Odyssey prep catch-up

Well, I’ve been getting some things crossed off on my Odyssey to-do list, anyway. 🙂 I sent my estimated window of arrival at the College to Jeanne and RA Brad, and sent Jeanne a question about the story I want to get critiqued in the first week of the workshop. I got my hair cut this morning so I won’t be making a very shaggy first impression, I got the car checked out at a local dealer this week, and I postponed my dentist appointment this afternoon. I got my ‘favorite short story’ scanned earlier this week, though getting it printed legibly is proving a little difficult, as even when I turn the ‘picture contrast’ up the text is still very faint, like a pale gray on white. Hmmph.

Oh, and I’ve started installing the important security updates and virus definition updates for the laptops I’ll be taking with me. Even installed clamAV on the Xubuntu side of the Toshiba, so if they need me to show them the antivirus, I can show them the antivirus.

I’m still behind on my essays from the textbook, though, and I need to get started on summarizing the first few scenes of ‘The Storm Mirror’ into a synopsis so that the whole story is under 6000 words for reading. So I’ll stop rambling here and get back to work!

Goals and Resolutions update, September 2012

Well, now that I’ve finished my Block Revision, I’ve got a bit more time to look at some of the other goals that I set myself for this month. I don’t think I’m in too bad shape, but I’ve got enough to keep me busy until October. 😉

1. Start lesson 18 of ‘How to Revise your Novel.’ I’ve sortuv done this already, in that I’ve read the lesson. It’s all about fairly low-level editing; voice and style and grace and elegance (that’s actually a bad one!) and how to place commas correctly so your reader doesn’t want to kill himself or you. I’ll need to organize what I had left from Block Revision before I start in earnest, but that’s cool.
2. Read 3 short stories – I’m already at 2, both courtesy of the F&SF free magazine subscription on my Kindle; one was an issue that I thought I missed when June switched to July, before I figured out the way to access back issues.
3. Submit two critiques for critters. Done! One was sample chapters for a longer book that you could critique for extra credits, and I liked the opening, so I’ve requested the full manuscript. Hopefully I can critique that before November.
4. Exercise every day (at least 30 minutes) and stick to my 2500 calorie diet. Doing pretty well so far…
5. Cleaning and tidying the apartment. I’m on track here too, over 5 hours tracked out of eight. If I stick to 20 minutes cleaning a day, I’ll be great, can even take one day off. And at least a lot of the cluttered receipts are dealt with.
   I just realized as I was writing that that when I was going through backlog mail and flyers this evening, I didn’t remember throwing old receipts out of my wallet, which is something that I want to do before tomorrow, so that I have room to bring extra cash to the Toronto Doctor Horrible screening and auction! I’ll have to remember to do it before I go tomorrow morning
6. Organizing files on the netbook computer. Also doing very well, an hour and a half spent out of my target two hours.
7. Posting a new, edited story up on fanfiction.net – well, I’ve gone through my files, found a story that’s already partly edited. Need to get my butt in a higher gear on this one.
8. Critique homework stories from the other CSSF workshop writers. Sent in one critique, started on another, out of six. Again, I need to work harder here.

Do you have goals that you’re working on this month? How are they coming along?

Stringing Words Day 1: Monthly project threads

One minor announcement first – I’m going to be posting a special interview with somebody who’s a part of the Office of Letters and Light and afiliated with Nanowrimo. Look for it in the week leading up to Christmas! And I’m taking suggestions for question ideas. Is there anything that you’d like to know about the people who make Nano and Script Frenzy happen? Leave them in the comments or email to chrisken zero at gmail dot com. If I use any of your questions, I’ll send you a digital cookie, and my heartfelt thanks.

And now, some more great stuff about the Stringing Words community! I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to get to twelve days of Stringing Words in December, but I may give it a try!

Today, I’ll focus on the monthly project threads. It’s a simple idea, but I’ve found it a powerful way to motivate myself. At the start of the month, you list some goals that you want to reach, and then, through the month, you cross off whatever you’ve finished, mark incremental progress for something that you’ve done halfway, make changes if your priorities have altered, and chat with other people in the thread, talking about what’s been easy, what’s proving tougher than you thought, and cheer each other on. Overall, it’s a lot of fun, and I’ve probably got a lot done over the past few years just because I put it on my monthly to-do list.

So – is there anything on your December to-do list? Or are you just relaxing and recovering from November?

August to-do list results

Well, August is really almost up now, so I guess it’s time to see how I did on some of the goals that I set myself 31 days ago:

• Revising “The Way Back Home” – partially complete. This was one of those projects that turned out to be completely different than I thought. That’s mostly because of Lani and the Storywonk class – I had an epiphany or two and made some progress in figuring out what the book is supposed to be, maybe, but didn’t make as much tangible and measurable progress as I’d hoped.
• Cleaning the apartment – partially complete. Tidying up the kitchen went well, but the living room table just sneered at my efforts. I’ll have to prepare much more carefully to tackle it again, hopefully before it actually begins to lurk in the middle of the room. (Yes, that’s a “Long dark tea-time of the soul” reference.)
• Rewriting “How to talk to Earthlings” – DONE!
• Submitting a story for publication – failed.
• Writing a list-based smartphone app – DONE!
• Continuing fanfic works in progress – Exceeded expectations, with 2 and a half chapters complete!
• Posting old fanfic to fanfiction.net – met quota!
• Blogosphere participation stuff – exceeded quota!
• Fan expo stuff – Done!

So – not too bad, all things considered. Didn’t achieve everything I wanted to, but I certainly kept busy.

Did you have a goals list for August? How did it work out?

An NS Basic List App

Well, I’ve been doing a bit more NS Basic App Studio work lately, and I like my newest program – it’s a very simple to-do list that I can use for grocery shopping or that sort of thing.

There are lots of grocery store apps in the app store, but that’s the problem; there’s too many to really look through, and most of them seem to be way too complicated, with built-in lists of possibly groceries or what have you. I didn’t even need all the bells and whistles of the Palm to-do program when I used that for groceries. All I really wanted was this:

May goals update! Much accomplished!

So, checking in on my list of creative to-do items for May, I feel like I’ve really done very well:

• Finished all three fanfic chapters I wanted to write. The new installment of “Un-brotherly love’ is a little shorter than I had planned, but it came to a good chapter break point.
• I added four titles to my master fanfic tracker spreadsheet, which was enough to figure out that it wasn’t all that hard.
• I submitted four stories for magazine publication!
• I’ve finished reading and critiquing a novel manuscript from critters.org
• I’ve visited a lot of cool blogs.
• I had a great time with the Storywonk workshop, and posted all of the ‘homework assignments’ on the private forum.
• I’ve completed tracking spreadsheets for all of the critters comments I got for ‘The Landing’ and ‘Harry and Mars’

This, in addition to other cool but unplanned stuff like getting into the CSSF workshop, and getting the air conditioner repaired.

I’ve started on the list of June goals to accomplish, as follows: