First Quarter Goals - Update

Okay, here it is, the real start to 2013.

Tomorrow (or today, as you're reading this) I start my writing marathon.  I will be writing to the beat of the A Round of Words in 80 Days challenge -- a writing dare I like quite a lot because it's flexible, AND it's ongoing.  It's 80 days of writing with about 10 days off between rounds.

ROW80 participants report their progress on Wednesdays and Sundays.  But since the challenge starts on a Monday and ends on a Wednesday, that means the last update is AFTER Wednesday -- which annoys me.  So I start a day early, on Sunday, so I can end on a Tuesday and report on that last Wednesday.

As I said last week my goal is:

2500 Words a Day

I have no total word goal, because I expect to be interrupted a lot, and my goal is not to have 200,000 words after 80 days, but rather to get into the habit of bringing my nose back to the grindstone after each interruption.

And I have an intentional interruption that I didn't mention before:

Prep Work

Since I am using Rachel Aaron's  2k to 10k Words a Day as inspiration, I am putting some extra effort into preparation.  Therefore I will set aside days just for outlining.  My plan right now is two days a week for prep work, at least until I feel ready to drop it.  (If certain other things looming in my life come to pass, this may be three non-writing days a week.)

I will mainly be outlining three projects:

*Devil in a Blue Bustle.  This second Mick and Casey novel has been semi-stuck for quite a while.  I've broken through the problem, and it will be the number one project for the writing portion of the dare.  I also have a Mick and Casey novelette that I will finish up to be an interim serial here when Test of Freedom is over in late February.

*The Man Who Stepped Up.  The second Starling and Marquette mystery.  This series is more complex so the backstory needs more prep work, so most of the outline work will be on this.  This is the other major writing project for this dare, and I will jump back and forth between this and Bustle as necesary to keep up the word count.

*The Case of the Misplace Baroness.  This is the summer serial, in the same series as last summer's story The Case of the Misplaced Hero.  I will not likely do much writing on this for this quarter, (unless the first two books get done or stuck).  I just want to be prepared so I can leap in when the time comes to start posting episodes in April.

I may add other projects to the outlining project as these projects are done. (This depends partly on how successful the outlining is in getting the writing done.)

Blogging:

I'm seriously cutting back on blogging for this quarter.  I will continue to post the episodes of the serial story on Mondays and Thursdays, and I will post writing progress on Wednesdays and  Sundays as a part of the ROW80 challenge.  These progress reports will sometimes be informative and intersting blog posts, but as often as not, they'll just be updates.

Oh, and I'll continue the Miss Leech and the Yard cartoons once a month (continuing this Tuesday).

I'll be trying to pull back from a lot of other online interactions as well.  I will focus on Twitter, since I am limited to 140 characters at a time.

Sometime after Chinese New Year (Feb 10) I will consider whether I want to go back to blogging more or not.

That's it.  Nothing new.  Just focus.

See you in the funny papers.