Sum Total of the Goals

I hope a bright and happy solstice was had by all and that the forthcoming holidays will also delight you and yours.

Do y'all remember back to January of this year? I only barely do. Apparently, I went on a rant against the abomination that is Western Civilization's obsession with New Year's Resolutions. It was my screed against listing out goals for other peoples' consumption and/or guilt-making. And though I was ranting against the load we seem to want to place upon ourselves with goals and resolutions and all manner of betterment (as if we aren't enough in and of ourselves) it turns out that ranting against goals is actually making them. They went something like this:

1. Pledge to be gentle with yourself - adopt a policy of nonviolence in thought, word, and deed concerning yourself. Seriously. Just listen to how you think at yourself. You will be horrified by what you hear.
2. Make time and space for doing nothing at all. It needn't be much time. Fifteen minutes a day. Not for meditation. Not for reading. Not for yet another course on how to do or be The Thing. To do nothing. Most of us have forgotten leisure and how to be alone.
3. Vow to help someone else. Whether you volunteer on a regular basis or just offer a cup of coffee to the homeless kid on the corner once in a while - totally up to you. But if you want the cure for a bad day, bring a smile to someone else's face.

How'd I do with these? Erm. Uh. Okay? I guess? The first one lasted for maybe a week before I fell back into old, nasty habit. I am still working on that. Too much research in the world proves that negative feedback does not produce results. Being mean and calling yourself names in your head does not do the job you want it to do. It produces little to no motivation. Positive motivations (having something to shoot for that matters to you) is far more productive. Reprogramming one's brain to DO that is not the easiest. Let's call this a work in progress.

I did nail the last two. Self defense on finding time to do nothing. Migraine sufferers know something about that - usually after a major migraine, you spend several hours, one the pain and sickness are gone, just looking around. Going through life gently. Yes. It is in fear of the migraine returning. But the point is that taking a few minutes each day to do nothing is now part of my self-care.

Helping someone else - Ballard has a population of homeless folks. You get to know who they are and you get to know their needs. So making sure that there are extra hot drinks on cold days, or a box of feminine hygiene products left for the young woman on the street with her partner - those things are easy to do. Supporting Best Friends and Big Cat Rescue with 10% of every dime I make is my other thing. But my favorite was seeing a young woman walking the street in the greatest, should be in a movie, velvet trench coat (bright scarlet). I was behind her and her friend. They went into a restaurant. I followed and touched her elbow. The two women turn to look at me. Faces blank. I said, "Truly epic coat." The gal's friend grinned, pumped her and crowed, "Told you!" The young woman in the coat lit up. Lit up so bright it brought tears to my eyes. Dumb, huh? But it happened. I liked that. Think I'll put it on my list for next year - to see if I can make someone's day like that at least once.

Looking Back at 2016 Goals

In a post dated 1/6/16 I noted my writing goals.

My 2016 goals are: 

1.) Finish Persephone #7.

2.) Hopefully spend some time doing the 'author/editor back and forth dance' on an unrelated fantasy novel that *should* come out fall of 2016.

3.) Finish and find a home for unrelated modern fantasy A or unrelated modern fantasy B. Or both. A has a good start, but short. B is 60% done...but the ending wasn't coming together...until, while watching a speculative TV show, something they said sparked a wild idea that over the course of an hour blossomed into the ending I'd been searching for.

Results:

1.) I did not finish Seph #7 but I have completed the plotting and did get it up to about 50k. I told people it would be out late 2016 or eaerly 2017, as my plan then was to self-publish. But other things have come into play with another publisher and until that is decided, no Seph. /sorry, I want it too!!!/

2.) I have done the dance. Publisher went through some internal changes to spring from just ebook to include print and distribution, so their pub dates were pushed back. I will do a cover reveal in the weeks to come for the book to be released in May 2017. -SQUEE-

3.) I have worked on both A and B and garnered some interest in both but, alas, I have no specific news to report on either.

While 2016 was not a rousing career related success, it was a spectacular success on the personal front.

At the onset of 2016, my goals seemed like a study of character internal and external motivations.

I was a single mom with a slightly-better-than-minimum-wage job with no hope of income growth. Although my workplace was a positive place to be, I was actively looking for something with better pay and benefits. I was also the only employed person in the house with two boys, a live-in mother and my nephew.

Something had to give and, honestly, it was me. It was always me. The octogenarian mother wasn't going to work. That was a no-brainer. The children weren't going to work. That only left me and a lot of weight on my shoulders. Looking back, I completely understand the inability to sleep and the depression.

My personal goals were:

Internal  I wanted love in my life. Someone to hold on to and be held by, someone to share everything: the good the bad, the laughter and the tears, the joy and the burdens.

External   I just wanted the time and focus to write well and the chance to continue building the career I wanted, the career I had for a time and seemed to have lost.

Neither seemed possible. Right after Christmas, with the taxes and the homeowners insurance bills looming, a leaking hole in the roof forced me to take some kind of action. After consideration, I had two options...and I pursued both. 1.) I worked two jobs in February and March. It felt like I would never get to write again...but people were fed and the house payment made, the leak fixed, and the heat was still on. That was most important, right? And 2.) I did something I didn't ever want to do: I hired a lawyer and sought child support for the first time. I had to assume that it would ruin the 'hospitable' relationship with the ex. With my boys "in the middle" that was not a decision I made lightly.

For the vast majority of creative people, this is the very thing that restrains: life and the the day-to-day responsibilities. Stress eats creativity like a ravenous animal with a delicacy -- no savoring, no consideration, just a one-gulp devouring of that stuff of dreams.

But I am stubborn. A writer is who and what I am. I cannot not write. But having touched the profession and being unable to maintaint my grip in that world left me feeling inadequate, fraudulent, and a failure. But, let me say it again, I am stubborn. I want what I want. And there are some things my spirit has not the capacity to give up.

That persistence served me well. Things began to turn around.

Concerning the external frontier, Ragnarok bought one of my older novels. It's been reworked a bit and will be released in May 2017. It is a story I am quite proud of.  The other books will be getting attention soon -- a lot of attention. I am once again in a position to write during a majority of my time. Now settled into the house and the new{old} routine, its all coming back to me.

Why? How? That al stems from the internal...

Concerning the internal frontier, a man I loved twenty years ago re-emerged into my life. This time, everything fell into place and fit like puzzle pieces. We got married and bought a house. It has been a whirlwind year, and I couldn't be happier (ok, well a NYT bestseller could make me happier, but yanno).

I love and am loved. I have met goals and made new ones. I know joy and I try like mad to spread it around. I wish this for you all, right now.

May you have the Merriest, Happiest, and Most Joyful Holiday with the people you love most around you, laughing, hugging, and making memories you will cherish.

2016 Goals - Hits, Misses and Surprises

As part of our end-of-year wrap-up, the SFF Seven are Looking Back on 2016's Goals: How'd We Do? What Was Our Biggest Deviation from the Goal or Plan? Why? Most Satisfying Accomplishment?

I always find it interesting to look back on what I thought would happen during the year, then compare it to what actually occurred - and try to parse why. It helps me plan for the coming year.

It was a particularly interesting year for me in that it was my first full year as a full-time writer. Since getting laid off in October 2015, my biggest goal was seeing if my husband and I could make it without me having to get another job. Our situation is compounded by the fact that he doesn't have a salaried job either. So this meant dealing with fluctuating incomes and me paying my own health insurance.

Biggest hit? Nailed it!

I almost can't believe, but we're making it. And things are getting better all the time. Whew! Huge win right there.

The biggest miss is that I thought I'd be able to write about 25,000 words/week. I had a good reason to believe I could, as 5,000 words/day is doable for me. Instead, the graphs look like this:

 While I did hit 20K/week a few times, my average for the year turned out to be about 7,000 words/week. Very surprising to me. In fact, my overall annual word count went down for the first time in four years.

Now, I still wrote over 400,000 words in 2016 (with a couple of weeks left), so I'm not beating myself up about it. I think a few things happened to account for this:

1. I blogged a LOT less, a number I had always included in my word counts. Some of this is because I quit a couple of group blogs that felt like they weren't doing much for me - a refocusing of effort on my part - but I also posted less to my personal blog. Conversely, I posted to social media more, word count numbers I don't track. This felt like a natural drift to me.
2. I taught more, which means stuff that I used to write for blog posts, I wrote for online classes, and I didn't track those word count numbers.
3. I spent more time on business and business-related activities.
4. I wrote in a more focused way, not playing around with stuff, but concentrating on producing specific stories.
5. I did a couple of major revisions, including revising an entire novel I would have been better off simply rewriting. That project accounts for the low word counts of August-October. 
6. I went to a lot more conferences.
7. It seems to continue to be true that I pay for high word-count productivity with rebound phases. I'm not sure I can escape that. Notice that my high-count weeks are followed by low-count weeks.
8. Finally, related to #7, I tried to be kinder to myself. If I needed to take days off, I did. For the first time since summers off as a kid, I didn't set an alarm in the morning, which meant I found my natural sleep calendar and that felt really good. In fact, my Fitbit graph shows a very interesting seasonal rhythm to my sleep cycle, which I had already suspected might be the case. 
   

The most satisfying accomplishment was also the surprise from 2016. I got serious about self-publishing, in order to establish a more regular income,

With the two-month lag in royalty payouts from retailers, along with time for me to get previous obligations handled, then new projects written and edited, the ramp-up was slow. But, once it kicked in, son of a gun, it worked! Having this option for authors makes a huge difference in whether we can make a living at this profession. 

I think the take-home from this is that we can set goals, but we can't always be sure what will really pay off. Which keeps life interesting!

Finally, to compare to what I set for goals at the end of 2015 in this post, I said:

1) in 2015 I made twice as much from writing as in 2014, but in 2014 I made five times as much as in 2013. Since I'm no longer working the day job, I *really* need to make a living wage from writing this year, so I really want that every-other-year thing to kick in. Five times what I made in 2015 would be awesome. Putting it out there.

I did not make five times what I made in 2015 - what a dreamer Past Jeffe was! - but I did make over twice as much. So, go me.

2) My agent has a book out on submission for a new epic fantasy series. It's a rework of the second novel I ever wrote and I love so much about it. In 2016, I want to either see it published or firmly in the publishing pipeline.

So did not happen. For Reasons. This is still a plan for 2017.

3) We're also going out on submission with a new contemporary romance, the first in a trilogy. That one is getting published in 2016, one way or another.

And... no. What it got was the Revision That Would Not Die. But it's a way better book now. My agent said: "Words cannot express how impressed I am with this new draft. You have taken something I thought was enjoyable and fun and turned it into something raw and meaningful and powerful." 

I'm still calling that a win. 
4) I have a third series that's been parked for over a year. The first one is going out in 2016 or it's in an amazing confirmed pipeline. Enough already.

Also did not happen, but mostly because I decided to back-burner it in favor of another project, which is the one that accounts for most of the self-publishing sales, so I think it was a good choice.

5) I'm making this last one vagueish. I have numerous plans. Hopeful plans to help secure the future for me and my hubs. This is the blogging equivalent of throwing my prognostication penny in the well of good fortune. I totally promise that, at the end of the year, I'll report back on what worked. But I'm too superstitious to unveil them beforehand.

Totally worked! Woo hoo!!!

For 2017, I'm mainly going to work on evening out my production. I'd like to see if I can consistently produce at 15,000 words/week, which works out to 3,000 words/day, which seems to be more sustainable for me. We shall see!

What about you all - what was a surprise win from 2016? Goals for next year??

Levity, Science, and a How To for 2016

Have you ever had one of those weird prescient moments where someone recommends a book and you get it even while thinking, heck, none of this applies to me and then WHAM. So relevant it gives you migraines? That was the first of my most memorable books of 2016.

How to Care for Aging Parents by Virginia Morris

Not the kind of adventure I'd wish on anyone, much less recommend to anyone. However. We all end up here at one point or another if the parent(s) have survived into old age. I read this a good five months before Dad suffered his heart attacks. This book gave me very accessible, easy to understand and implement advice on dealing with my father's doctors, his nurses, my father and my mother. It's a great book for pointing out options you might not know exist (I didn't.) So while I hope no one needs it, I am eternally grateful I'd read it before Dad's health challenges. The coping skills suggested in this book gave me the fortitude to be Dad's live-in care giver for the first three weeks of his recovery without being a nag, and no matter how badly I wanted to, I didn't try to wrap the man in bubble wrap. Very valuable book. Hope y'all can wave it off for many years to come.



Do you read less than you used to? I do. Used to never be without my nose in a book. Then we moved aboard the boat and I had to convert my paper books to Kindle versions. Paper and water, you know. Not to mention storage space and that whole 'no sinking the boat' rule. I kidded myself that I'd just run out of time for reading, but a part of me called bullshit on that. I knew I'd stopped reading. I just didn't know why. Then someone loaned me a print book. And I inhaled it in a day. It's possible a tear was shed when I realized how much I'd missed reading. Turns out, I can't see the Kindle print very well. Yes. I need glasses. No. It doesn't seem to be a monetary priority. So they go unpurchased. But it means that the deterioration of my eyesight made reading on the Kindle harder and less enjoyable to the point that I just quit without realizing WHY I'd quit. Until the experiment with a paper book. When I can see the damned print, I adore reading. To celebrate finding this out, I bought myself scifi. Because scifi. And this turned out to be one of my fav reads this year: The Martian by Andy Weir. What's to say? Mars. Left behind. Certain death. Science!

My last book is a bit of a cheat because I haven't gotten to read it yet. But I am SO looking forward to reading it that I'm including it.

The Angel Wore Fangs by Sandra Hill

The hero is a Viking, Vampire Angel. An angel. Who's a vampire. And a Viking. Seriously. How could you not love this? I am counting on this book to be a complete send up of every romance trope available to the market. Counting on it. This is slated to be my guilty pleasure holiday read.

It was this or stock up on Chuck Tingle titles. That may yet happen. Either way. I'm looking forward to some levity.

My 2016 Recommendations

Linda's 2016 Recommendations

The Red Queen  (link here) by Victoria Aveyard

A well reviewed debut novel that got my attention. In this world people have red blood or silver, and the silver-blooded are royalty and have power. Mare, the main character, is a red blood who ends up in front of the Silver court and there discovers she has power ofher own, which, of course, the king wants to hide from other red bloods.






The Silent Army (link here) by James A. Moore

I love this series and Moore is a great guy.

I recommend this one on audio book. There are many odd words/names/places which I adore in fantasy, but if you have any qualms about such, then the audio book smooths that right over. Also, the narrator for this has his narrator voice and gruffer voices for character dialogue which suits this telling well. Check the link above and click the listen button under the cover image.

A Curse on the Land (link here) by Faith Hunter

First in a new series set in Faith's Jane Yellowrock world.

I also recommend this one on audio book. Check the link above and click the listen button under the cover image because the reader has a southern tonality that really sells this story/character.

Happy Between Aces: My 3 Most Memorable Books of 2016

My Three Most Memorable Books of 2016...

10% Happier by Dan Harris
My mom sent me this book three times. I figured if I read it once, it'd make me 30% happier.  I'd be full ebullient mode 24/7. Or Not. Maybe. The book isn't about finding your favorite tree to hug. It's about coping when your mind turns against you.  Dan Harris is a national news anchor. The book opens with the day he suffered his first panic attack live on air. It gives a fascinating look into his early career working for Dan Rather and going to Afghanistan to cover the war.


Between You and Me, Confessions of a Comma Queen by Mary Norris
If you've ever had a copy editor bleed all over  your manuscript, this book will remind you that you are not alone. Norris uses humorous vignettes of her storied personal life to embed grammatical lessons. It's a light read that's worth the time and might save your copy editor a few gray hairs.



Aces Wilde by Jenn Stark
An Urban Fantasy with flying swords on the cover...what's not to love? This action-packed story is about an artifact hunter who uses Tarot-Cards to find her targets. This time, she's inherited the head honcho spot for the criminal syndicate of the House of Swords. Naturally, an outsider being handed the reins doesn't go over well, and in this line of business it's fight or die. Magic might save her, but her relationship with the Arcana Council's seductive Magician just might ruin her forever.