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?