New Year – Renewed Spirit

Just a few days into the new year and I am so excited about 2018!

2017 In Review

During the year, there were birthday celebrations, my anniversary and a few family gatherings and weddings. So besides the news and Donald Trump’s tweets, I can say that last year was great and filled with food, family, love, reading and writing. All of my favorite things.

The year ended with me writing over 50,000 words during Nanowrimo (a first for me) and winning an all expense paid trip to a week long writing workshop in Paris, France!

My husband and I hosted Christmas this year so there was lots of family over; I went to the movies with my mom (Christmas tradition) and my baby got to spend time with her great grandmom.

I spent New Year’s Eve with my family and had the kids write about their year in review and their goals for 2018. My son impressed me so much. His word for 2018 is responsibility!

2018 Intentions

I’ve read a lot of posts on social media from people who seem to frown on New Year’s resolutions. The thinking is that people throw out resolutions with no real resolve to follow through on them. I think its great that people post their intentions for the year. Even if they don’t see it through at least they gave some thought to their goals/plans for the year. Perhaps accountability can turn wishful thinking into accomplishments.

I have started setting my intentions daily, weekly and monthly. Last year I found that participating in challenges (health, gratitude, writing) really helped me to focus and continue to stay motivated. Of course, there were times that I didn’t follow through but I stayed in the game and kept playing until the end. So whatever helps me to stay on course, that’s what I’m going to do.

I wanted to do 3 writing retreats this year and two of them are already a go. I have a few other plans and intentions for my family, writing and health as well. My vision board is now my screen saver and in addition to my normal planner (Erin Condren Life Planner), I have ordered the Daily Greatness Journal (which seems like a pocket life coach) so that I can continue to be great! Finally, because I just couldn’t find the exact planner that I wanted I have started to create my own. I’m just playing around with it now but I should have a good one by the end of the year. So next year, I won’t have to buy anyone else’s planner.

I hope that 2018 has great things in store for you! Any special intentions, resolutions, plans and/or goals you want to share?

Preptober & a couple of accomplishments

Nanowrimo will soon be here. Being the pantser that I am, last year I just started writing on Nov 1st and my efforts fizzled out just after 8700 words.

So this year, I’m trying to plan my way through (as much as can be done for a pantser like me) and I’ve rediscovered the Evernote app. I’ve been writing things down and organizing my thoughts about my plot and characters and I’m slowly working my way to an outline.

This year, I’ll be writing in the Ulysses app because I’m still not over the learning curve for Scrivener. I think Scrivener is beautiful but I haven’t quite gotten the hang of it yet. Ulysses is much easier (for me) to just jump right in.

I will also be published again for my school’s annual publication, Mosaic and I’ve written a small feature in my school’s monthly newsletter Write On!

I’m working on my courage to submit to a few places in the next 6 months. But for now, I am just gonna concentrate on this one story (I’ve changed the title 3 times already so I’m hesitant to even put it here) and winning Nanowrimo 2017.

How have you prepped for Nanowrimo? If you’d like to be writing buddy’s, I’m “Underthera”

Nanowrimo 2017

So I last year, I started Nanowrimo in November but I only wrote 8764 words before I quit. So I’m giving it a go again this year, but this time I am using the month of October to plan.

I am more of a pantser than a planner and that works for the small projects that I have done for school but I want to try to plan and outline more for this project. This Work in Progress has been in my head for awhile. I have written a few of the characters already in other projects because they hang out in my head just waiting for me to get it right. Hopefully, this is the time!

Dreams

**repost

So last night, I dreamt a whole novel. Each scene played out vividly. Ask me if I wrote it down?

So here I am at work trying to go through my dream and write down what I can. It was a good story. I use to do that with poems during my most prolific writing period. I could be driving from work and a whole poem would sprout in my head. By the time that I got to my destination, I would have worked out all of the kinks.

Admittedly, that prolific writing period was a long time ago. But thanks to school and Nanowrimo, I feel like whatever was there is still there. If that makes sense.

As for Nanowrimo, I got in almost 9,000 words. Way short of 50,000. Now, that doesn’t count all of the papers and stories that I wrote in my two classes. I was very distracted in the month of November. It was my first time trying Nanowrimo (I’m committed to trying again next year) and I’m proud of myself for trying. I don’t even want to continue what I wrote for it, but I do plan to keep the characters, research, and story arc. I want to do something with it.

I have learned to keep writing. When I was in boot camp in the Navy, I had to jump off of a diving board. I had never done it before and I was scared. Beyond scared. But I didn’t want to go home. So I jumped. I kept telling myself that I could do it. And the whole time that I floated/swam I kept telling myself that I could do it.

I’m going to use that to push myself and continue on toward my goal of finishing my novel by the end of 2017.

I can do it.