All About Accountability

So last week I had some really lofty goals. The biggest reason I started writing the blog is that I needed accountability so I am reporting on my progress. I am being completely honest too--

Get another draft of my query ready

Yes I did. I posted it at AW and got feedback. And I also tried a worksheet that I found at Beth Revis's blog about creating a pitch. She adapted it from a post by edittorent. This actually was very helpful. I may post it later this week. I want to sit on it and think about it for awhile.

Work on my draft of my synopsis

I looked at this. Read it once, and left it completely alone. My biggest thing is I don't want to change some names that I know I need to change. The good guy society is Damia, and the bad guy society is Ares. My problem is that my two protagonists names are Dane and Isis. Much too similar Damia/Dane, and Ares/Isis. And I like the names too much to change the character names, but my societies have those names! Agh! I know I need to change it, but it is so hard.

Write a detailed synopsis for my trilogy

I totally did this and loved it. It is only a rough draft, but it got me completely excited about my series again. The characters still have so much opportunity to grow. The next two books are going to rock, but I'm not going to write them until I sell the first. Partly because I'm still super excited about twenty years later.

Design and order business cards for the Writer's Conference

So this didn't even happen. Not at all.

Keep working on 20 Years Later (which will soon have a new title, since I have to slightly change one premise of the book--thanks to feedback from writers group)

Well I did add a 1000 words, but I didn't go back and fix what I needed to fix. And I only worked on it one day--shame, shame on me.

Do Third draft of First Novel and Name it

I got some great ideas, and started my read through. But I didn't make significant changes yet. Not that I'm not going to. I got some great advice from the AW forum, and it's going to make me look at this draft a lot more closely.

Start blogging more regularly (This may or may not happen)

Obviously this did not happen. But it shall. In my defense I did get a lot of work done this week.

So I've been thinking a lot about balance this week. Finding the balance between being a mom, working from home and writing a novel. And I've decided I don't get as much done as I could, because I'm out of balance. I need to assign specific tasks to specific times and stick to them.

Goals for this week:

Reestablish a working writing versus novel writing schedule.

Another Draft of My Query

Third Revision of My Novel

Give My Novel a Real Title

Order the business cards (I'm running out of time on these)

Add 3000 words to Twenty Years later. That should be another chapter.


So how do you find the balance in your writing vs your normal life?