Tag: Project Reports

Deadlines Whooshing By: A quick report on the projects and deadline progress (Hint: not as much as I wanted)

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Writing Journal 4.21.2019: Up and down after I took the long weekend off

OK, had a good three-day weekend, and I wound up taking most of it off, writing-wise. That set me off a little with my writing goals this week, but it turns out it didn’t

Anyway, I’m out of my slump. at least. Here’s the raw numbers, so to speak.

+1,774 words written.

Days writing: 2 of 7.

Days revising: 3 of 7 for 120 total minutes.

Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of revisions): 4 of 7 days.

What happened was I needed a mental break from everything, and I have been obsessing over Game of Thrones’ last season. The first two episodes look epic and I’m really curious to see how it all wraps up. I’ve read the first book in the series but I’m honestly more of a series fan than the book fan, although I really love GRRM’s world-building skills and his way of developing characters. I honestly like that we have good television out there – I always picture growing up watching Superfriends, Misfits of Science, and Family Ties and thinking that was good television.

Here’s the project updates:

  • Project A: I’m delaying the Writer’s Market subscription until the end of May, when I’ll start shopping it around. I’ll want to finish my proofreading edit/follow-up revision by then, I think.
  • Project B: Stuck again on another dud of a scene. I might want to hold off on this for a bit to continue my work on A and C.
  • Project C: Had some success on the Google voice to text. I think I might still have Dragon Speak on my phone; I might see if that has better results. Right now I have about 30 pages of poems, which is pretty stunning for someone who never got into poetry until this decade.


    The projected deadlines for those projects (an attempt by me to keep myself accountable for all of this).

  • Project A, begin querying agents and publishers: Sometime in early-mid summer 2019.
  • Project B, finish major redrafting of the rough draft (more of a second rough draft rather than a more focused revision): End of summer 2019.
  • Project C, finishing creating rough draft poems: End of 2019.

I promise I’ll put some more stuff on the blog soon, hopefully before the next weekend.

Writing Journal 4.14.2019: Broke out of the slump, at least

I’m putting my mug on this post just because I can’t think of something cute to post like flooding.

[My town – at least, our riverfront – is getting flooded. Take a look:

Muscatine flooding

[Courtesy of my former employer the Muscatine Journal.]

Anyway, I’m out of my slump. at least. Here’s the raw numbers, so to speak.

+1,190 words written.

Days writing: 2 of 7.

Days revising: 4 of 7 for 165 total minutes.

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

Basically, I just sat down in front of the computer and started revising, even if what I was doing seemed to be garbage. Thankfully, what I produced seems to work, at least. At least, it seems to be material that I can work with.

Here’s the project updates:

  • Project A: Waiting on the Writer’s Market subscription for later in the month. Have just barely started the proofreading edit/follow-up revision on this work.
  • Project B: Decent progress this week. Most of my revisions have been on this project. Got through a scene that seemed to be a dud on the page and have moved on to a brand new scene. I’m feeling good about getting through a tough patch and being able to go forward with this.
  • Project C: I’m going to try today to transcribe some of the poems I’ve written down in longhand through Google Docs voice to text. I’ll let you know how that worked out in the next journal.

The projected deadlines for those projects (an attempt by me to keep myself accountable for all of this).

  • Project A, begin querying agents and publishers: Sometime in early-mid summer 2019.
  • Project B, finish major redrafting of the rough draft (more of a second rough draft rather than a more focused revision): End of summer 2019.
  • Project C, finishing creating rough draft poems: End of 2019.

That’s about it for now. I want to get back to more writing on the projects, so I’ll see you later.

Writing Journal 3.10.2019: Dry patch to start March

[AUTHOR’S NOTE: I did an image search for “dry patch” and this photo was the first thing that popped up.]

Took a big dive in productivity this week. The numbers:

+960 words written.

Days writing: 2 of 7.

Days revising: 2 of 7 for 60 total minutes.

Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of revisions): 3 of 7 days.

Yup. Basically, garbage numbers. I hit a three-day dead spot for the first time in a long time. No real excuse – I think I got sort of distracted by real-life stuff during the week. There were two days last week that my wife convinced me to play chess with her during the evening, and that actually was a good break for me.

I suppose that I just get paranoid about any drops in productivity and dry spells. I used to go months and years without writing or revising a single thing, and I never want to get back to that. So far, I’ve managed to avoid that level of procrastination and inactivity, but I never want to go back or give myself any possible excuses for it. Because, there really aren’t any for me. This whole idea of writing has gone way beyond any ideas of fame and/or fortune. It’s now so much a part of my identity that I would want to keep writing even if no one was reading it. (Why not; for many years nobody read what I wrote.)

OK, then – quick project update.

  • Project A: Still pretty much where I was last week. I need to sit down some night and figure out whether it makes sense to get into Writer’s Market or other sites. I think I got a lead on another site at an event the other week at the Midwest Writing Center, so I might check that out too. What I find out might be worth its own post.
  • Project B: Not too much more progress there. Got some additional revisions done, now I’m trying to trim out all of the useless stuff and get into a more cohesive and fast-paced read.
  • Project C: I have a couple of new poems done, but I think I’ll probably need at least a half dozen more before I have anything approaching a rough draft anthology.

No changes on projected completion dates.

That’s about it for now. If you can make it to any of those events I posted about last week, I’d love to see you there. I also have events posted on my Facebook and Amazon pages. If you’re curious, here’s a link to all of my other writing links. Sorry I was a little late tonight.

P.S. – just checked and I’m coming up on the 200th post for this blog. I’ll probably have to make a commemorative post when that happens, probably not until the end of this month at the very earliest.

Writing Journal 3.3.2019: Progress of some sort

[NOTE: There was no particular reason I picked the photo I used for the featured photo for this blog post except it reminded me of the type of paneling I would often see in basements when I was a kid (there was some that looked like this in my old childhood home, or it was similar to this).]

So, honestly, it was a weaker week (no pun intended) than the previous week. Here’s the numbers.

+949 words written.

Days writing: 3 of 7.

Days revising: 4 of 7 for 90 total minutes.

Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of revisions): 3 of 7 days.

I think there are just about two explanations for this week’s totals. The first is complacency, of course. However, it is also, I think a side effect of writing poetry (see below). It’s my observation that you have to put in just as much work to get a certain amount of words in poetry, but with the same about of work you would get twice as many words in prose writing. I’m not sure if I should consider poetry words to count twice as much as prose words in my word count, but I’m a little wary of anything that would even seem like I was cooking the books.

So, here’s my progress on the projects:

  • Project A: Not much to report on here. Might have one guy beta-read it, and unless I hear something drastic from him, I think I’m about done on major revisions. Next steps; proofing edit (I’m still counting that sort of stuff as “revisions” in my counts even though it’s a slightly different process) and figuring out where I start with first in researching who and how I query this book. Projected completion date: Hopefully querying agents/publishers this summer.
  • Project B: Got some more work done on this. I’m finding I’m adding new stuff to it, eventually to replace existing material. Right now I’m at 51,000 words, and I’m hoping it doesn’t get bigger than 60,000. I think that is doable. Projected completion date: Finished with first revision hopefully by this summer.
  • Project C: I wrote a couple more poems this week with some others in the process. I’m still a ways away from this getting finished. I have the concept for the collection down; however, I still need more material. Projected completion date: Finished with rough drafts and beginning revisions by the end of the year.
  • Unrelated fiction-type stuff: I am beta-reading one acquaintance’s screenplay and am planning on reading an author I get on contact with online. I’ve bought his book online and am now in the process of reading. Projected completion date: Finish with the screenplay this week and the book by the end of the month, maybe.Related plea/promise: If anyone does a review of my book for Amazon or Goodreads, I will be very happy to return the favor. I want as many people reviewing my book as possible, and I am willing to do stuff to help make that happen.

OK, that’s about it for this post. Pretty soon after this post, I’m going to post another blog entry about some events I’m going to be doing, so keep an eye open for it.