It's September! Mothers and fathers and care-givers all over the country are breathing a sweet sigh of relief. School has started again. 

So. About that whole writing/business thing. Hahahahaha. 

Ahem. Anyway. Is there any point in going over last month's goals? It's pretty telling that I have utterly no idea what they were. I think I knitted a hat. I did manage to finish The Case of the Armadillo. Golden Fleece Press has it's first actual book going into an ARC run probably next week (fingers crossed). I did another round of edits with the publisher for Undiscovered Country. Whatever my goals were, I'm just sticking with that. 


Now, about September. I'll keep this short and sweet, since sometime tomorrow I'll post a bunch for Well Written Wednesday, and Sci-Fi Friday this week is long and already written.

Goal 1: Blogging.
Same old same old. Some weeks I do really well. And then some I really really don't. 

Goal 2: Case of the Armadillo
An edit must happen fairly early this month.

Goal 3: Businessy business. 
The list is long. It is scary. I will accomplish it all. No really, I will.

Goal 4: The Finishing of SOMETHING
I have so many projects in my in-progress folder it's getting excessive. I will finish one of them this month. Possibly. Alright, I'm going to try.

I think that's good. I'm sure there will be knitting, just to get away from the computer, and other things. 

Also, FREEEEDDOOMMM!

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. 

                                                                                                        --Barack Obama

And that's basically all I have to say about April. 

Clearly I need to work on my time management. 

Here, have something pretty to look at instead.

That bit of pretty up there is from the Treasures of King Tut exhibit. I have more, I'll parse them out as time goes by. 

I have no goals for next month. I've given up.

No, I'm teasing. Mostly May goals are what the April goals were. Finish Watcher and the Camp-Nano novel I started. Possibly get through the blanket I started. April is going to be my month.

If you believe that I might have sea-front property to sell you in North Dakota.

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.

It's March now, and I'm seriously tempted to just slide right on past talking about what I had for goals last month and go right on to this month's goals. 

That probably makes it pretty obvious how well they went. 

On the editing front I got about halfway done. I've marked up the entire book, and figured out what major changes I'm making, but I'm only about four chapters into actually making them. I'm at that stage in editing that gets sort of consistently crippled by self doubt, and unlike the initial writing I can just tell myself it's okay for it to be crap.

My writing goal from last month was just.. No. Just no. Two chapters doesn't even count as failure. 

I finished The Fault in Our Stars and all I can say about it was that I cried a lot and John Green frequently makes me feel inadequate as a writer and a person. I like him very much.

The socks I made for my mother-in-law were about three-quarters done at her birthday. 

And obviously the blog front is the one thing I haven't failed at this month. 

Below are picturey things. 

So. What's the plan for this month? Basically a second crack at last month, only with the tea-cozy my mother requested for her birthday. Also I'm going to finish John Scalzi's The Ghost Brigades and The Last Colony.

But March is also my husbands birthday and my wedding anniversary and... No worries. It'll happen this month.

Tomorrow resumes normal programming, and we're talking about Camels so you've got that to look forward to.

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.