Category: Ramblings

Update | We’ve Got This

~ Ofelia Gränd ~ 2 Comments

“The tragedy in life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach.”

Benjamin E. Mays

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It’s update time!!! I’m feeling pretty good. For the last two months, I’ve felt like I’ve been rushing to get things in before the deadlines, but now I’m a bit more in control.

Holly’s advent story is with my beta readers, and I’ve just finished the first draft of mine, so yay! We’ve got this 😁 All stories for the third quarter have been submitted, and while it gets a bit weird now since I’m writing the December stories before I’ve written the October and November stories, I’m sure I’ll sort it.

Since the last update post, I’ve written 42.908 words which is pretty good. I believe I wrote some of them back in May, maybe. It says I created the Scrivener file for Dear Diary on May 26th, but according to my notes, I didn’t include the words in the June update post. I think I have the right numbers now.

It leaves me at 190.116 words so far this year, and only 59.884 words left to write to reach my goal of 250.000 words. I feel it’s more about the stories than the words, though. But, in case you didn’t know, I like stats and this is a way to keep track of things.

To reach my goal of writing 250.000 words in 2022, I only need to write 330 words per day for the rest of the year. Should be easy, right? If I keep the same tempo I have so far, I’ll have reached 250.000 words by the 28th of September. Cool, right?

If I keep it up this month, I might have time to go back to the story about the Halfhide pack I abandoned back in May. I want to write that, but I don’t want to feel I have to stress through it. We’ll see how everything plays out.

How are you doing with your goals??

Update | Running Out of Time

~ Ofelia Gränd ~ Leave a comment

“One part at a time, one day at a time, we can accomplish any goal we set for ourselves.”

— Karen Casey

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Update time!!! I have no idea what I’m doing. I haven’t even drawn up June in my bullet journal yet, which means, in my mind, it hasn’t really started.

I’m still chasing deadlines. When I planned my year, I told my lovely writing buddies that I didn’t want to be sitting in June and July and panic over the three deadlines I have given myself in July. I would have to make sure to write at least one, hopefully, two, of those stories earlier on so there wouldn’t be any stress… Guess what! I haven’t written any of them. I’m starting now! But that means I’ll have to do a lot of words these next coming weeks if I’m gonna make it, and my head isn’t really with me. I’m sure it’ll be fine, but my attention span is flaky, and there is a lot of worry in my personal life. My mother in law isn’t doing well, and it’s hard. It is what it is, though, and we’ll just have to make the best of what we have.

Since the last update post, I’ve written 39.833 words. A pretty good month, if you ask me. It leaves me on a total of 147.208 words so far in 2022, which is 58.88% done of the 250.000 words I said I’d do.

If I keep the same pace as I have so far, I’ll be done with the 250.000 words on November 1st. My daily average is 943 words. I guess I could do better there, but a lot is going into this that doesn’t add any words.

So far so good. Now I just need to make the deadlines LOL

Update | Change of Plans

~ Ofelia Gränd ~ Leave a comment

“Success in life is not how well we execute Plan A; it’s how smoothly we cope with Plan B.”

– Sarah Ban Breathnach

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It’s update time and my plan has gone to hell LOL Part of me is relieved. I was supposed to have submitted a Hugs or Kisses story by the end of last month, but… I was writing, and I was in a great flow, and then I hit 11k and the either-or stories have a max limit of 12k and I was nowhere near the end. So I emailed JM and said I won’t be able to do it.

I would’ve loved to continue on that story but since I still have other deadlines, I put it aside for now. I’ll get back to it later because I really liked writing it, and I’m 11.322 words in, so… 

I haven’t decided if this means I won’t do the either-or stories or not. Since I’ve written them all as a series it would feel weird to jump ahead, though they are pretty much standalone so I guess I could. We’ll see.

Right now, I’m writing on a Dozen story. It doesn’t have a title yet – I hate when stories don’t have a title, there will always be some panicked moments right before it’s time to submit it when I desperately try to come up with something. Anyway, JMS Books is turning 12 in July, so there will be a lot of stories that have something to do with 12, much like we did when JMS Books turned 9. I wrote Nine Stones then 😄

And after that, I’ll tackle Holly’s August story. We’re moving forward, people!

Since the last update post, I’ve written 25 092 words, which brings me up to 111 988 words so far this year. I’m 42.95% done, though we’ll see about that. I think I’ll need more than the 250 000 words I’ve written as my goal to get all the stories done. Time will tell. If I keep the same speed I have now, I’ll have written 250 000 words by November 25 – I think I’ll need them sooner than that LOL