IWSG: The I'm-Kinda-Boring Edition... (#34)

The Insecure Writer's Support Group (IWSG) is a monthly support system for blogging writers in need of finding other writers to connect with and share our deepest insecurities in a safe environment. Created by the clever Alex J. Cavanaugh with the expressed purpose to "share and encourage."

This month's optional question is: How do you celebrate when you achieve a writing goal / finish a story?

I don't do any celebrating when I finish a story or achieve a writing goal, although I don't finish my stories often, so that could be why. I suppose it never occurs to me to do anything. Just achieving the goal is reward enough!

I'm not very creative about stuff like this because I get so focused on just trying to get to the finish line. I suppose I'll go around and see what other authors are saying they do to celebrate because I've got nothing. Outta juice!

What should I be doing to reward myself for achieving a writing goal? Any suggestions? Maybe I'll be inspired by other people's ideas. Leave them in the comments.... ;)
 

IWSG: The It's-All-Planned Edition... (#33)

The Insecure Writer's Support Group (IWSG) is a monthly support system for blogging writers in need of finding other writers to connect with and share our deepest insecurities in a safe environment. Created by the clever Alex J. Cavanaugh with the expressed purpose to "share and encourage."

This month's optional question: What steps have you taken to put a schedule in place for your writing and publishing?

As of last spring/summer, I figured out "batching" is a scheduling trick that works for me in being productive for things I love to procrastinate. I spend three days per week, always leaving a day in between, just dedicated to writing and doing as little of anything else as possible. They are "writing days," thus they are just for that and not reading, watching TV, playing video games, or going shopping, etc. Just writing. I find I actually have the energy to do the writing with this trick.

It actually works for me really well, so I intend to keep doing that for writing. Right now, I'm doing research on the historical era I'm planning on writing about for a forth-coming Regency romance novel on the docket, but not batching that research, so I probably need to figure out how to do that. I'm having trouble with it. Batching helps me so much, I do it with the dusting because I HATE dusting....

Other than this, the plan is to write this historical romance novel, then write a free newsletter novella of the same genre and then write yet another historical romance novel. Can I do all this in one year? History would say, "no," but it might be worth trying, anyway. I may get a novel completed for a change by trying to get two-and-a-half completed in one year.

As for publishing, well... we'll take things in stride. I need to get used to finishing long novel WIPs first before I go "planning" how to publish said finished drafts.

What have you done to plan out your writing and publishing this year?

 

IWSG: The I-Can't-List-Everything-In-One-Post Edition... (#32)

The Insecure Writer's Support Group (IWSG) is a monthly support system for blogging writers in need of finding other writers to connect with and share our deepest insecurities in a safe environment. Created by the clever Alex J. Cavanaugh with the expressed purpose to "share and encourage."

This month's question: As you look back on 2017, with all its successes and failures, if you could backtrack, what would you do differently?

What a loaded question! (For me, at least.) There are just too many things I wish I would have done differently this year, even limited to writing. I'm not perfect enough to look back and be so proud that nothing needs tweaking. I won't air out all those grievances, but I'll cough up one or two of the best (worst) ones.

It's like I imagine authors would say on their death beds, like how most regular people say they don't wish they'd spent more time at the office because they wish they'd have spent more time with loved ones. Maybe authors say they wish they'd written more. I definitely wish I'd written more this year. 

I spent some time learning a lot about how to write, and while that was not time wasted at all, I did end up spending time getting sidetracked by other non-writing projects just because they had been looming over my head for months and years needing to get done. I wanted to get them done before fully launching myself into writing a couple of novels I plan on writing afterwards, which is now something I still need to do starting early next year.

The next thing is I wish I'd gotten more outlines planned/mapped out for my stories because they take such a LONG time to outline. I'm finally outlining the best way for me, which means long, detailed outlines, but, man... they take forever to get done! It's worth it, though. I need all that hand-holding when I write a first draft because I got lost in the forest of my long stories very easily. Guess I need to learn to speed-outline.

I suppose that's enough from me. Any more, and I'll be writing a novel-length blog post that will need to be outlined before I can even attempt to write it!

Would you do anything differently from this year concerning your writing?  Just me?

 

IWSG: The 'I'm a Dungeon Writer' Edition... (#31)

The Insecure Writer's Support Group (IWSG) is a monthly support system for blogging writers in need of finding other writers to connect with and share our deepest insecurities in a safe environment. Created by the clever Alex J. Cavanaugh with the expressed purpose to "share and encourage."

Yes, I've changed my blog theme! 

This month's question is: Win or not, do you usually finish your NaNo project? Have any of them gone on to be published?

I have only ever "won" NaNoWriMo one time, and it was the Camp version of it where you could set your writing goal yourself, so I set it for 15k words and did win. Not too incredibly ambitious. 

I'm not much of a NaNo person because I like writing at my own pace and not trying to keep up with other people. (AKA, I'm slow....) It seems to work well for social writers, but I am, most definitely, NOT a social writer. Stick me in a dungeon all by myself with a laptop computer and I'll be better off.

I've yet to publish anything, so I don't have the ability to say any of my NaNo projects have gone on to be published.

Well, that's all for me this month. Short and sweet.

Has NaNo made a difference in your writing life, unlike mine?