All the Billion Other Moments

Just a quick post to note that yesterday I finally typed “THE END” on the first draft of this latest novel. I’ll post about it in more detail soon, but I wanted to thank all the folks who offered encouragement and support throughout the process. You know who you are. I’d list you all, but I’m sure I’d leave someone out 1(but if you can always list yourselves by leaving comments).

May already? I feel like I just posted one of these. Sorry for the lack of other content around here, but I’ve been pretty much spending any and all time I carved out to write on the novel. How did I do on the “write every day” front? Well, I missed two days in April: my eldest daughter’s birthday, and my wife’s birthday. I’m happy to excuse myself in those cases1.

I cranked out 12,926 words, making April an improvement on last month. While I did miss two days I was more consistent in my output I’m pretty sure this comes down to having a daily goal of 550 words, which I didn’t always make, but it seemed to work better than “some words”. Read on for the breakdown

March was not a great month for me. I got pretty sick, and on March 24th I was too out of it to write. But I did manage to go eighty three days straight without missing a day. I’ve also been working long hours, which caused me to somehow miss another day as well. I’m still not feeling 100%, but I’m getting there. I wrote 11,781 words this month, making it my worst so far this year.

Another month gone by all ready? Yikes!

I made it all the way through the month without missing a day of writing, which if you remember my plan from last month means I didn’t have any weeks were I wrote more than five thousand words. I did write 14,732 words this month though, which is a few hundred more than last month.

I’m going to strive to be a bit more transparent about my writing this year. It’s something I have a hard time with, which might date back years to when I learned answering “What do you want to be when you grow up?” with “Be a computer programmer” seemed to be a more acceptable answer to most people than “Be a writer”. So to start I’m going to talk about the past month, and provide a bit of an info dump into what I think the future holds.

Partly due to the strangeness that drove me to change hosting providers I found out that the previous version of ProgPress had an issue running under php4. That should now be fixed in the latest version (0.8), now available on the ProgPress plugin page

I’ve never been a big fan of New Year’s resolutions. I don’t even know if anyone has ever followed through on one (aside from “quit making New Year’s resolutions”). There’s nothing wrong with turning over a new leaf when you hang up your new calendar, but it’s not usually my thing. That said, a number of people I admire and respect have decided to set goals or declare their hopes for the upcoming year. I figured I might as well join in.

I’m a bit late to the party on this, but I’m glad, because these are slightly different than what I would have said January 1. In no particular order, here are my goals for 2008. I may revisit them and adjust them as things change throughout the year.

• Take the family on more day trips, and maybe do some kid friendly hiking
• Write (or do some quantifiable writing related activity) every day. I’m not sure this is reasonable, but so far I’ve managed to pull it off. Some days I only get in ten minutes, but if I wait until I have more I might never write again.
• Finish the first draft of the novel I started in NaNoWriMo (hopefully by end of February)
• Return to and restart revisions on Miracles (I’d like to have it to first readers by April)
• Write and market some more short stories. I received an encouraging rejection in October, but stopped submitting to avoid being derailed during NaNoWriMo.
• Redesign this site. I haven’t been happy with the look of this place in years.
• Post substantial posts here more often (weekly would be nice)
• Keep learning new things. This is a constant goal, and one that I usually keep up with, but it’s worth stating.

Did you make any goals for 2008? Feel free to share them here (or if you posted them elsewhere share a link).