Tag: progress

April Results and May Goals

April unfortunately was not better than March. There’s always a lot of heartbreak for me in April, and I’m sad to say there was only more this year. Even through all of the issues I had through the month, I still tried to accomplish my goals.

April Results

Finish/Write One Short Story

I finished the short story for March in April, way later than I had planned, but I am quite happy with it. What it came down to was sitting down and putting words on the page, as it happens with everything else! As for the second short story of the month, AKA the short story for April, I finished it with a day to spare, and surprised myself with a great writing streak like I haven’t had in a while. It was one of the darkest things I have written, but it was quite fun.

Camp NaNoWriMo

This year, Camp NaNoWriMo did not go as well as I had hoped. I had so many hopes for several works that simply fell flat as the month went on. While I did write a decent amount of words on several works, it simply wasn’t the year to be successful at Camp in April. I’m still writing and still pushing forward in several projects though.

Poetry

April was National Poetry Month. For the first few days, I attempted to write a poem a day, but it ended up falling off and I think I wrote a max of five poems. While I didn’t write a poem every day in April, I did enjoy thinking about words in a different way and experimenting.

NYC Midnight’s 100 Word Microfiction Challenge

Thankfully, the microfiction challenge went well this year. I was able to sit down and write something rather pithy for the challenge and submit it without any issues. It exactly the gentle nudge I needed to get excited about writing again.

Hazel the cat celebrated her last birthday (14!), but the next day we had to put her down. We gave her the best birthday and spent all the time we could on that Saturday, but we knew it was her time. Another class for school wrapped up, and I’m grateful. This class, along with all the circumstances around it kicked my butt, but everything managed to work out in the end. I also managed to finish reading another book and start a new one in the month of April.

April is always difficult. At the end of the month it was my mom’s birthday and the day right after is the day she died. This year marks nine years, and in certain ways it gets easier, but also more difficult. I don’t cry as much as I used to, but at times, it feels like the grief is getting deeper.

I’m happy to say that April is over.

Word Count: 10,869

May Goals

Write One Short Story

The goal is so far going well, even if there have been a few small bumps in the road. I’m hoping to keep the goal going and have a lot to show for it at the end of the year. I’m not sure what I’m working on this month yet, but I’m sure it will come to me soon.

Reach 100K or Finish the 2021 NaNoWriMo Novel

I have an outline, I know what needs to happen, but lack of motivation lately has been kicking my butt. I’m really hoping to buckle down and make some progress or even finish the 2021 NaNo Project. Currently I’m sitting at around 88K, so 100K is not a crazy goal.

Edit Something

I’ve had the itch to edit for quite a while, but certain projects are taking me longer than I have liked. I’m hoping that I can get back into editing a few projects and make some good progress that I’ll feel good about. I have a loose plan set up, and I hope I can stick to it and have some progress by the end of the month.

Writer Life Lessons #18: Finish Your First Drafts

Progress is measured in several different ways. If you are an athlete, progress is measured by how well you perform at your sport or sports. If you are an artist, progress is measured by your art portfolio. If you are a writer, progress is measured by words written on the page, and the amount of pieces you finish.

Can you call yourself a writer before you finish a piece? Of course. If you are putting words on the page, or the screen, or whatever you write on, you are indeed a writer. Can you call yourself an accomplished writer? Sure! But do you have anything to show for it?

When I first started writing, by hand, in pencil, in spiral-bound notebooks, I used to read unfinished pieces to my best friend. Yes, I was a writer,  and yes, I wanted to feel accomplished. Some of those drafts I finished, but a lot of them I just left him hanging, waiting on the next cliffhanger, for the next chapter or sometimes even word.

The lesson for this week is: Finish Your First Drafts.

There are tons of quotes out there about finishing what you start, how blank pages are ugly and how you can’t edit a blank page. All you have to do is google the words “writing advice” or “writing quotes” and you’ll get a ton of advice on how to write, how to finish your drafts, and even how to edit them.

Yes, this advice (Well most of it) is true. To move on, to mark your progress and to grow as a writer, you need to finish your first drafts, or at least move on to a new project if you get stuck. There is nothing worse than looking at an unfinished piece years later and thinking “Now where was I going with this?”.

Yes, you can leave your pieces and come back, but eventually you should try and finish them. This is an area where I need to take my own advice, I have about three times the amount of works in progress than I do works finished. The point is: I do intend to go back to them once I finish current projects, or if I don’t continue them I at least plan to rewrite.

Finish your first drafts, even if they suck, because there is always room for improvement. There are some pieces that I look at, from several years ago, and when I reach the point where I stopped writing for whatever reason, I wish there was more there. Often times I think “I wish I could remember where I was going with this”.

You can take a break from pieces, but at least write a little outline so you know where you left off, or even a little note in the margins that explains what happens next. You will thank yourself when you come back to it later.

Finish your first drafts so you can edit them and make them shine later.

Happy Writing!

Writer Life Lesson #12: Keep Moving Forward!

How often does it happen that we decide to take breaks and then never return to the project we started? Quite often actually. We, as writers, decide that the project will never meet our expectations, or that there is a better, more urgent idea that needs to come first. This is a pretty common occurance and it can happen for several reasons, but it can be reversed.

This week’s lesson is: Keep Moving Forward.

The Disney movie, Meet the Robinsons had it right. As writers and creators we need to keep moving forward. This isn’t to say that we need to abandon those unfinished projects, or stay tied to them if we feel they are going nowhere. There are several ways to move forward, and whatever works best for you is the best way to move forward.

Sometimes moving forward with your project means going back to the beginning stages of writing. I can’t tell you the number of times I have returned to my very first outline and reoutlined or added several scenes. When you reach the end of one stage, it is often the beginning of the next stage. Just because you return to an old project, or restart another project does not mean you are moving backwards. Sometimes moving backwards is moving forward in terms of creation.

The opposite is true too. Sometimes moving forward is deciding to not continue a project, or idea. Still, last week’s lesson rings true. You can decide to stop working on a project, and decide that it isn’t working in the present time, but don’t throw it away. Years or decades later you could read through it and find a solution. There are several projects of mine that I have put on hiatus throughout my high school and early college years that only now, as I am working on a different project, I realize how they can all connect and how I need to finish several of them to make sense.

This lesson applies more to just writing too. To advance, we need to keep moving forward and keep learning and growing as individuals. Personally, I think about this a lot. This week especially, I considered deleting the entire blog challenge for this month and pretending like it never even existed. I decided that would not be honest of me. It is a blog challenge and though it was supposed to be in May, some of it might expand into June.

This lesson also rings true to me because I finally continued writing my novel this week. It’s the first words I have written for that novel since mid March. The story of that is long and complicated, with a lot of excuses to avoid it and work on other projects, but I came back to it. I know I have to keep moving forward with its progress. All throughout April and the beginning of this month, I have been distracted by other things, finals, essays and studying for my NCLEX to name a few, and I have had the urge to return to the first book in the series to edit, because that is the most comfortable option.

Sometimes, leaving a project is moving forward. In the case of my series, which is fluctuating between seven and nine books, if I continue to focus on the first book (which I have rewritten 3 times already), I will remain stagnant and it will take me decades to just publish one book. So, I am letting it sit and working on the rest of the series (more specifically book 2) to make it feel new again.

Moving Forward can mean several different things to several different people. To keep moving forward, just do what works best for you. Whether it’s going back to a previous project, or leaving a project to marinate.

Keep Moving Forward and making progress!

Camp NaNoWriMo Progress: Week One

The first week of Camp NaNoWriMo is unfortunately not going so well. I only have about 5K words when I should have at least three times that. But that’s ok! Because I am learning things I never thought I would, and I am taking a break from my year long attempt at a novel for a while.

I hope Camp NaNoWriMo is going better for the rest of you. I shall be trying to catch up eventually.

Happy Writing!

How is Camp going for you?

Process and Progress

After being a writer and calling myself a writer for several years, I have written quite a lot. Some great things, some terrible things and some things that I am sure I still cringe at to this day. I am mostly referring to my first few years of writing and my fanfiction phase.

My first story (not my first novel) was one I wrote when I was around eight. It was a powerpuff girls fanfiction that had one page chapters and really bad drawings. It was a half assed fairytale with a simple plot and a really really bad dialogue scheme. I am happy to say I have improved immensely since then.

Why am I blogging about my first story and embarrassing myself a little bit? Even though it’s not my favorite by a long shot, that piece taught me a lot about my writing process. I was around eight when I wrote it, on black paper, with gel pens. I had never written any stories before, but my friends, who were almost five years older, had nearly filled their notebooks with their ideas and their words.

And there is the beauty of my first story ever.

The process behind it, the quick choice of writing something I knew, something I cared about, even if it was rudimentary and juvenile. I got an idea in a flash and I wrote it the only way I knew how, with words, and pictures. I wrote it in a way no one else could, in a way no one else could, because those were my words and my choices on that page, as simple as they were.

Since then, my writing has changed, writing more of my own ideas instead of fanfiction, but the process still remains. I still get ideas in a flash, and I still sometimes write simple words and stories, but I can always edit them and change them to be better. I have expanded my horizons and ventured into other things, other writing, other hobbies, and other ideas. I have expanded as a human and a writer.

But that first story, I will never ever touch. I have to have some way to track my progress and my growth as a writer.

Do you remember your first jump into the creative pool?