug. She buzzed into my life about the beginning of August. She kept begging me to write, and I couldn’t because it wasn’t November. She kept giving me ideas and I kept taking notes. However, by this past week, the bug got so tired of telling me to write, she stopped buzzing at me. I could give up – that would be so much easier – and go back to my mundane life. However, that’s not what November is about. I have a story to tell, and I have to write it.

As a writer, I have a duty to myself and my story to see the writing project all the way through. Even if I don’t meet the 50,000 word count, I have to write what I can. Some times you just have to overlook your feelings, and do what you have to do. As a parent, I don’t always want to watch cartoons with my kids. To be honest, Jem, Strawberry Shortcake and My Little Pony are getting on my nerves. But I have to put on my mommy shirt and endure what I don’t like to spend time with my kids, which I love to do.

Life is full of choices, and each of those choices bring consequences. Good choices yield good consequences; bad choices yield bad consequences. Being a writer is full of choices – our entire writing careers are built on the choices we make. NaNo is a personal project. It’s all about you – it’s not for anyone else. You aren’t getting paid to write this, but the benefits of finishing your writing project could benefit you later on if you can get it edited and published.

If you give up on your own dreams, who will finish it? Even if some of our NaNo writers stop writing for November, don’t stop writing. You will always wonder what you could have done with it.

 ~~~

Kristyn Phipps is the ML for NC::Elsewhere Region. Recently published in Life Lessons from Teachers, she’s now working on a new novella, By Accident. You can visit her personal website www.kristynphipps.com or her Facebook page www.facebook.com/kristynmphipps.

Today we’ve got Elise VanCise on the blog talking about NaNoWriMo. With more than half of the month under our belts, you may be looking for ways to boost that wordcount. Let Elise tell you how to do it.

5 Ways to boost your word count…. Without cheating

by Elise VanCise

Let’s talk about 5 ways to boost your word count…. Without cheating. The daily word count needed to reach is 1,667 words. That doesn’t seem like an unreasonable amount of words to write in an entire day. (Are they crazy? )  But there are days that life will interfere with our lofty noveling goals. Try one of these when your fingers start to slow.

1. Sprinting

Meet up with the other Wrimos in person or online and see who can write the most words in a set amount of time. Most sprints are 10-20 minutes long. This is great for a tweet-up. You’ll be amazed at how many words you can get down with a couple hours of sprinting. Not to mention the fun!

2. Long Lost Friend /Relative

If you feel your scene is dragging or you just can’t get those words out. Try having your character run into an old friend or relative while they’re out and about. Or even a phone call from them. You can add tons of words as they reminisce about old times or that Thanksgiving when Aunt Mable’s cat ate the stuffing. Even if it’s something you may edit out in the next draft, it will breathe some new life into your muse and pad that count!

3. Disaster Strikes

A hurricane heading in, a freak F5 tornado, earthquake, flood, a 3-10 car pile up. Any one of these can add at least a couple of pages worth of wordiness. You have the before, during, and effects after that might even bring out some qualities you didn’t know your characters had.

4. Kill’em

Let’s face it. Death is wordy. Not matter how or who gets bumped off you’ve gotten at least 4 scenes off a corpse turning up. The death itself, the discovery, the aftermath, and the funeral, lots and lots of words.

5. Use Your Senses

You have 5 senses taste, touch, scent, sight, sound. Every single environment your characters walk into, or crash into in some cases, holds each of these elements just waiting for you to detail them. A car crash could have the scent of smoke and gasoline in the air. They would see broken glass, dented and crushed cars, hear someone crying for help or a siren approaching, maybe a car horn. Taste blood from a gash, or if gas is thick in the air it will leave a taste on your tongue. They may feel the ache of injury or the rough edges or the broken plastic of the dash. Talk about filling the pages, just let your nose guide you…. Literally.

Okay there you have it 5 ways to get wordy and pad that word count. Now who’s ready to meet up in the 50k Winner’s Circle?

About Elise

Elise VanCise, freelance photojournalist and award winning author, published in both print and digital media. Elise is a Florida Cracker, with a love for adventure and historic places. NaNoWriMo Municipal Liaison for Lake County, Florida, Founder of Lake Writers of Lake County, Florida. Advocate for Public Libraries, Young Writers, Autism, COPD

Where you can find Elise:

Gladiator’s Pen Blog http://gladiatorspen.blogspot.com
Official Site http://elisevancise.webs.com
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/EliseVanCise
Twitter http://twiter.com/elisevancise

 

Running a little late on the update today, but I was up until about 3am writing. It was glorious. But then I slept in until almost ten this morning, which was also glorious, but now I’m feeling slightly hungover.

BUT… On to the goals, so I know what to work on this week.

Writing

I’ve been working almost exclusively on Off Her Game, which I now have slated for a March/April release date. This is basically to give me time to get things in order and not have to rush to upload like I did for O Christmas Three. Not that I didn’t do all I could for O Christmas Three, I did. But I did it twice as fast as I normally do and was super stressed to get it released on time.

But if I release Off Her Game in March/April timeframe, this gives me time to get the second book done by late summer, and the third by winter. That’s the plan. Not sure if it will work but that’s the plan. I also have a few other projects to sprinkle in there so we’ll see how it works out.

Last night was the local all night NaNoWriMo write-in. I wrote until 3am when i started nodding off. Then I checked my wordcount and realized it was 37,000 words short. Panicking, I checked each scene in Scrivener and realized from about the fourth or fifth scene all the way to the new stuff i’d been working on, every one of them were blank. Thank goodness I make nightly backups by compiling the project into an RTF (and also saving to a Dropbox folder that syncs to three computers) because I managed to get everything back by copy and pasting the words back into their scenes, but man, what a scare. I was pretty much done writing after that. I made a new backup and then drove home from there.

Today’s lesson: Nightly backups are your friend. Your lover. Your world.

 Blogging

I love blogging. Have I mentioned that? I love talking to people here, and responding in the comments, and having a good time. I also love talking about things that I’m excited about. And I’ve sort of limited myself to just blogging about things that relate to writing, and honestly, there’s more to me than that. I have this unnatural fascination with organizational tools, I love talking about random shit, and of course, I always like to share my writing process, and how I’m changing as a writer.

Last week, I decided to do these blog memes. They aren’t anything that anyone else is doing. They’re just something for me to remember what to blog about each week. but I think that I probably won’t refer to them on the blog as the names I gave them. As long as I recognize that I shouldn’t be talking about writing on Monday. I should save that post for Saturday. And since I’m going to schedule them out a week in advance to a month in advance, I think that’s doable. I just need to remember that when i write a post, it’s not necessary to post it right then, which is what I usually want to do.

Good routines breed good habits.

Personal

One of my original goals on this section was to raise my income 15%. This week I realized that in two months, I’ve raised it 5%, so I’m feeling good about that. I’m hoping it will continue to grow as steadily as it has.

The design business is going really well, far better than I ever did as an editor. I realized this week that it was because (while I actually like story and talking craft and such) the Editor Mindset was so different and draining to be in from Writer Mindset. And it took away from that. The art work doesn’t take the same brain power as the writing does. It doesn’t share headspace like the editing did. As a result, I really enjoy it more and I think that it shows in my work.

I also uploaded a bunch of pre-made covers, stuff I just worked on when I was bored and didn’t want to write. And i have a couple of covers to add to my portfolio, but that will have to wait until after the authors give me the okay. This week, I’m working on a couple of website headers. I’m hoping I get a lot done with the holiday (Thanksgiving here in the US) but I’m not holding my breath. I’m pretty sure that it’s going to end up busy.

Alright, so I’ve talked enough. Let’s get on with this week’s list!

Write blog posts for the next week. (This will change to once a month hopefully in December. Good routines breed good habits, right?)
Write guest posts for other people. Blog tour is coming up in December for O Christmas Three. It promises to be lots of fun.
Write 15k on Off Her Game. Stay on Target and I aren’t speaking at the moment. I think the book is mad at me.
Organize desk area and surrounding book shelves.

So, busy holiday week coming up. The kids are out of school all week (and I’m not). And I still have a lot of work to do. I’m hoping I can get it all done.

Are you doing ROW80? How are your goals coming along? Keeping busy, getting things done? 

You may now be reaching that point in your novel where you’re starting to lose your grip on all the various plot strings you’ve been holding onto since November 1st. Metaphorically speaking, it’s like you’re holding onto a bouquet of helium balloons and trying desperately not to drop any of the strings before you have to hand the balloons over to someone else. But, what happens when you get to a point when you can’t remember where you were taking those friggin’ balloons? Or what if you know where you’re taking them, but can’t remember how exactly to get there?

Oh, hi! Plot block! This is where all those beautiful color-coded outlines you drew up back in October do you no damned good because your characters aren’t who you thought they would be, or you had to make some major change early on because what you originally was going to write just didn’t work for whatever reason (examples: a plot component is illegal, disobeys known laws of physics, or relies too much on suspension of disbelief.)

So, whadda ya do when you’re trying to crank out 1,666 words and can’t get over the hump? Come closer and let me whisper it to you.

In case you couldn’t hear me, here’s a transcript: skip the hump.

Yep. I’m giving you permission. If anyone calls you on it, tell them to take it up with Holley Trent. If the hump is giving you fits, quit trying to ram into it with your keyboard. Take a little literary walk right around the damned thing, (skip and throw rose petals as you pass it if you’d like), and write the end of the story. Then, after you’ve written those scenes that follow the climax, don’t go back to the gap. I don’t care how much it’s taunting you. You’re trying to crank out words, remember? Go back to page one and start identifying, tidying, removing, or improving subplots and major thematic movements.

Just trust me on this. Not only are you going to find and fix some things that no longer make sense in your story, but by the time you make it back to the gap you’ll have figured out what bit of the story was missing and needed to be told there AND you’ll have added a bunch of words to your story. Works for me every single time.

I’ve actually had to utilize this coping strategy for the past bunch of novels I’ve written. It’s easy to hit 50,000 words in a novel you think will end up with 85,000, but if you’re writing category length fiction (50k-60k words), your hump may come at 35k in as opposed to, oh, 55k in. In the work I contracted to Lyrical Press, Saint and Scholar, I had a big gaping plot hole just before the climax because my characters personalities had blossomed in a way I hadn’t predicted. So, I skipped ahead and wrote the “happily ever after” bit. That unlocked something in my brain. I started asking myself: “If that’s where they’re going to be, what little things happened to get them there that I didn’t explain well enough?”

I went back to Chapter One and started tweaking Carla and Grant’s back-stories to fit the people they had become mid-story. I molded the conflict so the ending didn’t have a resolution that came too easily.

Saint and Scholar is a 50,000-word story I finished in a total of one month (including requested revisions).

You can write a full, satisfying story in one month, I promise you. You can do it again and again. My 11/26 Crimson Romance novel My Nora took me two weeks (not including requested technical revisions). I wrote Polished Slick in a month.

You don’t have to know where your story is going. Give yourself permission to skip forward and go backward while you’re writing. Revisions happen in a straight line: not first drafts. 1,666 words. You can do it, even when you hit the hump.

~~~

Holley Trent writes sassy sensual romances set in Eastern North Carolina. She haunts Twitter regularly, but when she’s not there, you can probably find her navel gazing at her blog.

I’ve been doing a lot of discovery about myself lately, Dear Reader. What I’ve found is startling to me. My perception of what my process is and what my process actually is are actually two different things. Like opposite different.

I used to think that I made a couple passes and then I’m done. But that’s not how I work.

I was working on a cover this week. I generally tell people that we’ll do two or three mockups off the bat. Then we’ll do a couple rounds of revisions and be done with it. But I’m what I call a Tweaker.

I can do those mockups. Then when it comes to revision, I’ll do a crap ton of versions. I need active input from my client, which means they need to be ready for email. Because I will email. A lot. I did a header for a friend, and it ended up going through twenty-two versions. The cover I just did for a recent client? Eight versions. And this is after they picked the mockup they wanted.

It’s not bad that I do it this way. It’s just different than the majority of other designers.

Does it take more time?

Kinda. But I’m okay with that.

I’ve realized that my writing process is much the same. I do a massive rewrite right off the bat after the zero draft is done. Then I’ll do four or five more passes to tweak and flesh out things. I’ve tried to do Holly Lisle’s One Pass Revision thing. I’ve tried to do the traditional three-pass edit. I miss things when I do it that way.

The only way I feel like I’ve really gotten into the heart of the book, really pulled out the best story possible, is if I do a million and a half versions of it. Send it to critique partners, and then do another thousand.

Okay, so I might be exaggerating a little. But the numbers aren’t that far off.

I like the way I work. I’m just now realizing this. It’s not as streamlined as other people’s processes, but it’s mine and it’s what works for me.

So the next time someone tells you your process is wrong, but it’s working for you? Consider it, but ultimately decide what is best for you. It might be ignoring their advice. It might be taking aspects of their advice. It might be like a light bulb just popped on in your head.

It’s your process. Own it. Make it work for you.

Today I’ve got the one of the Dallas-Fort Worth Municipal Liaisons here to talk about Nano and to offer some encouraging words. Say hi to Chelsey and don’t forget to look her up on the NaNo boards! She’s kind of awesome.

Thinking about the years past when I’ve been shoulder-high in the crap-pile that was my “novel” around this time in November, I was often embarrassed by all of the clichés, the boring dialogue, and the unimaginative characters. I had to force myself to keep stumbling blindly to those 50,000 words. Here are a few things I’ve done in the past to keep myself motivated…

1. Say you are stuck trying to figure out how to get jittery ADHD Perfectionist Pharmacist Sally to fall salaciously in love with the over-bearing Football-watching lazy Diabetes patient, Marcus. You need them to get together, you need this great scene, but you just don’t know how to get there. Don’t give up. Write the scene that you are six-year-old-child-on-Christmas-morning excited to write first, as opposed to writing the scene that chronologically comes first. Yes, this can be quite a problem when it comes to the editing process. But that’s not what matters now, what matters is just releasing those words. Write about that life-altering, burnt-amber-&-lavender sunset of an awkward first kiss, before you write about the romance leading up to it. Write that scene that excites you, and it might be your guide to all of the other stuff before it. Or maybe you will realize you don’t even need stuff before it.

2. Pretend your genre is Revenge Thriller – you’ve been doing an immaculate job of giving your evil villain that perfect balance between meanness and misunderstood, and you’ve gotten your once child-like and gentle lead character pissed off enough to kick an adorable kitten down a flight of stairs. You’ve got all the pencils sharpened, but you are bored as hell because everything is going as planned…take a break and add in a scene that makes no sense for your novel… (For me it was an overly erotic sex scene), don’t be afraid to write whatever you feel you need to just to keep those words flooding out. One lonely night of one NaNo year, I was extremely upset, so I used one evening of writing to use my novel as a sieve for my emotions (Yes, it was basically an angsty teenage journal entry). In the end, I decided to incorporate the day’s writing into my character’s development. It was a great way to relieve the stress in my life, while simultaneously getting those NaNo words on paper.  Write whatever you need to. It might end up creating a whole new genre, who knows?

3. BAH, schooling has always taught me that three points are always necessary. Cheers to the unconventional!

Basically, I just hope you have fun with it, no matter what. Don’t feel the need to keep your novel going in the direction your inner novel-writing GPS has mapped out for it to go – if you allow it to take a windy dirt road, sometimes that’s when it gets gritty & more awesome than you ever could have imagined. Let it be you. That’s what has always kept me writing; let your novel be whatever you need it to be.

You might be behind in word count, or you might be ahead right now, either way – I want you to be sure to pat yourself on the back.

(Seriously, do it right now, no one is watching.)

What you’ve done so far has been amazing. Great job! I hope to see you at the finish line.

My name is Chelsey, (AKA – Shamaliane) and I am one of the co-MLs for the DFW region this awesome NaNo year. I’m a poet, a novelist, a cat-mom, a girlfriend, a pharmacy technician, and a believer in various superstitions. If you have any questions about this post, or NaNoWriMo in general, send me some words at email hidden; JavaScript is required. 

Nano changed my life five years ago. I had no clue what Nano was but a friend asked me if I wanted to participate on a one on one level. I did some research and cringed at the idea of writing 50k in one month. At the time I barely wrote 3k a month. My biggest problem was I constantly edited. I could write three pages in one sitting and edit it for a week. At the rate I was writing it’d take me three years to write a book.

My friend gave me some really good advice. She told me to turn off my internal editor and just write. “It can be crap,” she’d said. It didn’t matter. She suggested I just write and get words on the page. She told me once I finished I could go back to editing. I remember thinking her crazy. Turning off that darn internal editor would be impossible.

The daily goal was 1667 words; pretty steep in my eyes. We created a yahoo group and three of us took on the challenge. We decided to post our daily word count to the loop to give each other support. For the first few weeks I wrote 1667 every day. My brain shut down when I reached the magic number. Soon I was up to 2k a day. It was a pleasant surprise. That first year I sat down and lo and behold I wrote 52k in the month. I shocked myself. I did this the next four years. Every November something inside clicks and I write over 50k.

Now if I try that any other month it doesn’t happen. I’ve continued to keep my internal editor turned off all year around. I write much better this way. On an average month I can write about 25k, but I do enjoy the challenge of Nano.

Here’s to a winning challenge this month!

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my 365 Days to a New Life series, and I’ve been flailing that I haven’t posted every day as I’d originally intended. Then I realized that is kind of how I run my blog on a normal basis. So I’ve decided to clean up my life a little bit online, make it less me bouncing around and streamline it. So for this ROW80 update, I’m going to kind of talk about what I’m changing here and how it will affect this quarter’s goals.

Writing

This is probably the most affected by the changes I’ve been making. I realized after making a list of all the current WIPs and charting where they are in relation to being finished, that I give up a lot in the revision stage. Maybe I’m frustrated, maybe I’m bored, maybe the New Shiny asserts itself too strongly and whisks me away like the whore it is. I don’t know. The point is that I need to stop and take a step back and finish these works.

We’re going back to the hockey book, Off Her Game, to finish and clean up. I’m planning on a Jan/Feb release for this book. It might end up March, depending on how long this rewrite takes. I’m notoriously slow at revisions and editing. We’ll see how the rewrite goes.

I’ve been working  on my science fiction romance story, Stay on Target, for the last couple weeks. I’m enjoying it.

So, I think what’s going to happen is that I’m going to leap frog between the two for November. Hopefully, it keeps my attention long enough to get things done. I have at least five releases planned next year, hopefully more if I can get these done.

Blogging

I’ve begun to take my blogging more seriously lately. Not to do it as a promotional tool, but to do it because I enjoy it. The truth is that I love blogging. I love talking about  stuff and having a good time in the comments. But I also think that I need to improve here. i need to be more regimented, which is something that I struggle with and this is especially important as I get into promotional blogging next year. I’ll be doing a lot more guest posts on other blogs and such, so I need to be more organized with mine.

So, I want to post three times a week. Mom Mondays, Thinky Thursdays, and Story Saturdays.

Mom Mondays will be something new. I’ll be talking about being a single mom and raising kids and basically just every day stuff from my life. I might throw some money and budgeting stuff in there too. Those posts now tend to be my most popular so I think doing those with a little more structure might be more enjoyable to peeps.
Thinky Thursdays is basically whatever might be kicking it in my brain. Maybe it’s Twitter, or maybe it’s music I’ve enjoyed this week, or maybe it’s something in the publishing business world that stuck in my head.
Story Saturdays are my writing advice day. I love talking about writing process or whatever else about the craft of writing. My old blog was all about writing, because I loved talking about writing.

So, growing a little, trying to be a little more serious about myself. I think it’s going to be a good time. My struggle is going to be sticking with it. I’m infamous for not keeping with the schedule, but I’m going to try to get them done at the beginning of the month so I don’t have to worry.

I’d also like to make the newsletter a little more regular, maybe a once a month thing. Have to figure out the schedule first and see how the blogging works out before I go committing to that. Right now, I only send it out with new releases and when stuff happens. That might be good enough.

Personal

A lot of the things that I’m changing is because my personal life is changing a lot. And that’s good, because when I started blogging about my life, I wasn’t happy, and now… Well, I’m still not happy, but I see the potential that I could be soon. Just need to get through this part of my life, and on to better parts. Very much possible.

I have a lot of financial goals that will make my life happier. Yes, I know money isn’t the key to happiness. In my case, I need to be on stable financial ground and then most of my stress and unhappiness will float away. So I don’t need to be rich, but I do need stability and for me, money will bring that, provided that I budget it correctly. Heh.

I recently bought a month membership to an MMA place. I’m excited about starting this. It probably won’t be until January, but that’s okay. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for months.

Overview

So that’s the new changes for this week. To affect these changes, here’s the goal list for this week:

Write four blog posts this week, including my ROW80 update on Sunday.
Write 10k of new words on Off Her Game and Stay on Target (not each, but combined)
Maybe sleep a little bit here and there. Maybe.

How’s everyone else doing with their goals? Working hard? Hardly working?