Hey, everyone,

I tend to be releasing these Sunday night journals a little bit later than I usually have been doing. Part of that is that I have been traveling recently, so sometimes I have been pushing the posts back due to travel and recovering from travel. But, I’ll try to make sure to get these out by 6-8 pm on Sundays if possible.

Also, I’ve gotten to be less than consistent during the past couple of weeks with posting stuff on my Facebook and Twitter pages (check those links in the sidebar if you want to check those out). One of the things I will be doing in the next couple of days is get some things planned for that, too.

Well, for all the the griping that I’ve been doing about my writing consistency, this week’s numbers are… better, at least slightly, than last weeks. Anyway, here it is.

+368 words written.

Days writing: 2 of 7.

Days revising/planning: 6 of 7 for  330 total minutes.

Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 6  of 7 days.

More revising/planning than writing this week. But that happens. Anyway…

Right now, I’m in the process of getting signed up for the Writer’s Market online. For some reason, it’s not letting me sign up for just the site; it’s insisting I have to sign up for one of it’s books, which I don’t have an interest in. I’ll let you know what happens. I also took at look at it’s Second Draft service, which actually looks promising.

So, time to update on some projects. I’m only going to comment on stuff that I worked on this week (full list of the ongoing projects here):

• Project A – made good progress on the recent revision. Once this finally gets done (maybe even as early as this week), I am hoping that I give it a good proofreading edit and get it ready to shop around.
• Project F: Tooling around with Wonderdraft on a particular map for my fantasy world. I might have to break out Microsoft OneNote or Scrivner to do some serious planning to set up characters/situations.
  Fantasy writers of the Internet: How do you come up with good names for places/characters? On a related note: How do you avoid using names someone else has used in prominent fantasy lore?
• Project S: I am about ready to finish up a first draft. To be honest, I have been doing some light revision on that as I have been writing. I want to do at least two more scenes closely related to each other, and then fix the framing format I used for the story.
  After that, then what? I am seriously debating whether I post it on here or in some fan forums to get some feedback. For what it’s worth, I would rate it TV-MA, which is basically what the real Game Of Thrones was. As I mentioned before, this is totally fan fiction that I’m writing and have no plans of monetizing whatsoever.

Anyway, that’s all to report for now. I’m hoping to get another post going on Thursday or Friday (I will be busy Wednesday). Have a great week writing, everyone.

Well, things are still not as good and productive as I want them to be, but my productivity is slowly crawling up – definitely an improvement over the past week. So, maybe I’ll avoid looking like a jerk.

As you might tell from previous posts, I take my data and productivity numbers very seriously. I believe it’s one of the reasons why I’ve managed to actually get back into writing after many years of just sitting around and saying I was a writer and doing nothing about it. So, any improvement on numbers is a great thing.\

Speaking of which, here are the numbers for last week:

+674 words written.

Days writing: 2 of 7.

Days revising/planning: 6 of 7 for 300 total minutes.

Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 6 of 7 days.

Better than last week, but I want to and need to improve.

So, a quick word on the projects I am currently working on. (Go here if you want to find out details on them and when I am hoping to get them done.)

• Project A: Continuing another revision on this. Soon I should be ready for a proofread edit. I am just barely beginning to research possible agents and publishers.
• Project B: Nothing for weeks. I plan to make progress on it this week.
• Project C: Found a lost poem in my notebooks I plan to transcribe. Barely beginning researching possible outlets for some of my poetry. I’m thinking local outlets if possible, maybe concentrating on Iowa authors.
• Project F: Not too much, but I am playing around with Wonderdraft and I think I have a good starting model of my fantasy world. I’ll play around with that for a while if I feel stuck on anything else.
• Project S: I think I’m almost finished, but I’m sort of reluctant to have it completed. I think that I would post it here in sections, because I’m obviously not monetizing it. This was more of a therapy for me than anything else. I might post the first part of it right away just to motivate me to wrap it up.

That’s it for now – I’m sorry this was so late tonight. I’ll try to do better next week, as always.

Honestly, this is going to be a short post.

I could try and dazzle you with explanations about how active the Fourth of July week has been, packed with trying to get kids back and forth from activities, missing my wife being away, and how bloody hot it is in this state in July.

But those would be explanations that would turn into excuses, and I’m not really interested in trying to find a clever explanation for things.

I just became inert this week. No significant progress on any of these great projects, so, no point in giving project updates.

And I’m tired of seeing me repeat myself over and over again in these journals. Either I’m going to try and increase my productivity and call myself a good author or I’m not.

I’m going to (I mean it this time, really) lay out how my writing has gone according to the numbers for the first part of the year. To preview my findings: they started out OK, went slowly downhill over the course of the months, and picked up suddenly in June. Not horrible, but not what I like to see.

Speaking of that, here’s the numbers for last week.

+458 words written.

Days writing: 1 of 7.

Days revising/planning: 5 of 7 for  270 total minutes.

Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions):  5 of 7 days.

Again, not the worst numbers I’ve ever had, but I’m tired of seeing them this low.

I’m picking things up this week, and I’d better mean it this time. Otherwise I’m going to look even more like a jerk then.

See you later.

…yeah, I said I was going to post this this afternoon, right? Anyway…

The title pretty much speaks for itself. I can’t say that I have not been doing something, but whether it adds up to anything more than sound and fury and working out things in my own head.

Here’s the raw numbers:

+8,765 words written.

Days writing: 6 of 7.

Days revising/planning: 0 of 7 for  0 total minutes.

Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 6 of 7 days.

So, what’s(re) my excuse(s) this time?

1. Having my wife of 20-plus years living in a different city has, admittedly, put the zap on my head. The Internet and modern technology are doing a good job of keeping us in touch almost as much as if we were in the same place. However, keeping the home front and the kids moving has been an ongoing challenge. It’s been a distraction.
2. Looking up possible agents and publishers for projects A-C (Read this if you are desperate to know my code words for what I’m working on) is going to take some time, which is time away from writing, planning, and revising. I need to get on it, though.
3. The North American Gold Cup and the Women’s World Cup have been occupying my attention throughout the last month. Project A pretty much grew fully formed as part of my love and obsession with soccer. I’ve hinted at that love before, but I might need to explain it a little bit more, because it is a sport that has taken up quite a bit of my fandom.

As for my projects, my obsession with Project S, which I’m not even sure whether I would share it on the blog or not, has taken up much of my metal efforts. It is now up to 37,000 words that have just flowed out.

If nothing else, it is giving me practice in writing in the fantasy genre. Planning the bigger project (Project F) might be more of a deep dive than I anticipated. I am currently test-driving the program Wonderdraft that some people use to draw fantasy and other maps. Bet it would have made J.R.R. Tolkien’s work a lot easier.

My (writing-related) plans for the new month include: Posting some items to the writing social media pages, getting serious about agent/publishing research, more progress on Projects A-C specifically, backing up my files, and checking out some of my fellow bloggers more.

And writing. Speaking of that, I should have out two midweek blogs in a little while, one a midyear writing journal report, and the other a Writer’s Biography piece on why I’m so hyped for association football/soccer. I’ll see all of you later.