How did I do in the merry month of… uh, September?

• Get back up to 10 queries out for SHIFT HAPPENS (I had two rejections, so I need to send a couple more out.)
• Finish this rounds of edits on IMPULSE and send the whole thing to the WF critique group as well as the next chapter to YWC.
• Add some more new words to the chaos WIP.

Most of the work on the chaos project is in plotting, but I’m counting it.

I do need to get a couple more queries out — it was up at ten over the weekend, but I have since gotten a couple of rejections (including a “Dear Author”, oof).

So… goals for October:

• Get back up to 10 queries pending for SHIFT HAPPENS.
• Outline the chaos WIP (completely! with scenes! and characters!) in preparation for NaNoWriMo next month.
• Suffer through the WF critique on IMPULSE. Get some feedback and look into addressing whatever comes up.

It’s also Inktober. I’m not sure I’m going to produce a drawing every day, but here’s one to start…

The goals are a week late but hey, there have been things happening in my life lately, so just one week late is actually pretty stellar.

First, how did I do for August:

• Get 10 queries out for SHIFT HAPPENS
• Get the next chapter of IMPULSE out to the YWC critique group
• Critique this month’s novel for WF critique group
• Add some more new words to the chaos WIP.

That’s actually not too bad especially with the other stuff going on. And while I haven’t added any new words the the chaos WIP, I’ve been thinking about it. Right now I’m referring to it as Leverage but with the elder gods. I’ve wanted to do a heist book for a while and I think this is going to be it.

And now September:

• Get back up to 10 queries out for SHIFT HAPPENS (I had two rejections, so I need to send a couple more out.)
• Finish this rounds of edits on IMPULSE and send the whole thing to the WF critique group as well as the next chapter to YWC.
• Add some more new words to the chaos WIP.

I’ve been working a fair amount on edits for IMPULSE and I can’t decide if I just wrote a book that isn’t as cohesive as the ones I’ve written in the past, or if I’m getting better and now I realize some of the problems that have always been there. Either way, I have less than a week and there’s a bunch of stuff to fix.

In the meantime, here’s this handsome boy whose shirt says “Say YES to adventure.”

Writing-related accomplishments: I’ve been working my way through an edit on IMPULSE. I think I’m almost to the point that I can see the big character problems, so I should be able to start fixing those soon. I hope.

Things have been a little derailed by the illness of one of my cats and I’ve spent a lot of my spare time for the past few days dealing with appointments and keeping my fingers crossed that this is all just a temporary flare-up. Life tip: don’t adopt a bunch of kittens at the same time because it means they all get old at the same time…

Writing-related accomplishments: I’ve been a little more focused on getting agent queries for SHIFT HAPPENS out this week. The active number is currently standing at seven. (It was eight, but a rejection came an hour ago — I’m impressed by the less than 24 hours turnaround time. Hey, if it doesn’t work for the agent or their slush readers, why sit on it?)

I’ve also been cleaning up the next chapter of IMPULSE for YWC, and… a fellow writer in WF realized he wasn’t going to be able to finish his manuscript in time for our next meeting, so I agreed to submit something (full manuscript) in three weeks. Lots of editing needs to happen in that time. It’s good though. I get more done when I have deadlines.

Look at the summer fly by. Yep, it’s August. How did the July goals stack up? (Spoiler warning: not all that well)

• Finish the SHIFT HAPPENS synopsis
• Get 10 queries out for SHIFT HAPPENS
• Get the next chapter of IMPULSE out to the YWC critique group
• 30k new words as part of Camp NaNo — I have a couple of novels that just need their endings written, and I’m going to work on those.

I did add about 12k new words to two novels — one of them now has a complete rough draft, and the other is farther along than it was before. I’ve been lazy about the queries, mostly because I was avoiding the synopsis. But now I have a synopsis written (or some version of a synopsis — it may change quite a bit still), I can make some progress there.

So the goals for August:

• Get 10 queries out for SHIFT HAPPENS
• Get the next chapter of IMPULSE out to the YWC critique group
• Critique this month’s novel for WF critique group
• Add some more new words to the chaos WIP.

Writing-related accomplishments: Let me just say that when I avoid something, I don’t do it in a half-assed manner. I’ve been not-working on the synopsis for SHIFT HAPPENS for weeks, to the point that any time I remembered it still wasn’t finished I would put my fingers in my ears and start singing “La la la la la” loudly. So… it’s still not done, but it’s finally two reasonably coherent pages. I just need to fix some awkward sentences and then I can use it in my agent queries.

I think part of the problem was just general burn-out. I cut my Camp NaNo goal down from 30k to 15k. I may or may not make it. I did finally write the ending for IMPULSE and I have a pretty good idea of how the ending for the other manuscript needs to go.

In other news, it’s 105 F here today. My neighbors went to the coast to go hiking and asked me to check on their dog, so I took my dogs next door and worked on the synopsis for a bit while sitting in the shade. Their dog hung out with us for about five minutes, then went back inside. My dogs spent the whole time digging up and eating gross things. I guess a good time was had by all?

Another month gone already! How did I do?

• Finish the query for the dragon novel (SHIFT HAPPENS)
• Finish the final (ha!) edits for the dragon novel
• Get 10 queries out to agents (Almost — I have 4 out at the moment)
• Get the next chapter of IMPULSE out to the YWC critique group
• Critique P’s novel for the WF critique group.

June was a fairly productive month. I didn’t get ten queries out because I need to finish the synopsis (which some agents want along with the initial query) — the first draft is done, so now I need to edit it down to 1-2 pages. Hopefully I’ll have that ready soon so I can send out some more queries by next weekend.

New goals for this month:

• Finish the SHIFT HAPPENS synopsis
• Get 10 queries out for SHIFT HAPPENS
• Get the next chapter of IMPULSE out to the YWC critique group
• 30k new words as part of Camp NaNo — I have a couple of novels that just need their endings written, and I’m going to work on those.

On the non-writing front, everything that has a water source is growing, so there’s a bit of gardening and yard work to keep up with. The big dog is helping keep the patio clean by eating all the figs that the rodents and birds knock down to the ground.

Writing-related accomplishments: The query for SHIFT ENFORCERS is done and ready to be sent out, but Query Tracker was down this afternoon, so… maybe tomorrow.

While my mind was free-associating before sleep the other night, I started thinking about an AI responsible for herding sheep that is making the flock go into patterns in the shape of runes in an attempt to summon the elder gods. The whole idea is making me laugh still, so that may be the start to the next novel…

May your week be as comfortable as Ripley in this box.

Oh my, look at the time. I totally wasn’t procrastinating on my goals because I was still hoping to finish up the May items. Absolutely not. Also, it didn’t work.

Anyhow… Let’s look backward for a moment.

• Finish the query for the dragon novel (SHIFT HAPPENS)
• Finish the final (ha!) edits for the dragon novel
• Get 10 queries out to agents
• Get the next chapter of IMPULSE out to the YWC critique group

Ahem. Well, one out of four is… better than none out of four. I did work on the first two — I just didn’t finish them. The good news is that this makes it really easy to come up with June goals:

• Finish the query for the dragon novel (SHIFT HAPPENS)
• Finish the final (ha!) edits for the dragon novel
• Get 10 queries out to agents
• Get the next chapter of IMPULSE out to the YWC critique group
• Critique P’s novel for the WF critique group.

Here’s a picture of the big dog waiting not-too-patiently to go running. At least one of us isn’t a procrastinator.

Writing-related accomplishments: I’ve been beta-reading a friend’s novel and it’s really good and I feel like it’s taking me forever since I need to get it back to her by the end of the month. I’m almost exactly 1/3rd of the way through it. Other than that, I had a critique group meeting and got feedback on another part of IMPULSE and worked a tad on the query for SHIFT HAPPENS.

Huh. Look at the end of the month rushing at us. It’s going to be a busy week if I’m going to hit my goals…

I will spare you the picture of my knee post-pavement-impact. (I tripped while running. The big dog had an amazing look of second-hand embarrassment on his face and he pretended not to know me as I climbed to my feet.) Have this picture of Guido-you-bastard (still doing his thing nine months after being diagnosed with lymphoma) instead!