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oh hey, is it March already? guess that means it’s time to do a quick check-up on my goals for the year.

  • learn how to drive –  just finished the driver’s manual yesterday! I should get to take the permit test in the next couple of weeks, and we’re obtaining a second vehicle soon here so that I can practice on something other than our beautiful Six.
  • get good at doodling humans – no real progress here. I did pick up my iPad for doodling last night.
  • edit God Grown Old – I’m not far from the end of my initial reader’s read-through.
  • obtain film credit more significant than PA – have I mentioned that a) Jake’s coworker wants to train me as an assistant director and b) Jake’s boss has made me head of his official writing team for a couple of shows? yeah. yeeeahhhh.
  • continue to improve dancing abilities – been slacking on this.
  • give a handmade gift to Important People – still waiting to get my supplies and space back when we move, so I’m thinking this officially starts in June/July.
  • exercise at least 4x per week – I haven’t been keeping track anywhere, but I’ve been keeping up at least 3x per week. more like 4x, most weeks.
  • read 50 books – Goodreads says I’m 2 books ahead of schedule as of today, and I’ve read 10 so far.

and wedding planning has been slowly and un-stressfully progressing. I’m pleased.

so, all in all, I’ve been pretty good! I’ve been hella busier than I expected with my main job and several side projects, but I’ve managed to keep my own goals pretty well on track in the midst of it. and now as the weather gets nicer it’ll get harder to actually procrastinate (so she says). onward!

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The joys of NaNoWriMo

I look forward to November every year. It’s not my favorite month – I mean, December has my birthday, plus Christmas, plus ultimate cuddle weather. But November is NaNoWriMo month.  If you’ve managed to have a Tumblr and don’t know what this is, congratulations, you are probably not scarred by much on the interwebz. But I digress.

I am just under 500 words away from the halfway mark for NaNo – 25,000 words. Add to that the 8000 words I had prior to the start of November, and A God Grown Old is sitting at a pretty 33k.  In other words, I’m too far now to turn back.  Even better: I don’t want to turn back!  Ever since introducing Cleo, who is turning out to be one of my favorite characters, the story has bantered and cantered along nicely.

I can already see where my weak points are: character growth, consistency of style, and too much emo. And dialogue, always.  The great thing about those being the big weaknesses is that they’re fully editable. In round two, character arcs and style will become clear and I can hack away what doesn’t work and round out what does.  Emo can be chopped.  Dialogue can be spoken aloud until it sounds right.

Right now, it’s about putting my head down and writing, despite the myriad distractions coming my way right now: a bigger workload at my office job (meaning less time to write on the clock), purchasing a new car, holidays, all that good end-of-the-year stuff.  That’s what NaNo has always been good for, and will continue to be as long as I’m writing.