July Wrap-Up/August Goals

It's hard to believe another month has passed by already! And will you look at that! I'm still spouting cliches like there's no tomorrow!

Anyway, I had a really good month and I feel like I was able to accomplish most of my goals.

~Writing~

1. Participate in Camp NaNo. This round of Camp was just awesome! Most of The Order of the Pen was in our cabin, so it was a nuthouse of epic awesomeness. I set the goal of 40 hours this month. I've had the same goal the past three camps and I've never reached it. The closest I've gotten was 30 hours last July. I'm pleased to say that I not only reached it this month, but that I exceeded it at 42 hours! I'm really proud of that accomplishment and what I was able to get done in those hours. I'm also thrilled that just about everyone in our cabin also reached their goals! Great job, y'all!

2. Finish Draft Five of The Dawn of a Hero. I worked on cleaning up a few things that Jules noticed, while adding a few new scenes to add clarity. All of those are super cool and I'm looking forward to diving into draft six later this year. I was going to submit it to tOotP for critique/beta reading, but after going through it, I feel like I would be better served to give it another go through on my own before I do that. I have a lot of tidying up that I want to do and I know I can spot it on my own. I'd rather have them spend their time finding things I can't see rather than things I can see. 

3. Write at least 25k in The Fall of Chemmit rewrite. LOL, this didn't quite happen. I mean, I did really well with my rewrite, but I didn't reach the word count goal that I wanted. I managed to write around 13k, which isn't what I wanted, but still a pretty good dent in my book. I'm really excited about how this rewrite is coming. It's so much better than the last time I attempted it back in 2016. The whole story is so much better and more moving in my opinion. I almost cried several times while writing it (which is part of the reason why I didn't reach my word count goal). #somuchangst

Extras. I also managed to work on some story planning for a few ideas that I'm preparing to write when the time is right. I have one story that I'm working on for NaNoWriMo and then another fantasy series. Both are on the hush-hush right at the moment, so I can't talk about them for the time being. All I can say is that they're going to be awesome (hopefully). 

And Jules and I continued with SSaS. We've almost reached the 20k point with the main storyline and the plot is finally starting to thicken!! I'm really excited about how it's turning out. Once this portion is worked on, we'll go back and add in the other parts that are missing. It's just too difficult to juggle so many different POVs at once when we're not even sure what plot twists are coming. 

~Reading~

My reading life is pretty much the same as June. Slow. Practically nonexistent. But I finished Cress and I moved onto reading Fawkes by Nadine Brandes! This was an instantly gripping read, which isn't something I say about most books. But I really felt like I was in Thomas's head. Definitely a 4.5 star book. Also, I'm not okay right now. But ya know, I didn't need a heart anyway. It's cool. 

~Life~

1. Peachtree Road Race. Every year my family goes and runs the Peachtree Road Race on the 4th of July. I've gone my entire life (though obviously I didn't always run it) and it's just one big family event (usually). It's one of my most favorite things ever and my entire running life revolves around it.

This year was a bit different than most. My younger brother has a new job and hasn't accrued enough vacation to do a full on road trip yet, so we couldn't go down until the 3rd and had to leave shortly after the race so he didn't miss work. We usually stop at my grandparents first as they're along the way, but due to my grandma passing and a certain family 'drama' going on, that didn't happen this year and that will likely be the reality for the rest of time unless something changes. But whatever.

So this year it was just my younger brother, my dad, and I going. The race part of it was so much fun. I felt really strong. The weather was AMAZING! It was fantastic!

A good bit of rest of the trip was a bit of a disaster. We had a hard time getting to the race expo (#atlantatraffic), I spotted a squashed kitten as we were driving (and my dad showed little to no sympathy for my emotional state), and my brother and I took the stairs at the hotel and accidentally wound up in the security closet. #whoops!

Oh, and they changed the meeting area at the finish and my dad and I couldn't find my brother for almost an hour. So that was a delight.

But despite all of the difficult parts, we had a ton of fun and I can't wait until next year. It'll be my dad's 40th year running in the race, so we're hoping to get the entire immediate family there in town and possibly all of them in the race. Make a big celebration out of it. Might be difficult with my mom's Parkinson's, but we'll see.

And here's a few pictures from our trip. All credits go to my brother (because I forgot to take any good pictures). He was generous enough to share them with me.

After 21 years of going, I finally managed to eat at the first ever Moe's.
Also note the post race T-Shirts. One of the biggest perks of Peachtree.

A gym selfie in which I try to pass off my guns as Younger Brother's. Didn't work.
And yes, we did work out even though we were running a race.
We're cool like that.

View from the hotel.

So yeah, not much happened this month as far as life adventures go. 

I'm taking it a bit easy this month as far as writing goes because it's crunch time with school and I need to make sure I have plenty of time to study. But here's what I've got:

1. Continue writing The Fall of Chemmit rewrite. I decided it wouldn't take too much out of my day to write for an hour on my rewrite. That way I stay sane, but I'm not focusing on a huge project. I'm not entirely sure how much more I have on this one and I don't know if it's realistic for me to plan to finish it this month. It's more likely that it'll be completed next month. But I want to put a good dent into it and see where that takes me. 

2. Continue with Ships, Secrets, and Survivors. And maybe finish the first part of the story. We're coming close to the next plot point in the story, so it does seem realistic to say that we'll be done with the first part this month. Then we can focus on the part where ALLLLL the madness happens (where the survivors are). Also, we'll reach the one year anniversary of the idea at the end of the month, so it would be cool to reach another milestone around that time. 

3. Read at least four books. Seeing as I won't be doing as much writing, I thought it might be good to focus on reading more than I usually do. We'll see how that goes. 

Also, seeing as I've had an influx of followers recently (thanks so much to y'all! You're awesome!) I thought I might direct you to my books page in case you don't know which story is which in my updates. Which also reminds me to go update that page in light of all the progress I've made this past month...

Anyway, feel free to check that page out if you're ever confused about what I'm talking about. I try to keep it fairly updated (not that I have much to update it about). It has a lot of information about what the books are about and the fun stories behind their creation.

I hope y'all are having a great month and that you have lots of enjoyable things planned for this upcoming month!

How was y'all's month? Did you participate in Camp? Why or why not? Did you reach your goals?