Summer Wrap-Up/Fall Goals (+ a Q&A Call)

So, apparently, it's nearly fall now? #whatistimereally

But anyway, it's been a weird summer, filled mostly with writing related stuff and not much else, which I'm not complaining about! But let's get into what I did!

~Writing~

1. UM, I HAVE A FREAKING BOOK IN THE WORLD!!!!! In case you've missed it, Helena (aka Julian Daventry) and I published Ships, Secrets, and Survivors last week and we couldn't be more excited that it's in your hands! Also, if you want to check it out or order it, you can do so on Amazon or on our website.

2. I completed my rewrite of The Rise of the Prisoner. I managed to knock most of it out during Camp NaNoWriMo in July. It's too short and has ALL. THE. PLOTHOLES, but I loved every minute of writing it and it 100% motivated me to get back into the world of Reylance. #totallyworthit

3. I started overhauling the world building and characters arcs of all three books in the Reylance Trilogy. I'm planning on doing some massive edits next year, now that I know my world and characters better, but first I want to really cover a lot of the details and figure out how they play out in each chapter/book. If that makes any sense whatsoever. 

To do this, I broke out the Editing Bullet Journal again and spent a good deal of August scribbling away at it. If any of y'all are interested in how I put together my Editing Bullet Journal, you can check this post out. It's slightly outdated, so if you're interested in an updated version, let me know!

Once I got some progress on that, I started making updated outlines for each of the books. I'm adding in notes on each chapter in different colors to correspond with the notes I made in my bullet journal. This way I know exactly what I need to go through and improve in each chapter. If you're interested in how that looks as well, let me know!

4. I participated in GTW's 100-for-100. This helped me complete two projects (a novella, plus the rewrite of The Rise of the Prisoner) well before the end of the challenge, so I ended up using my world building notes for the remainder of the challenge, which gave me the motivation to actually get the work done.

~Life~

June:

Most of June was spent running around mentally, getting things ready for our release of SSaS. Lots of graphic design stuff, getting social media and website stuff together, and loads of artsy things to do!

And honestly, that was all I had the energy to do. I was supposed to do a lot more than that, but I just couldn't. 

One fun thing I did pick up in June that I've developed a love for is fantasy mapping! Jules and I needed a map for the Pirate Hunter Chronicles and I figured it couldn't be that hard to throw something together, so I volunteered to give it a shot. Anyway, I found this one guy on YouTube who had a bunch of mapping tutorials and live mapping streams. I devoured all of his content and discovered I really enjoy this process. Mountains were a pain to draw at first, but I slowly got the hang of them as I practiced. 

July:

July was supposed be full of travelling, but one by one, the things I was going to travel to got postponed, canceled, or I just decided not to go. Just as well, seeing as I had huge writing goals for the month and needed plenty of time to get those things done.

Pretty much the entirety of the month was spent getting financial stuff all sorted out for our release of SSaS. That was a nightmare and I was close to letting a few choice words slip a time or two. Thankfully, Jules and I got everything sorted and it's all smooth-ish now. 

I also did Camp NaNo, which I lost, but I still managed to complete my rewrite, so that's a win in my book!

I also drove up to Jules's place to spend the night. That was super nice (and I actually got some uninterrupted reading time and nearly finished two books!). We went for a short hike and got some of the pre-order stuff sorted.

August:

August happened.

I mean, of course there was the book release and that was awesome, but I had a lot of personal stuff going on at home that was difficult to get through that left me really exhausted. 

But I think most of that stuff is improving, so I'm glad for that! 

~Q&A~

My birthday is this month, so I thought it would be fun to do a Q&A in celebration. Go ahead and ask me anything down in the comments (within reason, of course. No asking for my SSN or anything like that) and I'll do a video of me answering them! I think I'll post it on the 30th and I'll probably film it sometime the week before, so just be sure to get your questions in by around the 18th or so!

~Fall Goals~

1. I'm going to continue working on my world building and character arc notes for The Reylance Trilogy. I'm really pumped about it and I can't wait to see how all of the details will help make the story better!

2. Edit and beta read (hopefully) for Sins, Sons, and Siren Songs! The interesting thing about publishing a series is that once you release a book, while everyone is freaking out about that one, you're already onto the next book. So now that Ships is in the world, Jules and I must now direct our attention to our precious book 2 (which, let's be honest, we're very excited about because we love this story!). 

3. Participate in NaNoWriMo. This year, I'm planning on working on at least two projects: book 3 in the Pirate Hunter Chronicles (AHHHH!) and book 3 in the Monsters of Our Making series. I'm estimating that I'll get somewhere between 75-100k between the two projects. Honestly, if I hit 50k in my book and finish my portion of the cowritten book, I'll be happy. But I would not be mad if I hit a double NaNo. 

Which leads me right into my next goal...

4. I'm going to dive into a somewhat crazy adventure. I'm going to try and take part in Kate Cavanaugh's Milwordy challenge. If you haven't heard of it, she basically challenged herself to work on 1,000,000 words over the next year, starting on September 1, 2020 and ending August 31, 2021, and invited anyone who wanted to take part to join her. The challenge includes all of your writing: drafting, plotting, rereading, editing, social media posts, and pretty much any other writing that you do. I won't be counting personal correspondence (emails, texts, and stuff like that).

If you wanted, you could select a smaller goal, but I decided I was going to try and aim for the full million words. Seeing as I have at least 3 books I want to publish next year, plus a trilogy I want to edit and pitch, I feel like pushing myself to write that many will be a good idea. 

I went ahead and made a spreadsheet, where I would log all of my words for the day. It's kind of similar to the one she made, but a little more personalized to me. Because I wanted to take at least all Sundays off, plus have to freedom to take Saturdays and some holidays off if I wanted, I popped onto a date calculator to figure out how many weekdays I had to work with and how many words I'd have to write per day.

With 249 workdays, I would have to write a total of 4000 words a day. 

Not horrible, if I include all of my work. I'll include rereading stuff (but only when I actually have to reread stuff, not when I'm just doing it to up the word count because that's cheating. So right now, rereading Sins counts. But I were to reread, say, Simon Says or something like that, it wouldn't count because I'm not planning on working on those stories anytime soon). I'm also including blog posts and Instagram captions. 

So anyway, it'll be interesting to see how this all goes.

That's what I've been up to and what I plan on doing in the next few months!

Onto y'all! How was your summer? What are your plans for NaNo? Are you participating in #Milwordy? What questions do you have for my Q&A? Let me know down below!