Failure

Originally Posted 04/02/2010

There's such a stigma associated with failing that I think we often hold back, for fear of failing. You hesitate to try because you might fail. You don't set a goal, or you set it low so you won't fail. And I can't help but wonder, what's the point?

Yeah, failing sucks. But if you don't try, if you don't push yourself at whatever you're doing, why bother at all? I've come to realize lately, that as much as it sucks to try something and have it go wrong, to set a big goal and not meet it, it's worth it for the times when you set that goal way out of reach, and then do manage to make it.

Now, I'm not saying you should have unrealistic expectations of yourself or the world around you. Something more along the lines of:Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it you will land among the stars. -Les Brown 

I set some pretty lofty goals for myself in March. I had a lot of work I wanted to complete, and I would have had to push really hard to complete it all. I failed. But, because I set that goal, I completed far more than I normally would have. And crossing those things off my to do list, even if I didn't cross them all off , felt pretty damn good. It's a new month, what goals can you set for yourself, what can you strive for if you just set aside that fear of failure?

2010/2011

What a crazy year. Lots of unexpected family stuff. My kitty nearly died. But we saved him. It was a very frightening month or two.

We were worried we might lose my grandfather, and after a few scary months things are looking up. I got married! Didn’t see that one coming, even though Oliver and I had been together 9 years. My little brother got married. My little sister got pregnant and is due any day now. Our house was broken into. Our neighbor’s was broken into and Oliver and I called 911 and chased the burglars. We adopted a dog.

Like I said, a crazy year.

So, my resolutions/to do list for 2010:

• revise Queen of Freaks Done! Approximately 7 times.
• write Queen of Freaks synopsis
• revise Queen of Freaks synopsis
• draft Courting Death
• revise Courting Death
• submit Courting Death Only to Writer’s of the Future, but I think it counts. It needs some editing before I submit again.
• send Queen of Freaks to betas
• revise Queen of Freaks for feedback Trunked Queen of Freaks instead of moving forward with it. It was the right move. Maybe I’ll come back to the idea some day, but I would need to rewrite the entire thing from scratch, and I just don’t have it in me currently.
• query Queen of Freaks
• draft adult urban fantasy  Began working on Feral instead. Have not completed Feral, but I have made good progress…after scrapping everything three times and starting over until I found the right story and the right starting place.
• draft 12 short stories  Just 1 completed. A half a dozen more started. I have hopes of coming back to a few of them this year.
• read 100 books  Nope. Only 34 this year. I had trouble finding things that I really fell in love with this year. My tastes were changing and it was hard to pin down what I needed in books afterwards.
• blog 200 times Ha! Try 51, plus drafts for 12 more that were about topics that it was difficult to articulate my thoughts on in a way that I was satisfied, and thus need to be revised and polished before they could be posted. Plus 2 more about Doctor Who, and 1 for the Vampire Diaries that I never posted because they felt a little too fan-girlish.

I’m not going to list all of the books I read in 2010. I’m not sure I even remember what they all are, I only wrote 34 of them down. But! I do have a few I want to gush over.

I still adore Ilona Andrews, Richelle Mead, Devon Monk, Kim Harrison, Gail Carriger, Caitlin Kittredge, CE Murphy, and Patricia Briggs. There are others I really love too, but each of those writers has a series which is a guaranteed pick-me-up, even when I feel like I’m in a reading slump, and they surely didn’t let me down this year.

New to my author/book love list this year:

Kristin Cashore: Graceling was amazing. I’ve been holding off on reading Fire until I know when Bitterblue will be out because I know I won’t be able to hold back once I start reading and will gobble it up, leaving me desperate for the next.

Robin McKinley: Don’t know how I went so long without reading her books, but started with Beauty this year and am working my way through everything else. This is pure love. I longed for these sorts of books when I was young. I really wish a librarian had put them in my hands back then.

Diana Wynne Jones: Ditto. For the number of times I’ve watched Howl’s you’d think her books would have been devoured long ago, but no. Oh, Howl, how I love thee. I’m in the middle of Fire and Hemlock.

Melina Marchetta: Saving Francesca had been sitting on my shelves for the longest time before I finally read it. Should have picked it up when I first bought it.

Suzanne Collins: Didn’t read The Hunger Games until this week. Burned through the entire trilogy in 2 days while I was sick. The Hunger Games was definitely my fave of the three.

And, to finish up, my resolutions for 2011:

• write at least 250 words per day and keep bumping up the word count as the weeks pass until I find the comfortable daily output to aim for that stretches what I can do without the quality suffering because I’m pushing for a higher word count
• read 100 books
• at least 10 of them nonfiction
• at least 10 of them classics
• at least 15 of them not YA or fantasy
• finish drafting Feral
• draft sekrit project YA
• write at least 6 short stories
• blog  3 times/week
• walk at least 5 hours/week
• make a budget
• sort through all of Oliver and I’s stuff and throw out/donate anything we no longer need
• organize what’s left
• buy some plastic drawers and organize all my different craft supplies in them
• make a point of getting together with my family at least once a month
• make a point of getting together with Oliver’s family at least once a month
• sort/sell/giveaway our comic collection. just do SOMETHING with them.

And now I’m off to finish cleaning our bedroom and organizing the clothes and all the belongings in it. I’m already well on my way towards the getting rid of what we don’t need and organizing what’s left. I hope to be done by the end of the week. And it will certainly make moving easier in a couple months.

2009

Originally Posted 01/03/2009


Only two days left until Oliver starts the new job and our lives get back to normal. I'm glad that we'll have that source of income, but after spending 3 months of being with the one I love all day long every day, I'm going to miss him. On the other hand, I'm the type of person that needs space/alone time, so maybe it will be good for us. :)

I spent the last few weeks of 2008 playing around with some tentative writing schedules for 2009, as well as my resolutions for the new year. I think with some touch-ups yesterday I got things more or less figured out.

In an effort to treat my writing more like a job and less like a hobby I've created a set up to treat it more like a 9-5. 
My plan is:

• Write 2,500 words/weekday.
•  Weekends and holidays (New Year's, February 2, March 20, Oliver's birthday, Easter, May 1, Memorial Day, June 21, July 4, our anniversary, August 2, Labor Day, September 22, my birthday, October 31, Thanksgiving, the day after Thanksgiving, December 21, Christmas Eve, Christmas, Boxing Day, and New Year's Eve) off.
•  For every 5,000 words I write I accumulate 1 vacation hour and 1 sick hour to be used as I like. 8 sick or 8 vacation hours may be redeemed for a day off in which I am not obliged to write, edit, or do anything involving my writing.

I know it seems like an awfully complicated system for something I should just do, but I figured if I treated it like this, gave it a concrete system, it would be easier to keep myself accountable to my writing. Making myself accountable for what I do or do not do is a large part of what I'm trying to work on this year.

2009 Goals:write 12 short stories
write 4 novels 
program my placeholder website
submit short stories at least 20 times
send out at least 150 queries
blog at least 3 times/week
type all the longhand writing in storage
write a short synopsis for each idea
keep notebook on me at all times 
develop an idea for a comic
read at least 100 books 
walk 1000 miles
drink less than 3 glasses of soda/week 
drink 64 oz. water/day 
stop using plastic bags 
stop using plastic water jugs
stop using incandescent lightbulbs in my home 
start recycling once I have a car 
get an oil change every 3,000 miles 
check tire inflation at least once/month 
say at least one nice thing/day 
stop and think about the thing I'm about to say before I let myself say it
put 5 cents in a jar for each time I swear

I have a few things to finish up on Queen of Freaks, then I'm going to do a round of edits for the things I already know need to be fixed. After that it will be all set to finally go out to the betas. I'm thinking that will be about the 16th or so. When I get it back from then I'll do a round of edits to fix any problems they catch, then it's going in a drawer for a month before I do my final edits. When the final edits are done I'll send out my queries.

In the interim I'll be working on PDA1, which really needs a title, but I can't think of anything. Maybe while I'm working on the zero draft I'll think of something. I think the zero draft will go quite quickly, since I've taken the time to plot the whole book in advance, unlike Queen of Freaks. It's also had time to simmer and develop. The last three months have been very unproductive as far as word count, only about 10,000 words, but PDA1 has developed nicely. Now I just have to ship Oliver off to work and get back to work myself.

2007/2008

Originally Posted 12/31/2007


With less than an hour left of this year I figured now was probably an appropriate time for a post reflecting on the year and listing my resolutions for 2008.

2007 was an interesting year. 2006 ended/2007 began with a blowout roommate wise and one of our worst roommates ever leaving. We began the year with her replacement, who was also pretty bad, but not quite as bad. He lived with us for only a couple months because he lost his job and OD'ed the night before rent was due. We had to call an ambulance for the first time, but he  His replacement turned out to be pretty great. Today is an especially fine time to reflect upon that roommate as today was his last day living with us. This afternoon he got on a plane and moved to Washington. In the last two and a half years with have lived with a lot of people (that tends to happen when you rent a 5-6 bedroom house); one family member, three friends, three acquaintances, and a handful of random people we found on Craig'sList. Of all the random people we've lived with I never expected to find someone like Sean. We have parted ways with most our roommates amicably, living with 5 or 6 other people is not everyone's ideal situation, and while cheaper people do tend to get tired of it over time. We have parted ways with a few in fights that were loud and quite unpleasant. Sean is the first we are truly sad to see go. He went from being just some guy living down the hall to being close friends with most of us. He will be greatly missed. I hope that, despite the distance, he remains a friend. 

Midway through January one of the close friends we live with moved away for several months, needing some time away. He returned to us in the summer, and we are glad to have him back home. Shortly after he moved back or lease was up and we had to begin looking for a new home. Originally we planned to move out of the house we were in and find something with just the significant other, good friend, and I. Soon after we realized how hard it was to find a place for just the three of us that we liked and wasn't insanely expensive. Luckily our landlord showed us four or five other houses and while it lacked the central air we had grown accustomed to in the last house, we fell in love with our current house. It's a beautiful brick house that was previously a parsonage. The selling point? A large library with built in bookcases with beautiful glass doors. That was all we needed to see. We have lived here happily for over 5 months, and it was the right choice, I'm sure. 

Our collection of books, which before was sprawling and could not be contained in our measly shelves looked tiny in our library, filling not even a quarter of it. This is until my grandparents decided to move about four months ago, and all my aunt's books that were boxed up in their attic needed a home. Fifteen boxes of books later I would say our library is now 80-90% full. It's a beautiful, glorious thing. Which brings me to my next book point. 

In 2007 it was my goal to read 50 books. I know to a lot of avid readers it seems like not that much, but from the age of about 8 or 9 to 14 or 15 I didn't read. I loved to read, but had trouble finishing books. I hadn't found what I loved yet and would get to the middle of each book and lose interest. This all changed when Oliver handed me my first fantasy book, and I've been horribly addicted since then. Each book I've read since then seems like an accomplishment to me, even if a small one. So, without further ado, the books I read in 2007:
*=my first time reading that particular author

1.) *Coraline - Neil Gaiman 01/03/2007
2.) Party Princess (Princess Diaries 7) - Meg Cabot 01/03/2007
3.) Shadowland (The Mediator 1) - Meg Cabot 01/04/2007
4.) Ninth Key (The Mediator 2) - Meg Cabot 01/04/2007
5.) Reunion (The Mediator 3) - Meg Cabot 01/04/2007
6.) Darkest Hour (The Mediator 4) - Meg Cabot 01/11/2007
7.) Haunted (The Mediator 5) - Meg Cabot 01/24/2007
8.) Twilight (The Mediator 6) - Meg Cabot 01/24/2007
9.) Queen of Babble - Meg Cabot 01/25/2007
10.) Size 12 Is Not Fat - Meg Cabot 01/27/2007
11.) Size 14 IS Not Fat Either - Meg Cabot 01/30/2007
12.) Project Princess - Meg Cabot 01/03/2007
13.) *I’d Tell You I Love You, But Then I’d Have to Kill You - Ally Carter 02/13/2007
14.) *Twilight - Stephenie Meyer 02/17/2007
15.) New Moon - Stephenie Meyer 02/25/2007
16.) *13 Little Blue Envelopes - Maureen Johnson 03/12/2007
17.) *Goodnight Nobody - Jennifer Weiner 03/25/2007
18.) *She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders - Jennifer Finney Boylan 04/07/2007
20.) *Secret Society Girl: An Ivy League Novel - Diana Peterfreund 05/06/2007
21.) *A Great and Terrible Beauty - Libba Bray 05/27/2007
22.) *Don’t Look Down - Jennifer Crusie & Bob Mayer 05/29/2007
23.) *One for the Money (A Stephanie Plum Novel) - Janet Evanovich 05/31/2007
24.) When Lightning Strikes (1-800-Where-R-You) - Meg Cabot 06/01/2007
25.) Two for the Dough (A Stephanie Plum Novel) - Janet Evanovich 06/03/2007
26.) Kushiel’s Justice - Jacqueline Carey 06/08/2007
27.) Three to Get Deadly (A Stephanie Plum Novel) - Janet Evanovich 06/13/2007
28.) *Wicked Lovely - Melissa Marr 06/17/2007
29.) Four to Score (A Stephanie Plum Novel) - Janet Evanovich 06/18/2007
30.) High Five (A Stephanie Plum Novel) - Janet Evanovich 06/19/2007
31.) Hot Six (A Stephanie Plum Novel) - Janet Evanovich 06/19/2007
32.) *Stray - Rachel Vincent 06/20/2007
33.) Seven Up (A Stephanie Plum Novel) - Janet Evanovich 06/21/2007
34.) Hard Eight (A Stephanie Plum Novel) - Janet Evanovich 06/26/2007
35.) To the Nines (A Stephanie Plum Novel) - Janet Evanovich 06/26/2007
36.) Under the Rose - Diana Peterfreund 06/27/2007
37.) Magic or Madness - Justine Larbelestier 07/03/2007
38.) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone - JK Rowling 07/08/2007 (reread it)
39.) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - JK Rowling 07/22/2007
40.) Queen of Babble in the Big City - Meg Cabot 07/24/2007
41.) *Moon Called - Patricia Briggs 07/30/2007
42.) Blood Bound - Patricia Briggs 07/31/2007
43.) Eclipse - Stephenie Meyer 08/07/2007
44.) Rebel Angels - Libba Bray 08/19/2007
45.) *Working for the Devil (A Dante Valentine Novel) - Lilith Saintcrow 08/25/2007
46.) Ten Big Ones (A Stephanie Plum Novel) - Janet Evanovich 08/27/2007
47.) Dead Man Rising (A Dante Valentine Novel) - Lilith Saintcrow 08/27/2007
48.) Eleven on Top (A Stephanie Plum Novel) - Janet Evanovich 08/28/2007
49.) Twelve Sharp (A Stephanie Plum Novel) - Janet Evanovich 08/29/2007
50.) *The Silver Kiss - Annette Curtis Klause 09/02/2007
51.) *If Angels Burn - Lynn Viehl 09/02/2007
52.) *Succubus Blues - Richelle Mead 09/07/2007
53.) The Devil's Right Hand (A Dante Valentine Novel) - Lilith Saintcrow 09/08/2007
54.) Vampire Academy - Richelle Mead 09/09/2007
55.) *Magic Bites - Ilona Andrews 09/13/2007
56.) *Kitty and the Midnight Hour - Carrie Vaughn 09/16/2007
57.) *Tithe - Holly Black 09/18/2007
58.) Valiant - Holly Black 09/27/2007
59.) Kitty Goes to Washington - Carrie Vaughn 10/02/2007
60.) Ironside - Holly Black 10/09/2007
61.) *Glass Houses - Rachel Caine 10/17/2007
62.) Dead Girls' Dance - Rachel Caine 10/20/2007
63.) *Vampire Kisses - Ellen Schreiber 10/26/2007
64.) Saint City Sinners (A Dante Valentine Novel) - Lilith Saintcrow 11/10/2007
65.) *Halfway to the Grave - Jeaniene Frost 11/11/2007
66.) Big Boned - Meg Cabot 11/30/2007
67.) *The Scent of Shadows - Vicki Pettersson 12/03/2007
68.) The Taste of Night - Vicki Pettersson 12/22/2007
69.) Succubus on Top - Richelle Mead 12/24/2007
70.) *The Devil Inside -  Jenna Black 12/26/2007

Using Amazon.com and Renlearn.com as well as estimating on a handful of books it looks like I've read approximately 5,730,286 words this year. Seems like a huge number. Makes me smile. :D  I most certainly met my 50 book goal. Lots of YA. Lots of Urban Fantasy. My goal this year is 75, and to diversify my reading a bit more.

I feel like I've taken huge strides in my writing this year. I know I have a lot more to learn, but it feels more refined. I learned to write a query letter this year. I tried my hand at a hook for the first time in December 2006 with Miss Snark's Crapometer. In the following year I tried my hand at it  several more times, writing 3 more practice letters and refining each. The latest is for my current WIP. I think it's the letter I will end up using when the time comes. I wrote 55,632 words that I've typed and probably 20,000 written longhand sitting in various folders for future projects. I can't help myself, when I came up with each idea this year if I had a piece of it in my head I wrote it so I wouldn't lose it. 

I didn't finish writing any books in 2007, but I am going to change that this year. I spent the first 9 months of 2007 working on my practice book. I knew it wasn't *the* book, but I thought writing it would be good practice so I wouldn't waste any great ideas on books I wasn't good enough to write yet. The problem with continuing to write a book that is flawed and my heart wasn't in is it dragged horribly and I just couldn't make it work, since, you know, it was fatally flawed. In the end of September or October I realized that forcing myself to trudge away at it wasn't doing me any good and I let myself quit and begin work on a new book, with an idea and characters I loved and a story that I was sure I could make work if I just kept at it. The first draft of Queen of Freaks is now approximately 25% complete (ignore my meter on the side, it doesn't like me and doesn't want to update) and I'm loving it. This book will be finished. Assuming this whole being sick thing resolves itself soon (what a great way to begin the new year, huh) I hope to be finished by Jan. 27th. It will be great to finish my first book.

In the last month or so I began something new, cutting out pictures that remind me of characters or scenes from my books and posting them over my desk. Since I started doing this everything in my stories seems so much more vivid. I spent hours at length searching for pictures that suited my characters. Being able to look up at them when I look away from the screen is such a comforting thing. When I get the chance I may post a picture of my wall.

So, writing goals for the year to come...

• Write 520,000 words. I'm aiming for 2,000 each day with weekends off to spend with the significant other.
• Finish first drafts of four books.
• Write a proposal for each series I intend to pursue eventually so I have a proposal for each  on file.
• Query aggressively once I am ready.
• Do not let myself query before the book is well and truly ready.

Other goals for 2008:

• Walk at least 366 miles.
• Eat healthier.
• Cook more instead of going out so much.
• Create my placeholder website for my domain. Nothing complicated, just a clean cut, simple (but nice looking) page with my contact information, a little about myself, and the first three chapters of Queen of Freaks.
• Keep my house cleaner (though this is excruciatingly difficult when 7 people live in your house)

Well, I think that's it for my long-ass post. Happy New Year all.