goal setting – Page 6

September 3 in 30, Week 4

September 24, 2011 by Carey Jane Clark

Feeling a little overwhelmed this week. I began work on my proposal to send to agents, and feeling the strain a little. More on that a little later this week.

Here’s how I’m doing on my goals:

Bible in 90 Days – On day 65, should be on day 77. Yes, the gap is widening.
Revision – Getting there, but looked over some of the previous chapters and realized they still need a bit more work. Will it ever end?
Starting Homeschool – The cracks started to show a bit this week–fortunately, we filled them in with field trips! On Monday, it’s back to a normal schedule, no matter what!

Is it perverse that I’m actually enjoying the revision process? Because I’ve written with a giant three-year hiatus between the first half of my second draft and the second half, I can see how my writing has developed.

I’m also seeing lots of things I think need change. Which is why I picked up an old favorite of mine, a book called Word Painting by Rebecca McClanahan. It’s the text from the very first writing course I ever took from what was then Writer’s Online Workshops, and what now seems to be Writer’s Digest University.

It contains so much wonderful advice, and her writing is such a delight to read, I’m enjoying the read all over again. And picking up tons of good advice about how to revise my manuscript. While I read last night, I made a list of things to revise, and tried out a few. Just searching out one word in my manuscript and editing the portions that contained it, already made for a much stronger story. I could see where I had been holding back, which was my instinct about the story, but I couldn’t quite identify why I felt that way.

So here is my plan for revision until the July 31. (Please don’t laugh, even if you know it’s completely unrealistic.) The end of the month was my deadline anyway, but I’m even more serious about it now because I’ve been given a scholarship to a writer’s conference, and need to get things in gear!

July 20 – Finish reading Word Painting

July 21-22 Make changes from list created while reading Word Painting

July 23-24 Edit based on reading and pen-and-paper edit of manuscript done July 7-16

July 25-26 I want to try out some editing software to pick up anything I missed

July 27-31 Read aloud as much of the manuscript as possible, submit to my faithful readers for feedback, and hope they can read fast!

July 3 in 30 Week 3

July 17, 2011 by Carey Jane Clark

It has been a busy week. I’m not sure there were actually 24 hours in each of those days. Here’s how I’m doing on this month’s goals:

Manuscript revision – A little bit behind on where I’d hoped to be with revision, but sticking at it, and should still finish by July 31. This is a good thing, because I’ve just learned I’ve been given a scholarship to a writer’s conference next month. I have several goals for the conference, and getting this manuscript completed by then gives me a chance at reaching them.
Bible in 90 Days – I have had to fight a bit to do it, but I’m on track.
Exercise 4 times a week – This is not where I expected to have difficulty, but it was the first thing to fly out the window when the late nights began. I simply woke up too late to squeeze everything into my morning, and didn’t want to skip the Bible reading. I also counted on exercising using videos again when I was at my inlaws’ and at my parents’ and didn’t count on the challenges of other people’s schedules and the space limitations of so many people in the same space (there were 11 of us at my parents’). The rest of the month should be easier, as the during-the-week schedule is easing off, and just the weekends will be busy.

It’s been more challenging than I thought to reach my goals, partly because I was somehow thinking that most of the busyness would be over by the time the Bible in 90 Days started. Bit of a miscalculation on my part there.

But I’m not going to let myself get completely derailed. I intend to push through and do my best.

How about you? How are you doing?

Visit the 3 in 30 Linkup to check on the progress of others.

Finished!

July 8, 2011 by Carey Jane Clark

Wrote the last word of my novel (re-write) on Monday, July 4, 2011, just before we went on a three-day vacation out of Internet range, so I couldn’t even blog about it. Very excited to hit this milestone!

I finished the original draft before we left for China, and didn’t like it–the climax fell flat. I purchased a copy of Dramatica, and worked through some of the exercises. I realized that I needed to more fully develop one of my characters, so changed it from a novel entirely from one first-person POV, to an alternating point of view (two characters), and am much happier with how it’s turned out.

Now, on to revision!

(And just so you know, I’m keeping up with the rest of my goals for 3 in 30.)

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