We are over halfway done with the year!
Hi there!
How are your goals coming along so far? Reading or otherwise?
I recently read Atomic Habits (I know—I am late to the party) and it got me thinking about how I tackle my goal.
I’m the type of person who has four calendars (no exaggeration). There's my physical planner, my phone calendar, a digital calendar for writing and publication goals, and a content calendar. My projects are organized in two ways: one by year, and one by individual project. I literally have the next three years planned out, which includes the plotting, drafting, writing, and publishing of seven more books. (We will see if I can stick to it).
Think I'm kidding? Here is a very condensed (and estimated) timeline.
Although after reading Atomic Habits, I realized that a lot of my excessive planning is a result of productive procrastination (this is not necessarily new to me). If I write it down, if I plan it out, I believe it will help me achieve my goals. After all, that’s what we have always been taught. However, the author emphasizes that while that is fine and dandy, it doesn’t mean that it will force you to do the thing you set out to do if you do not take the steps to make it into a habit (he, of course, said it in a more eloquent way, but you get my point, hopefully).
My brain requires me to write things down. I need to be able to see things in different ways to organize my thoughts (and not lose my sh*t, if I’m being honest). So will I stop overplanning? No. I have to keep myself accountable. The most important thing, however, that I gathered from the book was to set clear, achievable (yet somewhat challenging) steps in order to become the person you want to be.
So we’re going to try doing that.
Alright, time to get off my soapbox & get down to business.
This month, I’ve been participating in Camp NaNo (July edition). I love participating in these events because I find that they help me push myself. For this month, I had two goals: edit 40k of TCS and write 20k in Dani & Fynn's story.
On Friday, I officially finished the second revision of The Crown’s Shadow (the sequel to The King’s Weapon) and have officially sent it to two of my beta readers! Once they read it, I plan to do one more round of revisions (this time focusing on scene strength) in August before sending it to my wonderful editor in September. <3
This also means that a cover reveal and release date will be coming soon (like VERY soon)…so stay tuned!
Meanwhile, the Dani & Fynn standalone (title to be announced at a later date) is…in progress. Now that the latest round of revisions for TCS is done, I can focus on drafting D&F’s story since it was on the back burner for a couple of weeks.
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