Happy New Year! And some new goals and old

Happy New Year, everyone! For New Years, we took the granddaughters to a bridge across the Neckar, where we had a great view of fireworks in all directions. We shot about 30 Euros worth into the air ourselves. Here’s one:

2016 is getting off to a pretty decent start, as far as far as production goes. My word counts are steadily increasing, and I’m hoping to up them even more. I don’t know how much translation projects will cut into my writing time, but I am (once again) going to try to find a better balance. *g* Hey, I’m finally pulling it off between marketing and writing, now I just have to integrate translating into the mix!

Goals for the first quarter of 2016

Business:

– Get Dragons from the Sea to Judson. The translation is complete, but my significant other is still working on the corrections.

Writing

– Write an average of 5000 words a week, or do 15,000 words of revision. I need to challenge myself to start writing more on a regular basis, so I can get some of my many projects finished. (See below.*)

– Start revisions of Facets of Glass and Shards of Glass

– Write 2 new short stories

– Revise “Pool of Souls” and send it out

– Finish rough draft of Ygerna

Writing business:

– Schedule ongoing promotions for my books

– Publish “Starting Out as an Indie Author”

– Upload more story collections to D2D and Kobo (Oregon Elsewise, Earth to Mars, Story Hunger)

– Submit 5 short stories to traditional markets

– Publish “Shadow Artist”

– Publish “Degrees of Separation”

– Publish Cutting Edges; Or, A Web of Women as an ebook (It is presently only available on the Web as hyperfiction)

– List books with Babelcube & Noisetrade

– Put together collection of my writing articles with Jay Lake

– Put together collection of fantasy stories with Jay

* Long list of projects to be completed to cycle into the above goals:

– A Wasted Land

– Fragments of Legend

– Unnamed Thriller

– Another installment of Looking Through Lace

– An Airship for Elise

– Dragon Touched

I think that will be enough to keep me busy. 🙂

Good luck to everyone this round!

Goals for the final quarter of 2015

I’m a bit behind here in posting my goals for this quarter. Mostly it’s because of the translation, but here’s an even better excuse:

Cannstatter Volksfest 2015

Those are my granddaughters at the second biggest Volksfest in Germany. Only the Munich Oktoberfest is bigger.

Which proves that I am not working all the time. 🙂

My goals for this round are going to look a lot like those from last round, just with a few completed taken off the list, and a few new ones added. I never manage to everything on my lists. They’re there to keep me focused. So here we go:

Goals for the final quarter of 2015

Business:

– Finish the translation of Dragons from the Sea

Writing:

– Write an average of 3000 words a week. I upped this in accordance with Kait’s challenge, even though I know I don’t have a chance of meeting it until after I’ve finished the translation.

– Finish Shards of Glass

– Start revisions of Facets of Glass

– Write 3 new short stories

– Revise “Pool of Souls” and send it out

– Decide whether and what to do for Nanowrimo (dependent on getting the translation done in time)

Writing business:

– Schedule ongoing promotions for my books

– Submit 5 short stories to traditional markets

– Publish “Starting Out as an Indie Author”

– Publish “Shadow Artist”

– Publish “Degrees of Separation”

– Publish “Cutting Edges; Or, A Web of Women” as an ebook

– List books with Babelcube & Noisetrade

– Put together collection of my writing articles with Jay Lake

– Put together collection of fantasy stories with Jay

As usual, I’m pretty sure I won’t get bored. 🙂

Good luck to everyone this round!

21 days to habit: Third quarter goals

Last round, I had a hard time getting back into a regular routine after the extended visit to the States. About the only thing I was able to keep on track with in accordance with my goals was the translation.

As a result, my main goal for the rest of this summer will be to somehow find my way back to the good habits I had managed to develop earlier this year in balancing translation and my own writing. It will be a challenge, since we have multiple visits from the States in the upcoming weeks, starting with my brother on Saturday. Habits are powerful things, as Kait Nolan pointed out. I’ve read that it takes 21 days to create a habit — for good or for ill.

It will be difficult to find those 21 days to get back to the good habits I lost, but I’m determined to find a way, especially given how frustrated I’ve been in recent weeks. Recently I’ve been cutting back on social media, and I’m seeing the first positive effects. The translation was up in the last week, and I’ve gotten a lot of my hard copy notes on Facets of Glass and Shards of Glass (the follow-up books to Island of Glass) into my Scrivener file, resulting in a nice jump in word count. Wish me luck in keeping that up!

Goals for this round:
Writing:

– Write an average of 2500 words a week.

– Finish Shards of Glass

– Write 3 new short stories

– Revise “Pool of Souls” and send it out

Writing business:

– 500 words a day of translation

– Schedule ongoing promotions for my books

– Publish Almost All the Way Home From the Stars to Createspace

– Publish Oregon Elsewise to Createspace

– Submit 5 short stories to traditional markets

– List books with Babelcube & Noisetrade

– Publish “Starting Out as an Indie Author” as ebook

– Publish “The Shadow Artist” as ebook

– Put together collection of my writing articles with Jay Lake

– Put together collection of fantasy stories with Jay

– Write newsletter update for my subscribers

– Find more reviewers for CIAM and Island of Glass

To wrap up, here one of my favorite distractions, my granddaughters:

Random weird fact: the summer sweater Lisa is wearing is something she chose to save from my old stuff, one of my favorites in (much) skinnier days. Hard to imagine it ever fit me at all as an adult, when I see it on a 13-year-old!

Second quarter goals

I got a bit sidetracked yesterday by the hijacking of the Hugo Awards for SFF, which I wrote about in my last post. Now that is off my chest, I can get back to business: my goals for the next quarter.

For the next couple of weeks, this list and my blog will be largely on hiatus while I try to catch up with relatives on another continent.

Writing:

– Write an average of 2500 words a week.

– Finish Shards of Glass (that btw is not the final cover, so any and all comments and suggestions welcome!)

– Write 3 new short stories

– Revise “Pool of Souls” and send it out

Blog:

– Write a report on Villa Diodati 14

– Wrap up the series “Starting out as an indie author”

– Update my book page here and on my web page, ruthnestvold.com

Writing business:

– 500 words a day of translation

– Schedule more promotions for my books

– List books with Babelcube & Noisetrade

– Publish “Starting Out as an Indie Author” as ebook

– Publish “The Shadow Artist” as ebook

– Put together collection of my writing articles with Jay Lake

– Put together collection of fantasy stories with Jay

– Write newsletter update for my subscribers

– Find more reviewers for CIAM and Island of Glass

– Start splitting up Shadow of Stone like I did Yseult

Wishing everyone a successful Round of Words!

The first draft of Facets of Glass finished!

I put in a pretty intense writing week in order to earn my little monster, as I explained in this post.

So in order to complete the challenge by the end of the month, I wrote 8000 words this week. The week before, my word count was 5700. And all of that constantly looking up details about glassmaking, travel times in the 17th – 18th century, Bohemian glassworks, regions in Venice, etc. etc.

I know from experience that writing projects that don’t require a lot of research can result in way more words in the same amount of time spent writing, but Facets of Glass isn’t one of those. Though I will admit that I ran by the seat of my pants in more than one scene, making notes to myself about things I will have to research later on the rewrite. 🙂

But now at least I have a complete first draft of Facets of Glass, the second book in the Age of Magic series after Island of Glass, even if it’s pretty rough on some of its edges. I also have a cover:

I’ve also been doing 20 minutes of yoga almost every day since the beginning of the new year, even though it wasn’t on my list of goals. 🙂 But it’s making my old joints feel a lot better — and I’ve dropped a kilo without really trying. So I think I’m a convert. *g*

First quarter goals for 2015

Happy New Year! I hope everyone has started it off better than me — I’ve been sick with a very irritating head cold. It seems to be slowly letting up now, though. I certainly hope so. I find it very hard to concentrate when my head is full of gunk.

Anyway, on to the first order of the year — stating my goals for this round! A number I will have to carry over from last year, but I did make a big dent in my publishing goals in the last days of 2014: I got Mars: A Traveler’s Guide, and Yseult, Part III: Two Men and a Woman published!

(BTW, the Mars story is free everywhere but on Amazon — I still have to get it price-matched.)

On to my updated goals!

Writing:

– Write an average of 4000 words a week.

– Finish Facets of Glass

– Write 5 new short stories

Blog:

– Write a report of the Villa Diodati workshop (finally!)

– Write a new installment of “Starting out as an indie author” every other week

– Update my book page (LONG overdue!)

Writing business:

– Write New Year newsletter for my subscribers

– Schedule upcoming promotions for my books

– List books with Babelcube & Noisetrade

– Publish last episode of Yseult

– Publish “The Shadow Artist” as ebook

– Publish Chameleon in a Mirror to Createspace

– Find reviewers for CIAM and Island of Glass

I hope everyone who reads this had a good time bringing in the new year and it turns out to be a very successful 2015 for all of you!

Quarterly goals for final round, 2014

Hard to believe it’s the final round again already! Hope everyone has been making good progress on their goals. Mine remain much the same as last round. I’ve tweaked here an there, deleted the goals I completed, and I’m raising the weekly word count goals, since things were going well towards the end of last round.

Writing:

– Write an average of 4000 words a week.

– Finish Facets of Glass

– Integrate critiques from the Villa Diodati workshop into Recontact (novella with Jay Lake)

– Write 2 new short stories

Blog:

– Write a new installment of “Starting out as an indie author” every other week

Business:

– Translate book description etc. for translation project and get it back to the client.

Writing business:

– Try to pull off a successful book launch for Island of Glass on Oct. 28

– List books with Babelcube & Noisetrade

– Submit Recontact (novella with Jay Lake) to traditional magazine markets

– Finish splitting Yseult into episodes and publish individually

– Publish “The Shadow Artist” as ebook

– Publish Chameleon in a Mirror to Createspace

– Find more reviewers for CIAM

– Publish more of my books to Xinxii (Shadow of Stone!)

– Publish Life in the Fjord Lane

– Publish “Mars, A Traveler’s Guide” to Amazon and make it free

– Upload free books to Google Play

– Submit 5 short stories to traditional markets during the round

I will leave you with a hopeful picture to lead us all into a successful fourth quarter!

Late on stating my quarterly goals, but with a good excuse

I’m in England right now, and have being visiting sites for the next novel of the Pendragon Chronicles, A Wasted Land. Today I’m heading off to the east coast of Suffolk for a wedding. Yay! Anyway, as a result, I haven’t had time until now to get my goals for the round sorted out. Woke up early this morning, though, so I figured I could get that done before heading off for the train to London.

Salisbury, where I am now

Writing:

– Write 500 words a day, five days a week, for an average of 2500 words a week.
I’m going to start out on this one with a deficit, since at the moment I’m too tired in the evenings from running around to get any writing done. That’s ok. I’m seeing lots of cool sites that will feed into my writing. And when I get back, I’ll blog about it (see below).

– Write a detailed outline of Facets of Glass

– Integrate critiques from the Villa Diodati workshop into Recontact (novella with Jay Lake)

– Write 2 new short stories

Blog:

– Write a series of detailed posts about the sites I visited and the research I did while here in England.

– Start a series of blog posts for beginning indie authors (per a friend’s request)

Business:

– Go through the edits of the translation project and get it back to the client.

Writing business:

– Submit Recontact (novella with Jay Lake) to traditional magazine markets

– Publish Island of Glass as ebook

– Publish “The Shadow Artist” as ebook

– Publish Chameleon in a Mirror to Createspace

– Publish more of my books to Xinxii

– Get Amazon to price match “The Leaving Sweater” for free

– Publish “Mars, A Traveler’s Guide” to Amazon and make it free

– Submit 10 short stories to traditional markets during the round

– Start marketing my ebooks again

Wishing everyone great luck with their goals this quarter!

Slowly getting back to writing: My quarterly accounting post

Those who follow this blog will know that I took some time off from writing the last couple of weeks to give my mourning brain a break. When the mourning seemed to be going on a bit to long, I remembered the letter from Clarion West in my inbox and signed up for the Clarion West Write-a-thon again this year. That started on Monday, and I haven’t quite reached my goal of 500 words a day, but almost: 400 a day on Monday and Tuesday, and 500 on Wednesday. At least it’s helping with my main goal — getting back into writing regularly again.

Now for the accounting, my goals at the beginning of the quarter and what became of them.

Writing:

– Work on writing related projects every day. Once the Big Translation Project is done, return to daily page goals.
I mostly did this, except for the first couple of weeks in June after Jay died. Life happens, and so does death, and sometimes we just can’t push forward with our goals as a result. Some things are more important than writing a few more pages.

– Move forward on A Wasted Land
I have done so, if slowly.

– Finish edits on Recontact (collab eith Jay Lake)
Finished a first round of edits and put the novella through the Villa Diodati workshop in Spain the beginning of May. I have yet to integrate the critiques I got there.

– Finish edits on Island of Glass
DONE!

– Start Facets of Glass
Started, yes, but barely. 🙂

– Write 2 new short stories
Wrote one and started a second.

Business:

– Be done with the Big Translation Project by the end of April
DONE!!!!

Writing business:

– Publish Island of Glass
DONE! Well, at least for the paperback. 🙂 I still have to arrange some promotion and set a date for the publication of the ebook.

– Publish Recontact (novella with Jay Lake)
I did not finish this in time, unfortunately. 😦 But since I didn’t, I think I may send it around to some magazines first. That might bring in more money for Jay’s daughter and widow than an ebook would.

– Publish “The Shadow Artist” as ebook
Nope.

– Upload “Leaving Sweater” to Smashwords and make it free
Didn’t upload to Smashwords, but free books through Draft2Digital are now also going free on B&N, which is slowly making Smashwords obsolete, as far as I’m concerned, seeing as their Meatgrinder (their term, not mine) is so difficult to format for. I have better things to do than uploading a book half-a-dozen times. With Draft2Digital, if it doesn’t work the first time, it usually works on the second, and it’s a lot faster to boot. Anyway, “The Leaving Sweater” is now free on both B&N and iTunes. I just have to get Amazon to price match.

– Publish “Mars, A Traveler’s Guide” to Amazon and make it free
Nope.

– Make Author Page for Amazon.de
DONE! You can check it out here.

– Submit a short story a week to traditional publishers
Not quite. Only 7 story submissions this quarter.

– Start marketing my ebooks again
I’m afraid not. Which of course is reflected in my abysmal sales. But I am well aware that I have only myself to blame, and nothing will change until I put my marketing hat back on again.

I don’t have a lot of strike-outs above, but I’m ok with that. Like I said, death happens, and if I started kicking myself for crying too much because a friend died, what kind of person would I be?

And looking at my list, I managed to get more done than I thought, so I’m good. I hope everyone else is happy with their progress.

#ROW80: My writing goals for the second quarter 2014

I realize we were supposed to post our goals yesterday, but I was tagged in the writing process meme, and I rarely have time for more than one blog post a day. Thus, writing goals for the second quarter 2014 are a day late.

The goals that I didn’t complete last round I am carrying over into this. A number of goals are a bit vague, since I have thirty pages to go on the Big Fat Translation, and I just don’t have enough time or creativity left for big picture writing goals while I’m still working on that. In the spirit of Kait’s excellent post, while I’m still translating this novel, I have to go easy on myself regarding my writing goals. Once that’s done, I can sit around with a spiral notebook for an afternoon, take notes, ask myself questions, and figure out what burns to be written.

On to the specific goals for the next quarter:

Writing:

– Work on writing related projects every day. Once the Big Tranlation Project is done, return to daily page goals.

– Move forward on A Wasted Land

– Finish edits on Recontact (collab eith Jay Lake)

– Finish edits on Island of Glass

– Start Facets of Glass

– Write 2 new short stories

Business:

– Be done with the Big Translation Project by the end of April

Writing business:

– Publish Island of Glass

– Publish Recontact (novella with Jay Lake)

– Publish “The Shadow Artist” as ebook

– Upload “Leaving Sweater” to Smashwords and make it free

– Publish “Mars, A Traveler’s Guide” to Amazon and make it free

– Make Author Page for Amazon.de

– Submit a short story a week to traditional publishers

– Start marketing my ebooks again

Wishing everyone a successful spring!