August 2018 Goals

Happy August! Summer is almost over. Of course, here in Wisconsin, August is usually the most consistently hot of the summer, but I’m curious to see what this one is like since the other months have been so weird.

How was your July? Mine was pretty busy. If you are a newsletter subscriber, you’ll have seen this picture before, but I thought I would share it with the rest of you, too.

It was a busy, but fun month. And I wrote an average of more than 1,000 words each day! Which means my total for the month went over my goal of 25,000 words by over 6,000 words! It’s been a great month of me trying to be more consistent and intentional in my writing. Doing these blog posts has been a great help to me.

What else did I accomplish? Well, here’s the list I made at the beginning of July and how well I did with each.

• Edits #2 and #3 of Lo, How a Rose (Done!)
  
• Finish writing rough draft of Christmas story collection (Done by July 17th)
• If those stories don’t reach my 25,000 word goal, start writing The Haven of Rest (Done, and 2/3rd through – as it stands, I think this might be the shortest of the series)
  
• Continue working on Un Sospiro and get past the 4th page (Mostly done, I got past the 4th page, but it’s not polished up yet)
• Finish beta-reading Bitter Winter (Done! And it’s really good!)
  
• Continue WWI research (Done, though not as much as I should have)
• Stay cool!! (Done! The last week or so, I’ve even had to wear hoodies to stay warm. Like I said, it’s been a weird year weather-wise)

August Goals

• Go through HLM proofreader edits and send to formatters
• LHaR edit #4 and send to proofreaders
• Edit #1 of Christmas stories, send to beta-readers, and then edit #2
• Finish writing The Haven of Rest
• Work on book covers with Perry
• Work on novella release
• Polish up the first 4 pages of Un Sospiro and start working on pages 5 and 6
• Exercise at least 3 times per week

I’d love to help encourage you in your goals. Feel free to comment here with them, or email them to me using the contact form. Have a great month!

 

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January 2018 goals

Happy New Year! It’s been quite a year. I didn’t quite reach all of my goals, but I had a few distractions like a courtship, engagement, planning a wedding, and getting married. I’ll post my 2018 goals later this month. But for now, I have my January goals:

Write 1,000 words per day T&O
Tammy’s blog tour
Finish edit #1 HLM
Send HLM to betas
‘Tis So Sweet blog tour
Edit #6 HHMS
Send HHMS to formatters
Finish anthology edits
Start working on Ta’Mara’s blog tour

How was your 2017? What kinds of goals do you have for this month?

July Goals (and an exciting announcement!)

Can you believe another month is here? I know I can’t! It seems like just yesterday I wrote up my goals for June. A lot has happened, and I’m not just saying that tritely. A LOT has happened. In fact, it was something life-changing.

June Goals

May is over, June is here. It’s time for an update!

• Get Blog Tour ready (DONE!)
• Read one writing book (Failed)
• He Hideth My Soul edit #1 and send to beta-readers (DONE)
• He Leadeth Me rough draft finished (Failed)
• All the Way final edits (DONE!)
• Publish All the Way (DON!)
  
• Total word count goal: 30,000 (Half-done)

Obviously, I didn’t quite get as much done as I intended, but most of my May was spent helping get our kitchen remodeled. And it’s still going on, so June’s goals are getting scaled down a little more than I would like, too.

First, pictures of the kitchen:

• He Hideth My Soul edits #2 and #3
• He Leadeth Me rough draft finished and type up done
• Prep for two tour orchestrations
• Read one writing book
• Sew

May Goals

April was a busy, but very good month. Here are the goals I made with the completions in bold:

• Keep up with the Facebook group (Done! If you’re a writer and on Facebook, we’re keeping the Encouragement Campfire going year-round. Let me know if you want to join)
• Write 2,000+ words per day (Averaged out, yes, for a total of 55,083 this month)
• Promo books on twitter (Done! And hired a Virtual Assistant to help me keep up with it. Thanks, Naomi!!)
• Finish two writing books (Done! And reviewed here and here.)
• Keep up with reviewing books read (Done! One is being reviewed on Friday).
• Edit All the Way and send to proofreaders (Done!)
• Get Be Thou My Vision and Blessed Assurance on Pronoun (Done and loving it!)
• Total word count goal: 50,000 (Done plus 5,000 extra)

And now it’s on to May. Is it just me or is this year going by way too fast?

Four book Cover Reveal!

About the Series

Genre: Christian Western Coming of Age

Logline: Through God’s leading, four orphans grow up to be important members of their communities.

The Orphans of the West series is a continuation of the stories of 4 orphans that were introduced in either a Hymns of the West novel or novella and goes through each orphans life.

Savior, Like a Shepherd is about Titus Hine who was introduced in Blessed Assurance (Hymns of the West Novellas #6) and how he must take care of his sister and brother as winter approaches, all while not being allowed to work anywhere.

All the Way is about Henry Salisbury, the only orphan in the series not directly introduced in a previous book, but it has other characters you will recognize from the books about the Brookings family.

He Hideth My Soul is also attached to the Brookings family and Otis Miller as Otis finds out that his grandfather left him a large inheritance and he can finally follow his dream.

He Leadeth Me takes up Gage Wilhelm’s story. Gage was introduced in I Love Thee (Hymns of the West Novellas #1) and tells how he is given the deed to his farm and told to go back to his farm. Gage gladly accepts only to have someone show up claiming his long-dead father owed another man a large sum of money and now there’s 10 years of interest added on.