goals – Page 3 – marginalia and such

November is really kicking my bum

Egads! November has thrown me way off course writing and life-wise. There is just too much stuff happening at once. And I want to do it ALL! I’m trying to avoid spreading myself too thin, but seems unavoidable lately.

Some good things…

My gaming day event was a huge success by my standards (small library/campus, more than 50 people equals lots of fun).
I totally failed at keeping my New Year’s Resolutions (re: let my hair grow out). I got a pixie cut. I love it. So there.
The Book Fair!!!! OMG! BERKS!!!!
The WIP is coming together nicely. It’s become more of a rewrite than a revision, but I’m going about it in a different way this time and rewriting scene by scene, rather than doing a full-scale rewrite. Cassiel needed the works (new setting, change of characters, plot, etc.), Anúna just needs to grow into the action.

The not so good…

I’m definitely not near my NaNo goal, but I’m no longer aiming for it. I’m back to my original goal of complete 2nd draft by February. I can’t remember how I came up with February… but I think it has something to do with Camp NaNo in April.
Commitments, commitments.
I need a vacation. I feel it.

Camp NaNoWrimo FTW!

I did it! I actually reached my 80k word goal! That’s the Good News…

The Bad News is that I’m still not finished.

Yep, I was right when I said predicted that this draft wouldn’t be complete when I reached my goal. Re-outlining the ending certainly helped me get it going at a better pace, but I still see another 3-4 chapters to finish, which might mean anywhere from 15-20,000 more words given my average chapter lengths for this draft. All in all, I feel much better about it than I did last week. See 🙂 staying positive after all.

*Goodness, I just compiled and saw that it’s really 337 pages long! Thank you, Scrivener, for keeping all that text in an orderly fashion.*

Cassiel, rewrite draft 1/part 2 (total word goal)

About Cassiel (or the best summary I could come up with for the moment)

With her family and fortune gone, sixteen-year-old Cassiel Loriett is placed under the guardianship of the exacting Mrs. Maywoods, but there is more to her family’s fate than Cassiel knows and the only way to learn the truth is to solve the mystery herself. Willing to do whatever it takes to find out what really led to the loss of her father’s fortune and her mother’s unexpected death, Cassiel runs away with little more than her father’s journal a couple of clues, but first she has to stay away from Mrs. Maywoods and her brother, Mr. Stellworthy, who seems to take a strange interest in Cassiel’s position as the Maywoods’s erstwhile ward.

Finding herself on a quest, Cassiel ends up the unlikely resident of Walstone House–a derelict manor house run by Stephen Frye, and his cousins Christabella and Nathan Walstone, and owned by their reclusive grandfather, Pierce Walstone. Finding a friend and ally in Stephen, Cassiel sets on a journey that might mean losing it all, or finding herslf along the way.

A YA historical mystery set in late Victorian England.

A re-write in progress…

Follow my Cassiel writing updates here: http://things-she-said.org/tag/cassiel/

Things I want to do in 2013

This is not a list of resolutions. These are personal goals. So there. :p

Anyhow, I’ve been thinking of what I’ve accomplished and what I want to accomplish and I’ve decided to make a list… Because that is what I do.

Things I want to do in 2013

Participate in at least 3 5Ks. I did a 5k last year and want more!

Edit my manuscript and prepare it for querying and submissions.

Keep on writing. I like the habit I started and I want to stick to it.

Read through the books on my shelves.

Finish paying my loans.

Seriously consider my options for moving out.

Be more active within my professional community.

That is all for now. Go on.

weighty issues

I have been struggling with bad food lately. Though I hate to fall into the trap of thinking of food as “bad,” eating cake for lunch more than once in the last two weeks certainly qualifies as some sort of poor eating habit. It’s my own fault, of course. I slacked on my usual eating habits because I felt stressed and overworked, leaving me what seemed like little time to plan my usual meals. I have not cooked a proper meal in nearly 3 weeks. That’s never a good thing for me, as I have all sorts of food issues at the moment due to a faulty gallbladder and an under-active thyroid (though under control). Working out has been sporadic at best, and an extra 200 calories a day became a regular thing.

November marks a year since I left my old job, and the much larger campus (and daily 20 minute walk to and from my car) it provided. Before I left that job, I had maintained my goal weight for months. I set my goal in 2008, after a friend’s sudden battle with diabetes made me take control of my own weight-related risk factors. I lost a lot of weight and reached my goal during a 2 year span. I weighed 135 last November. I’ve been stuck at 145 (this is an average, given usual fluctuations) since April. I blame it on office parties, outings, less space for walking at work, and less time to get a full workout. But it’s really just me. This week, I became fed up with those 10 extra lbs and told myself I would start being more honest about this whole mess. I am going to get back on track and reach my goal weight again. It’s a personal challenge that I plan to keep. 10 lbs may seem like a small amount, but it feels physically wrong to me/on me. Few people who met me post-weightloss can guess that I was ever overweight, and I’ve managed to keep it that way. I don’t want to be that fat girl who lost weight. I want to be fit and healthy for life.