January 2018 Fly-By Status Report – I joined a writer’s group!

Greetings, readers! Nice to see you on the other end of Christmas & New Years!

Finally.

Dang, I’ve been so busy I haven’t had time to put my thoughts and hopes for this year in blog post form yet, til now, when January is ALMOST OVER! (I’m curious, who actually reads these updates, or are they pretty much just for me? If you do, leave a comment and say hi!)

Right now I’m typing to the dulcet sounds of workmen trimming the giant tree in my front yard (buzz saws and thuds on my roof), and now that I finally got WordPress to upload images again (ugghh), it’s time for my January 2018 Fly-By Status Report! I feel decently good about fulfilling last year’s resolutions, even in part.

So after Halloween (I dressed up as Wonder Woman, if you were curious), and ending my NaNoEdMo vlog series early, I pretty much just rode the holiday wave (family, ugly sweatshirts, overeating, making Christmas presents), and while I was actively allowing myself to relax for a few months, I spent a lot of time with family, did craft projects and house projects, AND IT SNOWED! TWICE! IN ATLANTA!

And so, after my lovely break, since January is almost over, I’m happy to report that I’ve been working my way back up to full schedule complete with working out, calorie tracking and light-moderate house chores, all of which I am SOMEHOW ACTUALLY DOING ON A REGULAR BASIS. Well, not somehow. I’ve been bribing myself with various types of incentives to give me a feeling of exerting actual control over my life, including things I constantly want to put off, and I’ve been continuing to do it successfully into 2018! This was something I was really wanting to do better, taking baby steps to achieve my difficult goals, and I started working on that progress late last year. Now that it’s been a successful endeavor, it’s true progress that I can really crow about! It feels so good to be getting that level of important self-care done on a regular-to-semi-regular basis!

But before I forget, let’s see what I did manage to accomplish according to the goals I set for myself on my front page.

Winter 2017/2018 Agenda:

Long Term

• Continue with the hardcore outlining and rewriting the style of my YA fantasy novel Sign of the Redwing in preparation for  an editor to look it over agent hunting, and ONLY THEN:
  • Outline the entire series that follows “Redwing”
  • Finish a new round of research and go through gathered notes for my series

Short Term

• • • Continue implementing my writing regimen and meet my September October Just-Get-It-Done-ASAP Draft 6 finish goal – Yeah, Draft 6 was NOT AT ALL finished by October…or November…or December. But I ACTUALLY MADE FOR REAL, LEGIT PROGRESS EDITING MY BOOK (thanks to incentives) AND JOINED A WRITER’S GROUP! Which is HUGE!! Sadly, I haven’t written anything since last November, but I plan to change that tonight! I will tweet if I have succeeded or failed. And if I can finish this draft by the time I post my third and final Fly-By Status Update of 2018, I’ll be truly happy.
      • • Finish some short stories I keep putting off – Maybe I’ll get a few I already wrote looked at by my writer’s group, but I’m not sure if I’m going to be writing new ones any time soon, unless I get a really good idea. Like ones I’ve been playing with for a very long time, for example.
        • Write the first draft of a new novel for NaNoWrimo 2017 – This makes me sad because I SO wanted to start a new story about super heroes, but I promised myself I wouldn’t til I finished the hard stuff on Draft 6. So on the back burner it goes, alas.
        • Finish as many crochet & cross stich projects as I can – I keep adding on new ones, haha, and some of them aren’t “due” for a while, but I hope that won’t keep me from getting a lot done on them, so I feel freer to work on the new ones. (By the way, the Paint Love auction was lots of fun, and I actually sold a few pieces for charity! Yay!)
        • Add something else to my Etsy shop, or put out at least one piece for Free Art Friday — posted some things on Zazzle I can possibly use for FAFATL – I have a few ideas for some things to go up next month, and I’m clearing out all my hope seed conversation heart magnets after Valentine’s week, so you should totally check those out before they disappear! </cheapplug>

And now, my creative resolutions for this first third of 2018 are:

• finish editing Draft 6 of my novel by my September Fly-By Status Report, then take a month or so off so I can work on learning to play the piano and practice guitar more
• keep bringing bits of my book to my writer’s group, and keeping the notes so I can eventually make a Draft 6.5 edit
• work on a few short stories (with photos) about my dollhouse dolls, something I’ve been wanting to do for a very long time
• finish craft projects I already started, and put more things up for sale in my Etsy store and put out for Free Art Friday!

And of course, there is tons of life stuff like work, house stuff, wellness stuff, volunteering, being a good friend, family member, cat mom and wife…I think that will keep me pretty busy til May! I’m trying to keep it simple, and heck, these goals will last me the whole year! So I’m pretty excited to see what this new year will bring! I better get cracking! See you when I upload the Star Wars Party vlog!