Because I maybe feel like I could pull off a good one right now. But I promised a first post of the new year post tonight, and I'm here at the computer (even if I feel like I've swallowed glass and I haven't really slept in two days).

So. 2018!

I feel SO unprepared for this year. But we're going to ignore that pervasive, quiet sense of dread that accompanies every start of something new, and talk about the plans for this year. Or at least a few of them. 

1) Focus on projects! 
This is a problem I universally have. I need to do better at focusing on things before they're due in three days. 

2) Post a short story to the blog every month.
Someone challenged me to write a short story every month for a year, so I'll be doing that. And then posting it on here. I think we'll try for a little more polish, so I'll work on them for a month and then post them at the beginning of the next month.

3)Read !
I'm challenging myself to read 52 books this year. I'll also be posting a short review and possibly a list of what books I'm ready when so people can read along with me if they like! This weeks book with be the Mongol Queens, because I already checked it out from the library. Feel free to make suggestions for next week.

4)Catch up.
For irl reasons I've felt like I'm scrambling behind the snowball that is my life for like two years now (or a year and a half, if you happen to be paying attention). I'm still not caught up. I get close sometimes, and then it seems to all spin off into left field on me. So. 2018 will be the year. I'll get back to where I'm supposed to be. 

5)Flaunt it!
I'm going to write another post on this one, probably next week. The short version is that I agreed to do an utterly terrifying thing this year, and it's a first, and I'm going to need to psych myself up for this one. We'll talk about the long version next week. But outside of that specific thing, I posted before about needing to remind myself that I have skills, and this journey has been years long (more than a decade) and it's good for me to remember that. That's probably not just true writing wise. It never hurts to have at least a moderate amount of faith in your abilities. I need to work on that more.

Okay. Cold-Brain is checking out for the night. But I will finish The Secret History of the Mongol Queens by Saturday, and post something about it!

Because it's time for a Year of Creative Pursuits update. 

So, what did I manage this month? Well, the publishing business is still big, and we did a video for our Kickstarter. I'm counting that. My acting skills are such I really should.

I'm also very nearly done with The Case of the Armadillo--two chapters left, and then edits and it'll be on the editors desk, ready for the real world. At some point I may have to talk about how different it is writing short children's books, from the long drawn-out variety.

Next months I've got a major editing deadline looming, not counting all the other secondary publishing deadlines and the continued push for the kickstarter and and and. 

Alright. Time to breathe. It'll happen. I know it will. 

The new idea that happened today just needs to go away.

I have utterly no clue what I said I was going to do this month. I think it was said with the full understanding that if I hadn't mentioned Golden Fleece Press yet, it was already hovering in my work folder and therefor whatever I thought was going to happen was more or less slated for failure.

It's hard to say I failed last month, when I sit back and look at everything I actually did. Did I do the stuff I said I was going to do? Well...no. I'm pretty sure I did nearly none of it. 

Whatevs. It's a new month full of new beginnings. I opened a publishing company last week! Arguably with a crap-ton of help and the coolest business partner in the universe, but I digress.  So. Goals for this new month.

• Ignore the faintly horrifying number of blogs I am responsible for upkeep on and ACTUALLY DO THEM. I know, this one might be a little difficult. Still, moonbeams and stardust and all that jazz.
• Edits. For the thing that's my placeholder in this whirlwind snowball of doom. I have months, but given everything else I need months so...
• I am doing Camp Nano. Because you all know I am crazy and I said I wouldn't, but you all knew that was a lie. You did, come on, admit it. I'm writing content for projects to be announced later and I know for a fact at least one of them is going to be utterly unhelpful in the way that means a 25k word project decides to be ten books. So. I've got that to look forward to. 
• Plan out a blog tour. Because my professional life isn't full to the gills already.

Right. So. There's my July, mixed in with my birthday and my kid's birthday and two visits from my parents and one national holiday and...

I wonder if there's a floor on my attic. That seems like a legitimate place to hide.

This is what happens when I don't write my blog posts over the weekend. 

I have every intention of Sci-Fi Friday happening tomorrow, but for today we need to talk a little about my goals for June and pretend any of us think they're going to happen (hahahaha).

So. Last month I said I was going to--
A) Finish the edits on Watcher, and Camp Nano
B) Finish a blanket

I don't even know what to say about that. I'm about three-quarters of the way done with Watcher. I don't feel bad about that, the last two weeks got eaten by other projects that involve the book that's actually got a publisher. Obviously that takes precedent over nearly everything else. 

And I almost wish that was what had happened with the Camp Nano novel. But it's not. That one fell flat on its face. I look at it once in a while, and it flails around there on the floor pathetically. It doesn't look like it's going to grow legs any time soon. I might have to let it go.

So what's actually happening in June? 

1) I'll save you the insane task list. Let's just say I have a whole lot of charity/school work going on this month, and I intend to get it done.
2) Major secret project I'm not talking about in detail yet, but when it goes public you'll know. There is much stuff that needs to happen with this, too. Very stuff. Muchness.
3) A month with no missed blog posts. Seriously people, if it's Monday, Wednesday, or Friday and you haven't heard from me by 5 I expect to be wet-noodled for all I'm worth.

Alright. Are we ready? After all, the point of the Year of Creative Pursuits was to learn to be useful across a year. I keep telling myself it doesn't matter how many times I fail, the point is the learning.

No picture today, I'm a little behind. If you've got one for me drop it there in the commenty stuff. 

I'm not even entirely sure what one is (some sort of outside porchy thing, not quite sure why it's not just a porch) but I want one. The weather's been nice, and my life has been...not nice for the last week and it's a new month and...

So. March goals. 

Yeah, that's enough about those.

In April I solemnly swear I will continue the blogging, and I'm doing Camp Nano at least this first pass so there will be little word counts chilling at the bottom of my blog posts.

I'm going to read Whose Body by Dorthy Sayers, and re-read Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs.

I'm going to torture myself attempting to make this blanket thing I decided to do for my father.

I'm going to finish editing Watcher, in hopes of finding it a home next month.

I think I may have to reward myself with something as I move along, because clearly my normal habits aren't working this year. Oh well, you live and you learn.

Word Count--3015
Feeling: restless

It's not as if I don't have enough to do. It's nearly halfway through the month, and I'm woefully behind on my writing goals, and barely hanging on to the editing ones. I should have plenty of time to add extra stuff to that, right?

I'll wait for the hyenas in the back to finish.

While I was faffing about the internet looking for blog inspiration (or any kind of inspiration at all, if you happen to be paying attention) I came across this article on Buzzfeed and it sort of reached out and grabbed me. 

I read a lot, and one of my goals this year was to read more consistently. To pick a book every month and at least get through that one. January was The Cuckoo's Calling, February was TFiOS. March is the last of John Scalzi's Old Man's War trilogy. Yay, that seems to be going fine, right? Except for the whole thing where I've got nine months left, and only three more books on the list. 

There are a few on that list of books people say they've read that the haven't that I've got every intention of picking up, but a list of classics isn't what I'm looking for. I don't want books a literature professor would suggest, or the NYT Bestsellers list. I want books people love. 

So, it's time for more audience participation (and I still haven't come up with a prize for the last one, but whatevs). Now you all get to be book evangelists. No holds barred, no caveats. Any book, any genre, any content. If you love it, drop it in the comments and I'll add it to the list.

There are buds on the trees and birds on my deck (they like to torture the cat) and guys playing ultimate Frisbee in the field behind my house. I'm not sure I'm ready for it to be spring yet. 

So, way back in the annals of history (shut up, January was a long time ago, I have the attention span of a mayfly this time of year) I made a commitment to blog more. You can look at the list of posts under this one to tell how that's gone. 

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” 
                                                                                                                      ― Winston Churchill

I've got nothing more relevant to say than Mr Churchill up there. So I'm moving on. 

Apparently the general consensus on this is that you should blog three times a week, and not blog about writing because no one wants to hear(see?) you witter on about writing three times a week. I'm probably going to fail about that, because irrespective of what everybody else thinks the conversation is about, it's always about writing to me. I promise to do my best to make it interesting.

Are you ready for the schedule? 
 
As of this week, Monday's at Words and Wonderings will be Miscellaneous Monday. There'll be a post, hopefully it'll be fun to read, I'll figure out what it's about when I sit down and start writing it. Wednesday's will the Well-Written Wednesday. That's the day for book reviews, or my take on what's happening in the writing universe, or TV/Movie (of the content variety, not the 'he's so pretty' variety) pop-culture. And last but not least Friday will be Sci-Fi Fridays and I'll trot out the latest cool thing I've found (usually getting lost while researching) and probably talk a little about it's potential in fiction. 

If I miss these you're totally allowed to brow-beat me about it. 

See you Monday!
(Yes, I realize I'm an eternal optimist. Yes, I realize how annoying it is.)

PS--the title is borrowed from Robert Frost-- "In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."

January was just...broken. It always sort of is, because that month after Christmas always manages to get away from me in new and surprising ways, but this one was worse than most. My kid was home from school for like eight days, and it got properly cold in Virginia for the first time since we moved here.

And even with all that, I still managed the vast majority of my January goals. I finished the light-edit I was trying to do, and I finished the Minecraft scarf, and I blogged nearly once a week (the last week didn't happen because I spent three days trying to figure out what to say and I still don't really have anything interesting to blog about), and I finished The Cuckoo's Calling.

There'll be a blog post about that when I can come up with something quasi-interesting to say about it.

So, what's on the plate for February?

1. Editing Watcher (the first part of the Paranormal series I started last May)
2. Writing the first two books in the short-mysteries series I keep threatening to do.
3. Something knitted that constitutes a birthday present for my Mother in Law.
4. Reading The Fault in Our Stars (with some other lovely people, so we can share the inevitable pain).

Added to the late January/early February weirdness, the Superbowl was horrible and Phillip Seymour Hoffman died. I can't decide if he always reminded me of the friend that gave me my first job, and then killed himself a year later, but he certainly does now.

They've even taken my title. 

Last week was good. Maybe not awesome, I didn't get some things done I wanted to, and I've been the kind of sick that just hangs out in the background and makes you miserable. I wrote a lot, maybe twelve words of which were actually of use, but I'm cool with that. 

I could go into reams of real life stuff, sure. My kid's been home from school for about six months now (it feels like that anyway) and all the normal stuff that comes along with that is true, when you're an introvert who gets tired of the company of people no matter how much you love them. 

I even briefly thought about leaving a few words of wisdom for posterity about the SPN/Belieber fan dust-up this week. Something about how badly you have to damage someone's house for it to result in a search warrant for eggs.

Instead I think I'm going to give in to the winter blahs and leave a few words about how my January goals are going, and then go bury my head in fantasy-ville again. 

I finished the half-draft of The Quiet Mine (2013's Nano) on Monday (? I think it was Monday, this week's turned into a gd five-headed dragon of wrong). I'm not necessarily happy with everything in it, but it's a long chalk better than it would have been if I'd walked away when I hit 'the end' during November. And I'll pop a picture of the mine-craft scarf under here, because I finished that as well. It looks like the 'other project' is going to be the mittens he wants to go with it. Which are just...gah. They're smaller and theoretically quicker, except the measurements are all strange and they're trying to kill me with small pointy needles, basically. 

So yeah, the rest of my month is mitteny things (I live in hope, I know) and a little more than 300 pgs of The Cuckoos Calling. 

*side note, the mitten you see down there is wide enough for an adult and long enough for a two year old apparently.

I know you're all in awe of my photographic abilities.

Yeah, about that. Even when it's warranted and this year has been sort of...crap, I'm not particularly good at new beginnings. I could do a sort of 'year in review' thing but it would likely be a bit depressing. A lot of this last year was spent in hospitals or taking care of sick people. And it does sort of get balanced with the good stuff, with signing a book contract and getting to see my family a bit more than I expected and having a year with all kinds of new ideas. 

Normally I'm good at hope. I believe everything is temporary and Iife's going to get better. Maybe that's because I don't think too much about it, but either way... I've got nothing.

So I think maybe the best thing I can manage for this, is to accept I'm just not going to have anything profound to say about the New Year, and move on to making plans. Myself and some of my local Nano people are doing a Year of Creative Pursuits again this year, so I'm singing off with my goals for January. 

But first my goals for the year:

1. Make a blog post every week. (hahahah.)
2. Review the books I read on here, and manage one a month.
3. Finish the ridiculous self-pub project I've started myself on.
4. Finish at least one other series project. (hahahahhahahah.)
5. Do one 'creative' project a month (knitting, crochet, whatevs).

And now the goals for January specifically.

1. Finish re-drafting The Quiet Mine (this years Nano that kind of got away from me)
2. Finish reading The Cuckoo's Calling and blog it.
3. Finish the ridiculous Minecraft scarf and one of the other dozens of things I have on the needles.

Let you know next week how those are going :)