#ROW80 Final Check-in Round 4

I’ve decided to post my last check-in today because as of tomorrow, I will be too busy to post on the 22nd.

This has been a busy round for me, and not without problems (losing revisions, my computer being in service for 11 days, being severely sleep deprived due to eczema). I think I did pretty well despite my issues. There are things I needed to let go in order to get the things I needed to get done done, which sucks. I plan to do better in the new year.

So, here’s how I did (gulp):

~Finish the Ever Touched revision.  I can do this. <–DONE and on time.
~Stay on top of FYFB class. Taking a class through Monica Leonelle. It happens to be going on at the same time as my revision, but might as well go all in. It’s three months. Should be fun. <–NOT DONE. As things got busier (revision + 2 editing jobs), I had to drop this out of necessity. Once things calm down, I’ll be catching up and hopefully staying on track.
~Make a ruling on my next project and start prepping (contenders are Fireborn, which needs a revision, Survivor, which needs a rewrite, and Death Dancer, which needs some tweaking — and may be my next Turtleduck Press release.) <–DONE! Fireborn is the next project. The second half needs to be reworked. I hope to release it in 2017.
~Drink 1 glass of water 5x a week <–DONE!
~Exercise 2x a week – <–NOT DONE. Being chained to the desk sucks. I plan to get better with this in 2017.
~Do All the Things related to anthology release (TBD — release is Nov 15th) <–DONE, (even though I lost my revisions on 21 pages and had to work like a mad thing to catch back up) and the anthology released as planned. 🙂 
~Keep up on reviews (I’m on 4 ARC teams) <–DONE, for the most part. Still slightly behind, but I’m doing okay.
~Lose 5 pounds. <–DONE, and NOT DONE. Lost 5 pounds, gained 5 pounds, and lost 3. So a total loss of 3 pounds. Still better than nothing!
~Take more pictures: infrared and normal. <–NOT DONE. Had planned on it with hubby but got sick both times. Another thing I need to pick back up in 2017.
~Post-process infrared pics from camping trip <–NOT DONE. Wanted to, but got too busy!
~Chocolate consumption report, as always! <–DONE!

Final chocolate consumption report – This round, I got addicted to Snickerdoodles and Twizzlers, so my consumption went way down.I still love chocolate, no issue there, but I found other things as well. Will keep reporting on it in 2017. 😉

So that’s it for this round. I hope you all have a great, safe holiday season and I’ll see you for round 1 in 2017! Thank you all for your support and encouragement. 🙂

#ROW80 Check-in Dec.11th

I’m baaaack!

I’ve had a rough couple of weeks. First, I finished the Ever Touched revision on time, but it was a struggle. I also got a freelance editing job in the midst of that, which was great, but needed to be done, so I wasn’t able to do much else (but the extra money was worth it!). And I have another one coming in tomorrow, which is great. 🙂

Then…I started getting these odd, itchy blisters on my hands and feet. The itching was miserable. I couldn’t sleep for at least a week. I finally got the brilliant idea of taking Benadryl before bed so I could sleep, except that really made me groggy in the morning. I couldn’t take hot showers b/c the heat would make the itching exponentially worse. All in all, I was miserable and a bit freaked out.

Long story short — I saw my doctor on Friday and he said it is vesicular eczema, which only affects the hands and feet. Apparently it could have started due to an allergy, but maybe not (we’ve racked our brains and can’t come up with anything). My dad had atopic eczema, and I guess there’s a genetic component to all of this. He gave me a shot of steroids (which I’m not sure helped), a prescription strength anti-itch cream, and told me to make sure I put moisturizer on myself every day indefinitely, as my skin is too dry (always in the winter). If I’m not better in one week, I’ll need to call him and probably come in again.

I can’t even tell you how miserable this is. Besides being itchy all the time, I have to constantly be aware of how warm I get b/c that affects it. I don’t sleep with many covers, so most of the time I’m freezing. I’m also swollen from the steroids, so I can’t wear my wedding rings or my anniversary ring, which I know is not huge and is temporary, but I have never not worn them and my hands feel naked. All my scratching can lead to a skin infection, so I’m worried about that as well. The funny thing? I figured this out myself. I did some research and saw pictures, and they looked just like my hands. But of course I needed confirmation of that, so I saw the doctor.I just want this to go away! I’m afraid it’s going to linger, and I’ll have to battle this for awhile and I really don’t want to.

But I guess of all the things that could be happening, this is relatively minor. Just a nuisance. But still…

So I haven’t done much of anything. But here’s the rundown:

Ever Touched revision – DONE and turned in 12/1. I get it back January 1st for the first round of revisions.

FYFB class – SO behind, not even funny. But I will be working on it today a bit.

Reviews – Somewhat caught up, but I have a few that need to be done like right now…

Exercise – Are you kidding me? Nope.

Water – Pretty much 5x a week, yay!

Weight – Lost 3 pounds, yay!

Chocolate consumption – Not a lot, really. WW Sundaes, chocolate-caramel thingies, hot chocolate. Lots of Twizzlers and Snickerdoodles.

#ROW80 Check-in Nov. 20th

This is the cover for our anthology. 🙂

I’ve been really busy revising, and haven’t had time to post. My computer is working great, thankfully. 🙂 Time is FLYING. I can’t even believe we’re about a month away from Christmas. Holy smokes.

News on our anthology: To Rule the Stars: A Space Princess Anthology has been released! It is 99c only for a short time, after which the price will raise to $1.99. It contains three cool stories (including mine!) and a sneak peek of Ever Touched. Check it out here.

Here is the rundown:

Ever Touched – I’m on page 201 of 210, but that’s deceiving because I probably have at least 10k to write. But I am getting closer. Depends on how next week goes, with the holiday and helping my mom with the cooking and cleaning. I have the following week off work for vacation so there’s a bit of time if I really need it (which is why I set it up that way).

FYFB class – Still behind, but slowly catching up.

Water – 5x last week, and I think I missed 1 day this week, so 4.

Exercise – Nothing, except raking leaves yesterday for an hour. That counts!

Reviews – Keeping up. 🙂

Weight – Lost 5 pounds, gained 1/2 pound back. Story of my life. 😦

Chocolate consumption: Would you believe that I haven’t had much in the past two weeks? Some WW sundaes and ultimate chocolate ice cream sandwiches, and a hot chocolate yesterday but that’s it. But I’ve been going a bit nuts on Twizzlers.

 

#ROW8 Check-in Nov. 6th

I’ve been so busy, and I’ve some big things go wrong. Which is why I haven’t been around much.

First, with my short story revision. I lost all my revisions 21 pages in (3/4 of the way done!) so I had to start from scratch! I was able to finish it all in 2 days, by some miracle, and turn it in 1 day early.

Best I could figure was LibreOffice. If you don’t save in the native format, it is dicey as to whether or not your revisions/edits/changes are saved. Lesson learned.

Ever Touched revision – Finished the first pass, started the second on the 1st. I’m 39 pages in. But…my computer was making some weird grinding noises and was restarting out of nowhere…I thought, uh oh, hard drive failure, so I decided to be proactive and get it looked at. Good news: it may only be the fan, but it needs to be replaced. Will cost between $136 and $300. Bad news: It could take 7-10 days IF it can be popped out and replaced. Worse news: if the fan is soldered to the motherboard, we’re looking at possibly 4 weeks. And a blown deadline. 😦

So, I let my TDPers know and they are okay with it. But I am really upset about it, even though it’s not actually my fault. 😦

Soooo I am working in Google Docs on a slower, old computer and it’s going, well, slow. But it is progress.

FYFB class – Still behind. Couldn’t find an option for editable PDFs for awhile, but I think I’ve gotten it figured out. Slowly making progress there, too.

Water – 5x a week, for the most part.

Exercise – Nada, too depressed and busy. 😦 Will try to restart this week.

Reviews – Keeping up with them for the most part.

Weight – Lost 3 pounds. Trying to keep it off!

Chocolate consumption – WW Sundaes, WW caramel-chocolate thingies, chocolate stripes cookies, hot chocolate, ultimate chocolate ice cream sandwiches .Lots of snickerdoodles and Twizzlers (my new addiction).

Also, Turtleduck Press is releasing our anthology (the one my short story, formerly Enslaved, now called Bound is in) November 15th. It is called To Rule the Stars and the theme was space princesses. We some awesome stories in it, so stay tuned!

#ROW80 Check-in Oct. 16th

Wow, half the month is already over! It’s insane!

I’ve been busy, mostly working on Ever Touched and my class. My knee is still a problem, and I have an appointment with my doctor in 2 weeks, so I’ll be talking to him for sure.

Here’s the rundown:

Ever Touched Revision – Up to 117 pages done, just over halfway. I will need a second pass though. There are parts I’d forgotten I’d written, and stuff that needs to be figured out yet.

Short story – We’re in the copyediting phase now. I sent mine in already. Just waiting for the story I’m copyediting to come to me. 🙂 (We share copyediting duties so one person isn’t bogged down with it).

FYFB class – I’m a bit behind now. Lessons 6-12 posted yesterday, and I need to listen to at least one today. I’m on the worksheets for lesson 4. Had a slight hiccup because I’m supposed to be comparing my book (the one I’m supposed to write for the class. Probably Elysium) to others out there, and I’m having a hard time finding any! I bought two books that looked promising to read, and I’ve started reading both (yes, I am insane!). So, next up is lesson 6.

Water – Every day except one.

Exercise – Nada, due to the knee problem.

Reviews – Just posted one yesterday. I have a deadlined one coming this week. Still working on my backlog.

Photography – I was supposed to have a picnic with my hubby at a lovely park, where I planned to take both digital infrared and regular pics. But yesterday I got really sick, so we postponed it to next week. I was not happy 😦

Weight – I have technically lost the 5 pounds I recently gained, but the plan was to lose 5 pounds, not gain any. I’m trying really hard, so we’ll see what happens in the next few weeks.

Next project – I am leaning toward Death Dancer, just because it will most likely be a TDP release, and it needs some work before I can offer it up. Still pondering though. I also had a brainstorm for my older project Darkweaver and I am itching to outline it. Big time. Again, we’ll see.

Chocolate consumption – pumpkin chocolate chip muffins, chocolate caramel thingies, WW sundaes, ultimate chocolate sandwiches. Lots of snickerdoodles again. I am really addicted to those.

 

#ROW80 Check-in Oct. 9th

Alrighty, I almost spaced on today’s post. Been so damn busy! And, I’ve been having some issues with my knee again. Don’t think it’s from the sprain. So I need to take it easy on the exercise.

So what have I done this week?

Short story – Second revision completed.

Ever Touched revision – 51 pages revised, 1,800 new words written

Water – Every day but one.

Exercise – Housewalked yesterday! I plan on a bit of actual walking today after dinner. The weather is beautiful right now!

FYFB class – Watched lessons 1-5 videos. Have completed worksheets for lessons 1 and 2. Started worksheets for lesson 3.

Reviews – Finished 1 book and posted a review. I’m due to post another review on 10/15.

Chocolate consumption – Not a whole lot? I have an obsession with snickerdoodles. My mom made pumpkin/chocolate chip muffins and they are divine. I’ve eaten a few WW sundaes and a few WW chocolate-caramel thingies, too.

How’s it going for you?

 

#ROW80 Round 4 2016 Goals

Happy Round 4 ROWers! Dang, what happened to the year? It’s almost over!

Here are my goals. I am trying to keep things simple and relaxed, as I have a revision due to my editor on 12/1 and I suspect I might end up wanting to take a break. But I would like to do something, so I may choose a project and go slow with it for the rest of the round.

I am still feeling exhausted, and I seem to be in another fibro flare, so I need to concentrate on taking care of myself. Meditation, trying not to stress, and earlier bed times will hopefully help. 🙂

Here are my goals:

~Finish the Ever Touched revision.  I can do this. 🙂
~Stay on top of FYFB class. Taking a class through Monica Leonelle. It happens to be going on at the same time as my revision, but might as well go all in. It’s three months. Should be fun. 🙂
~Make a ruling on my next project and start prepping (contenders are Fireborn, which needs a revision, Survivor, which needs a rewrite, and Death Dancer, which needs some tweaking — and may be my next Turtleduck Press release.)
~Drink 1 glass of water 5x a week
~Exercise 2x a week
~Do All the Things related to anthology release (TBD — release is Nov 15th)
~Keep up on reviews (I’m on 4 ARC teams)
~Lose 5 pounds.
~Take more pictures: infrared and normal.
~Post-process infrared pics from camping trip
~Chocolate consumption report, as always!

Annnd that’s it. Good luck everyone!

 

Terrified

I’ve got to revise Ever Touched in 60 days. The first draft is technically not done, but I’m almost to the end. I see no point in struggling to finish — and eat into my 60 days — when the ending may end up changing anyway.

Today I said I’d start it. I’ve got my music ready, I’ve read the first few pages to familiarize myself with it (I haven’t read them in months), and I have an idea about how I want to work this.

Soooo what’s the problem?

Well, I’m glad you asked.

It’s something I call the “Rewrite Terrors.” Basically? It’s the fear of screwing up a book when rewriting or revising. F*cking it up good. And, as I only have 60 days, I can’t screw up anything. This is why I insisted on starting today. To give myself a month buffer. I was going to start Nov 1st, giving myself 30 days, but that seemed waaaaaaay too tight, especially with Thanksgiving and a guest coming in from out of town. I also set up my 2nd vacation the last week of the month so if I did get into trouble, I’d have more time to fix it.

I’ve done everything I can possibly do. Typically, I outline the book after finishing, but I am considering skipping that step. I may outline as I go, which will save time, I think. This way, if I do need that big picture view, I’ve got it.

This book is very, very different from the other two. It introduces a whole new race of people, and some interesting abilities. It may continue in the next book, if I can’t finish the story in this one. Maybe. I haven’t decided yet. But it also grapples with some interesting concepts. There’s science-y stuff in there, too, which I won’t reveal right now. All in all, I’m pretty happy with it. So why am I so goddamned scared?

Every single revision is scary and challenging, as I told my husband a few minutes ago. Every time it feels like it won’t come together, it won’t work, but it always does. Sometimes it requires more work, or more brainpower, or more fanagling, but it happens. I have to trust the process. I’ve revised *counts* 1 book 3 times, and 2 books once each, not including novellas and such. That’s to completion. One revision I abandoned because I’d changed everything so much that it required a rewrite (still pending). And I get scared each and every time. With the one I revised 3 times, I was super scared because it was the book of my heart and I needed it to be perfect. I still have another to do, but that’s another story.

Okay, time to chill and see if I can make this happen. Wish me luck.

Oh, and a hint as to the theme song of this book, which announced itself last week: The Sound of Silence, covered by Disturbed. I will be playing this a lot. If you haven’t checked this out, do so. It is absolutely amazing. Off to revise!