Tag: writing goals

february 2023 wrap-up post February 2023 Wrap-Up Post
Monthly Review

February 2023 Wrap-Up Post

Kara JorgensenLeave a comment

Not going to lie, I tend to hate February because it’s a short month, which totally throws me off in terms of planning. Every deadline in early March causes panic mode for me because I somehow forget February ends abruptly. Either way, this was a far less eventful month than January, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. My goals for February were to

  • Learn more about writing mysteries specifically (research!)
  • Outline Act I of The Reanimator’s Soul
  • Write 500 words a day (14k total) <— hahahahaha
  • Grade a shit ton of papers with my brain in tact
  • Manage stress
  • Do more art
  • Read 8 books
  • Blog weekly
  • Send out my monthly newsletter

Books

My reading goal for February was to read 8 books, and I read 10 books.

  1. The Empire of Gold (#2) by S. A. Chakraborty- 5 stars, a phenomenal ending to this series. I loved how it wrapped up, everyone got what they deserved, and the redemption arc was actually good.
  2. The Fellowship of the Ring (#1) by J. R. R. Tolkein, read by Andy Serkis- 4 stars for the book, 5 stars for the reading. Andy Serkis is a fantastic voice actor. He voices every character uniquely, and the acting is fantastic. This sort of audiobook reading is really the only kind I enjoy.
  3. Sword Dance (#1) by A. J. Demas- 4 stars, I greatly enjoyed this re-imagined ancient Mediterranean world. It was full of queer characters, espionage, and action.
  4. The Busy Writer’s Tips on Writing Mystery, Crime, and Suspense by M. R. McAlister- 3 stars, while there were some useful things in this book, I think if you’re more than a newbie writer, a lot of it is already known/obvious.
  5. Out of the Mirror, Darkness (#7) by Garth Nix- 3 stars, this series is linked by tone and time periods but different authors. So far, this one feels the most underdeveloped. I don’t know if Nix borrowed characters known to his usual readers, but the main characters in this short story felt very flimsy.
  6. American Cheese by Joe Berkowitz- 4 stars, an interesting nonfiction deep-dive into US cheese culture. A lot of this is hipster-y, but there was a whole cheese subculture I had no idea existed.
  7. Self-Defense for Gentlemen and Ladies by Colonel Thomas Hoyer Monstery- 4 stars, a collection of Monstery’s articles on self-defense with added biographical and supplemental text. Very fascinating and will come in handy for my research.
  8. A Very Merry Bachelor’s Valet (#2.5) by Arden Powell- 4 stars, a short story featuring the characters from The Bachelor’s Valet. It was a lot of fun to visit them and see the chaos they can get into.
  9. A Novel Arrangement (#5) by Arden Powell- 5 stars, I absolutely loved the dynamic between these three characters. At first, I wasn’t sure how their relationship was going to work out, but throughout the story, Powell did a great job getting them to move to friends, then lovers.
  10. Last Gender (#2) by Rei Taki- 4 stars, this one doesn’t flinch from complicated, adult queer relationships. I have a love-hate relationship with the vignette format because there are some characters where I would love to see more. It also does quite a bit of explaining/spoon-feeding of info, but I can deal with that.

Admin/Behind-the-Scenes Stuff

  • Wrote “An Unexpected Valentine”
  • Edited and proofed “AUV”
  • Made the cover and blurb for “AUV”
  • Published “AUV” and sent it out to newsletter subscribers
  • Researched writing mysteries
  • Researched plot twists
  • Researched many more book things I won’t give away
  • Outlined Act I of The Reanimator’s Soul
  • Did more planning for The Reanimator’s Soul
  • Played more of Bear and Breakfast
  • Got REALLY far ahead with blogging
  • Graded so many papers

Blogs Posted

Writing

I’m not going to lie, I was really ready to be very down on myself about how much I didn’t write in February on The Reanimator’s Soul. What ended up happening, as with all my new stories, is a false start. I often feel like I am 100% ready to write a story, then I start writing it and quickly realize I have no idea what I’m doing or where I’m going. Basically, it’s still underbaked, even if I have the framework of the story ready to go. That’s what happened in February. I started writing it, realized it was not fully gelling, went into the wrong point of view initially, and I froze. I didn’t want to delete what I wrote already because that would have been painful, but rewriting it was also sort of a painful process because it needed a lot of beefing up and fine tuning. The good thing is that while I stalled doing that, I picked up my pack of blank notecards and managed to figure out the major emotional beats for the story and made quite a few scene cards for act one. Are they words on the page? No. Are they very useful to eventually getting words on the page? Yes. I need to trust the process. So much of art is staring at something that looks like absolute garbage until suddenly it doesn’t. Art is messy and frustrating and often ugly, and that’s something my perfectionist(ish) brain tends to forget. We get an (ish) on perfectionist because it’s less about perfection and more about “why can’t it look like I know what I’m doing?!” before I actually know what I’m doing.

The other big writing thing I did was nothing to sneeze at either. I wrote a whole freaking short story, edited it, proofed it, and published it to my newsletter (which you can grab if you sign up for it). Even though “An Unexpected Valentine” is only 5k words, I put a lot of effort into it and deeply love it. I needed a palate cleanser when the story wasn’t flowing well, and I think working on it is ultimately what jogged loose the important things I needed to figure out. It’s like when you get ideas in the shower or while doing a semi mindless task. I needed to write that to let the bigger story gel in the background. Books are basically jello. They need time to set before you can start messing with them.

Hopes for March

  • Read 8 books
  • Write The Reanimator’s Soul
    • Minimum goal 15k words
    • Real goal 20k words
    • Stretch goal 25k words
  • Enjoy spring break and actually relax (as opposed to using it to catch up)
  • Blog weekly
  • Send out my monthly newsletter
  • Do some digital art
  • Plan my goals for Q2
July 2022 Wrap-Up Post
Monthly Review

July 2022 Wrap-Up Post

Kara Jorgensen1 Comment

July was a weird month for me, mainly because it’s my birthday month and I ended up having to last minute prep for a summer class I wasn’t sure if I would be teaching. Surprise, I’m teaching it, and I found out like last week that it was a-go. If you aren’t in academia, everything depends on enrollment, and in this case, I was not privy to how many students had signed up until the admins told me. If it looks like I did A LOT in the admin section, I have been panic working in case I did end up teaching that class. Anywho, here were my goals for July:

  • Finish Writing The Reanimator’s Heart
  • Start Editing the beginning of The Reanimator’s Heart
  • Figure out what to do with old room furniture/prep for reno
  • Start drafting newsletter freebie, at least a little bit
  • Do the cover reveal
  • Start making release graphics
  • Read 8 books
  • Crochet something?? Or do some other art project??

I can already tell you, the last bit did not happen. I didn’t crochet or do any art projects at all this past month, but I did play some video games.

Books

I aimed for 8, nearly failed, but I did read 8 books this month. Thank god for graphic novels.

  1. The Unmatchmakers by Jackie Lau- 4 stars, parents with baggage try to break their adult children’s budding romance and create havoc in the process (Kobo only)
  2. The Facemaker by Lindsey Fitzharris- 4 stars, fascinating read about the man who became the leading plastic surgeon during WWI and the people who influenced him
  3. A Lady for a Duke by Alexis Hall- 5 stars, I LOVED this book, a Regency story featuring a trans woman who falls for her ex-best friend. It is just so emotional and lovely.
  4. Saga volume 5 by Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples- 5 stars, rereading for volume 10
  5. A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske- 4 stars, an Edwardian MM story where a civil servant stumbles into the world of magic
  6. Lore Olympus volume 2 by Rachel Smythe- 4 stars, I love watching Hades and Persephone get closer, letting their walls down while also dealing with less than savory characters
  7. The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs by Stephen Brusatte- 4 stars, highly interesting read about the evolution of dinosaurs from their origins to their extinction
  8. Saga vol 6 by Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples- 4 stars, rereading for volume 10

Admin/Behind the Scenes Author Stuff

  • Finished throwing out all the trash from my room/office reno. Everything is empty at this point and ready to go, but now, that room is hot and hard to work in. The reno is now on haitus until September because I’m not sweating to death and having paint peel off the walls from the high temperatures.
  • FINISHED WRITING The Reanimator’s Heart! The main draft of it is DONE. I AM FREE.
  • Made lots of promo graphics for TRH
  • Made a book trailer for TRH
  • Finished beta reading a book for a friend and send them their feedback
  • Prepared for that summer class that was semi sprung on me by creating a Blackboard, tweaking the syllabus, setting up my virtual workspace in the basement (I look like I’m in a hostage video, but it’s better than the 100 degree office)
  • Made the syllabi for my fall classes
  • Got all my cover stuff squared away for TRH
  • Had the cover reveal for TRH and launched the preorders (see blog post below for links)
  • Set up the preorder for TRH at all major retailers
  • Started working on a freebie story for my newsletter subscribers (won’t be out for a while)
  • Edited some bits of TRH that I had on my list that were in need of tweaking (larger things like resplicing a chapter)

Blogs Posted

Writing

I feel like I spent a good chunk of July feeling behind, panicking, catching up, falling behind, repeat. Luckily, I managed to pull ahead and finish The Reanimator’s Heart at 97,680 words (pre-edits). This total is also not counting work I’ve done on the newsletter freebie story during the last week of the month.

  • Week 1- wrote 3/3 days, 1,000 words total, 333 words/day
  • Week 2- wrote 6/7 days, 3,200 words total, 533 words/day
  • Week 3- wrote 5/7 days, 2,700 words total, 540 words/day
  • Week 4- wrote 5/7 days, 4,100 words total, 820 words/day
  • Week 5- wrote 4/7 days, 3,680 words total, 920 words/day (finished the book on Thursday)

I am very proud of the work I’ve done on The Reanimator’s Heart, so I’m really hoping you all will like it too when it comes out in October. As you can see, once I got toward the end, I sort of hurtled through the last few weeks. I’m finding it interesting to track the speed and fluidity of my writing at different stages in the story. Act I takes forever, Act II part 2 takes a long time, but Act III seems to flow so well once I get going.

Hopes for August

  • Stay on top of my summer class stuff (that runs from the beginning to the middle of August)
  • Set up the Blackboards for my fall classes (*quiet sobbing because I hate doing it*)
  • Edit the majority of The Reanimator’s Heart
  • Continue working on the newsletter freebie story
  • More graphics for TRH
  • Set up Google form for ARC copies of TRH
  • Read 8 books
How I’m Getting Back into Writing
organization · Writing

How I’m Getting Back into Writing

Kara Jorgensen1 Comment

As you may have gleaned from my posts since I started blogging again in the latter half of 2021, I have had a lot of trouble writing since the pandemic started. It was difficult before that, but it really worsened during the pandemic due to stress, worsening of my OCD symptoms, and what I now realize may have been covid brain fog (this seemed to greatly lessen after getting vaccinated). At this point, I’m in a much better place mentally than I was a year (or more) ago. Not 100% but at least 80% of the way there.

Since 2022 started, I have tried to really get back into the groove of writing like I did in 2019, so I’ve been trying to figure out how to optimize my writing routine and do things that make it easier to get work done. Before we get into this, I want to make it clear that I am not into the hustle grind, write a million words a day mentality. I’m literally just trying to get words on the page in a way that doesn’t feel like absolute torture.

Sprints

Something I started doing at the end of 2021 is using sprints. Sprints are setting a timer and writing for that amount of time. This is a branch off of the Pomodoro Method, which uses 25 minutes of work followed by a few minutes of time, followed by another “pomodoro” or 25 minute sprint. I found several authors on Youtube who do live sprints online, and I started joining those to help get started. Even if I found the videos too chatty at times, the synergy of writing at the same time as other people helped a lot. It took me a bit of trial and error to figure out what sprint length works best for me. 20 minutes seems to be my sweet spot. I can do two 20 minute sprints pretty easily and clock in a couple hundred words each time. I’m slowly trying to strengthen my creative muscles and do a bit more writing, so increasing from two sprints to three or even four in the future. I’m not there yet, but it’s a hope of mine.

Tracking Progress

With sprints, I’ve also started tracking my sprints with a printable chart that I got off Sarra Cannon’s website. You can see them in the picture below. Using these sheets and making note of the minutes long the sprint was helped me to find my sweet spot with sprint length. I also liked to see how much I got done each day and how the word count was increasing. Seeing progress makes me believe that it’s happening because adding words feels rather amorphous.

I also use a spreadsheet to track my daily word count. I take the total from the sprints and add it to an excel sheet. These spreadsheets also track my overall monthly goal (which we’ll get to in a bit). The monthly spreadsheets add everything up for me, let me track my progress, and the one I bought can track more than just my WIP. That way I can see that if I have a low word count on my WIP it may be because I wrote a 1,000 word blog post instead. If you’ve ever done NaNoWriMo, the word count trackers are a lot like what they have on their website, but this one covers more than one project at a time.

While tracking my progress has been good for me because I have the visual pay-off, something I struggled with greatly in January was not punishing myself for not writing on a certain day. I originally colored in the days where I didn’t write. That ended up becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy where one writing-less day perpetuated more writing-less days. The colored bands stacked up, and my positive feelings surrounding my work plummeted. In February, I stopped coloring in the days I missed. I tried to treat the new month like a clean slate, and with each successive week, I tried to have less writing-less days if possible.

Realistic Goals

Let’s put a big neon, bolded sign around REALISTIC.

I somehow managed to be under the delusion that in the past, I could write like 30k a month despite logically knowing I didn’t write more 1,000 words a day. I actually went back through my blog and found my old monthly check-ins, which had my word count totals for the month. Most were 10k-20k depending on the month and where I was in the story.

This is also something I had to calibrate within myself. The beginnings of new books are a SLOG for me. I tend to have false starts, have a lot more pauses, and I can’t power through the beginnings when I don’t know where I’m going like I can in the middle of a work. What I am having to remind myself is that if I’m working on the beginning of the story (first 10k-15k), I need to be mindful that it’ll take me a lot longer than months where I’m in the middle or end of a book. I may only write 5k a month when I’m starting a brand new story and still feeling out where I’m going.

In January, I wrote 2,800 words, and in February I wrote 10k with the word count increasing each week. This leads me to my March goal. I decided that I’m going to have a good, better, best goal for my March word count goal. My good goal is 10,000 words, which is fairly modest and very doable if things continue as is. My better goal is 15k, and the best goal is 20k. I don’t think I’ll hit the 20k, but it would be amazing if I could. Instead of shooting for the fences and saying 20k for March, I have the lower goals which are more realistic and very doable. Basically, this is positive reinforcement as I stretch and rebuild my writing muscles. I have these goals written down on my sprint sheets and my word count spreadsheet along with how many words per day I need to reach each.

I’m a very visual person who likes data, so having all these spreadsheets and sprint sheets help me manage my goals while tempering my expectations (aka not being totally unrealistic because I can’t remember my past creative thresholds). Not everyone will like this, and I know some will actively hate that everything involves tracking because it has the opposite effect on them. But if you’re like me and need that sort of regimented, goal-oriented, piece-by-piece breakdown, some of what I’ve done these past two months may be helpful to you.

Writing

Writing and Food Poisoning

Kara Jorgensen7 Comments

I am one of those people who rarely ever gets the stomach virus. It’s been years since I’ve had to deal with it, and when I say years, I mean, at least ten because I think I was in middle school the last time I threw up. This past week I felt bloody awful.

In a few of my previous posts, I’ve mentioned that I’m participating in Camp Nanowrimo, which means for the month of July, I am trying to write 15,000 words, which would double what I have thus far of my manuscript. I was incredibly excited about the challenge of this, and within a few days, I made it a nightly ritual to write each night before bed, usually at least 500 words. I wanted to break away from being a feast or famine writer and write every day instead even if I didn’t really feel like it. It was going really well… until the 10th.

nanowrimoI made it through my day at work, and I didn’t feel that great. I felt dizzy, but sometimes my sinuses get clogged and I didn’t think much of it. Friday night, I felt horrible. Nauseous, dizzy, horrible headache, absolutely miserable. I sat staring at my computer with my outline beside me unable to do anything. Flipping tabs to my Camp Nanowrimo graph, I sighed. There goes the writing streak. I ended up shutting off my computer and going to bed at eleven.

The entire weekend I felt off. Just inexplicably sick without having any outward symptoms. I thought I was crazy. As I sat there pecking out as many words as I could before I burned out, I tried to figure out if the nausea was in my head or if I really felt sick. This continued for several days and probably reached its worst on Monday. Tuesday, the symptoms finally seemed to ease. I no longer felt like my head was going to blow off and every movement didn’t make me seal my lips against the threat of vomit. In the past I have had sinus infections that led to dizziness and nausea, so I figured that’s what it was and it would go away in a week or two. The same day, my mom calls and tells me that Shoprite called everyone who bought the frozen, prepared chicken we ate on Thursday because it had been contaminated with Salmonella.

Can I just say that food poisoning is miserable no matter how mild. I know some people become violently ill and can barely leave the bathroom, but this was like nothing I have felt in a long time. If you feel lousy, you probably do. I don’t know if other people sit there wondering if they really feel sick or if it’s all in their heads, but trust your instincts, you’re probably sick and it’s okay to take a step back and recuperate for a day or two instead of stressing over what you haven’t done. More than likely it isn’t getting done well when you’re sick as a dog anyway.

The entire time I wasn’t feeling well, I was so afraid I would stop writing and ditch my Camp Nanowrimo challenge. I ended up skipping a day (the 10th), but the next day, despite feeling crappy, I kept writing and recovered. Thus far, I am way ahead of my challenge goal for the day, and by the end of the month, I’ll have written closer to 20,000 words than the 15,000 I set out to write at the beginning of the month. Now, to get back to writing!

PS- Stay away from frozen prepared chicken. It doesn’t taste that good, and the food poisoning is not worth it.