Tag: Goals

Other Cool Blogs: Magical Words 1/16/2012 and 3/26/2012

Erin Penn

Ambition and Tenacity

Half of the year gone and not having half the goals met. Is that because the goals were too ambitious or my inner drive not tenacious enough?

What ambitions did you start the year with and what have you reached? Do you need a new set or to retool the old? Or just turbo charge that old tenacity?

When thinking about your goals, you might want to read the Magical Words – “On Writing: The Value of Ambition” by David B. Coe. It can be found here:

He mentions three ambitions:

  1. Material Ambitions – For me, this would be publication credits and sales numbers. Things I have no control over other than production.
  2. Output Ambitions – Which leads to Word Count, Complete Stories, and Anthology Submissions. To get #1, I have to meet #2.
  3. Creative Ambitions – How do I want to push myself as a writer?

In 2019, I started my patreon page at the beginning of the year (https://www.patreon.com/ErinPenn) and an Editing Rant Vlog (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4qqZ3dYm_OlXfecgzWRi1g) at the end of the year. One related to my material ambitions and the other related to my creative ambitions of exploring the video and sound field. In 2020, my goals include completing a novel and 500 words per day every day – both output ambitions.

I think I am ambitious enough, but am I tenacious enough for my ambitions?

Mr Coe covered that in “The Writing Life: The Value of Tenacity”:

The tenancies covered include:

  1. Day-to-Day Tenacity – That 500 words per day, or one hour, or every weekend or whatever it takes.
  2. Project Tenacity – Finishing that thing.
  3. Market Tenacity – Selling that finished thing somewhere.
  4. Career Tenacity – Finishing the next thing, and the next, and sell, and sell. Repeat.

For me, I think Project Tenacity is my major downfall. Between fighting the Oo-shiny syndrome and my mixed-up schedule forcing me to take a break a week at a time sometimes (or four months during tax season), once the “right now” issue settles and I reach to pick up an ongoing project, I rarely reach for exactly what I was working on before.

The dreaded “meeting week” being the worst offender. The second week of the each month I have a meeting Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night, and Thursday night. I get NOTHING done this week other than meeting prep and meeting cleanup.  I collapse over the weekend (if it isn’t filled with a convention or other obligation) and try to restart the fires of ambition as soon as I can. I need to work faster so everything is completed in three weeks or figure out how to integrate the Meeting Week into an ebb-and-flow.

WRITING EXERCISE: Review this year’s goals. What have you been able to do and why? What has been a barrier? Should the goals be changed?

Other Cool Blogs: Lucy Blue Writes 10/9/2019

Erin Penn 1 Comment

Photo by Nery Zarate on Unsplash

Hey you, yeah, YOU.

So how is that New Year’s resolution to write more coming?

I know, I know. January is COLD, and you have to recover from the holidays, and everyone is back at work demanding why the things that needed to get done on a schedule are behind like half the workforce hadn’t been off for two weeks of the last six.

You are exhausted, stressed, and miserable – maybe even feeling a real cold coming on.

I get it. Believe me.

So does Lucy Blue. Back in October, she wrote a post Ways to Keep Writing When You Can’t. Look them over and see if you can get back in the saddle on those resolutions. Remember, just because you slipped doesn’t mean you have failed.

Meme created by Erin Penn

WRITING EXERCISE: Comment below what your New Year resolution is for writing and how far you made it before your first slip. What do you plan to do next?

***

(1) Keep the momentum going from NaNoWriMo 2019 – at least an hour in chair every day, doing at least 500 sellable works. (2) Finish and publish two books this year. (3) Keep up on blog and vlog and patreon.

Tax start put a dent on this right from the start – but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to continue to try every day this year. This is my year!

Blog: New Year 2020

Erin Penn 1 Comment

Meme created by Erin Penn

Happy New Year! 2020, can you believe it?

Time for those New Year Resolutions and Reviews. I started all of this way back on November 11, 2011. Some years have been better than others, but I’ve become more consistent every year. Even so, I’ve left a lot of Unfinished Objects in my wake. It’s gotten so bad I focused on UFOs for NaNoWriMo and hit 50,000 words in 2019 – and still didn’t actually FINISH anything.

This is the year to Finish Things. It’s the year of the Metal Rat (starting January 25) – ambition, persistence, determination, luck, wealth, and cleverness. I will keep up, and I will finish things I start in this auspicious year.

First, the website/blog, which is more an ongoing than finishable item. It keeps me honest, keeps me coming back.

The production schedule for 2020 shall be:

1. Sunday – A flash story. Week 1 will be expanding an old flash, Week 2 will be my old D&D stories until they are gone, Week 3 will be a Text Flash, and Week 4 a Visual Flash. Months with a 5th Sunday will have long flashes.
2. Tuesday – Will continue the cycle of Book Reviews, Editing Rants, Author Spotlights, and Writing Exercises. With the 5th Tuesday being my arts when I remember to take pictures.
3. Thursday – Links to other people and information. Still working my way through Magical Words the first week, pictures and quotes the second week, Geeking Science the third week, and Other Cool Blogs the fourth week. Random commentary happens the fifth week.

Second, is the new Patreon and Vlog. Again, this is an ongoing activity.

1. Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/ErinPenn) levels each have an Early Access and an Exclusive Access bonus.
2. Patreon Master ($1 or more a month) gets the fiction posts one week early, which means I have to have them prepped a week earlier that I think. They also get a monthly exclusive post from the present work in progress (WIP) or a flash expansion. These will NOT be published on the website. – That is an extra 1,000 words to do a month – a great encouragement to keep a WIP active at all times. (Especially since the Patreon Nobel gets an ADDITIONAL 1,000 words of the WIP every month.)
3. Patreon Knight ($3 or more) get to see the Editing Rant EARLY and they also get an EXCLUSIVE quarterly Q&A video to answer any of questions asked by patreons.
4. Patreon Nobel and Royals get access to books as they are released, which means I need to have books released.

So quick recap for First and Second to think about what I am getting into:

Four flashes a month with an additional nine posts per month (total 13), a video per month, another video per quarter, and 2,000 words from a WIP in two separate postings separate from the blog.

Right, so what else do I want to add to that?

Not a newsletter. John Hartness and others swear by them, but it just doesn’t feel right to me at this time. Maybe I’ll try it again another year. 

Conventions? With my present commitment playing politics, 2020 is not the year to commit to additional conventions. SAGA by Falstaff and ConCarolinas is all I am willing to commit to at this time on the writing side of things. (And an additional eight, so far, for politics, ugh. – Vote. It’s important. Vote Local, Vote State, Vote Federal. Every step, every year.)

Anthologies/Short Story submissions. I entered two short stories last year and got both published. But I never seem to get my act together for the anthologies. With the addition of the Vlog this year, I think I will let these slide this year. Three will hover around on my list, but I am going to not beat myself up if I don’t make it.

And that leaves, ta-da, actual books. Guess I should write something which can make money, huh? I got a stack in my UFO pile: The Small Courages of Giants, Write Good, Cons of Romance, First Officer, The Autumn Tree, …

So Third, clear at least two UFOs from my pile. I want more that that. I would like a book every quarter. That will be a bonus, the third book.

And this will all be done by Fourth, BIC every day I can. 500 words of sellable (WIP) material and 500 words of other material.

Thanks everyone for your support. 

May you have a great new year and travel well.

Video: Beginnings

Erin Penn

NaNoWriMo is happening. As announced on Oct 31st with my special song, I am participating again. So far I am at 34K of the 50 goal.  If I was on track, I would be at 41K – but I’ll take 34,000 words. That isn’t a bad month’s production and there are still 5 days left. The “novel” I am attempting is UFOs – not science fiction, but Unfinished Objects. Writings started and abandoned.

A big part of this has been getting my blog in order. I am super caught up, though not completely caught up. Soon, though, soon. Related is expanding certain categories of the blog into things. The Write Good book series based off of the writing exercises. Finishing the AtoZ stories from April, into their collection of the Small Courages of Giants. Getting the flashes in order for actual expansion into short stories and books, and in response to requests on patreon for more if people are willing to throw money at the idea. And, most important, dealing with the fact I no longer have a backlog of flashes for my Sunday posts. 

That is going to be a challenge going forward. I’m thinking my 2020 posts, at least initially will be – first week, expanding old flashes; second week, digging up old and new D&D campaign stories where I wrote things up in detail; and then third week new text flashes and four week new visual flashes with the fifth Sunday being the long flash. Plus, if the patreon (https://www.patreon.com/erinpenn) gets some people, I’ve promised unique-to-them Flash expansions and ongoing bits from my work-in-progress. Hopefully that will really kickstart my writing. I seem to do better when I feel obligations.

This level of output has done well this month. I don’t know if it is sustainable. I got a year to test it out.

Finally for the expanding certain categories of the blog, I’ve been bouncing around the idea in my head and with friends about maybe, sort-of bringing my Editing Rants to video format.

(Aiii!, while writing this I got my first patreon … Hi, Bruce. Thank you!)

Anyway, I made a thing as part of NaNoWriMo. Hope this entertains and informs.

 

 

Publication of Three Losses

Erin Penn

A competition caught my eye last Friday (7/5/2019) – write a flash in 24-hours this Sunday (theme to be announced). The website looked rather new, and I’m not sure the e-zine has been published yet, but I thought, why not? If I have time. The time would be weird because the host for the competition was clearly overseas (prices for other competitions listed in pounds instead of dollars, though this prize was just publication).

On Saturday a little afternoon, I say the theme pop by “Loss”. Ugh. I rolled my eyes. Ten thousand people writing about death and hurts. Well, count me out. A little later my brain said, what if … you don’t focus on depression. Can you make it an action-packed Urban Fantasy? Suuuuure, why not stick all that in only 500 words? Well, you were just talking to someone about your “Archaeology is the Best Major” for it’s creep factor and thinking about creating a new series for Martini Martinez, an Urban Fantasy Monster Hunter – and that boyo from Archaeology is a monster in human form. Nah, that would be … well, maybe. And I went to sleep, playing with the idea.

Sunday morning I wrote the untitled story and it came out to 683 words. The flash, including the title, for entry had a 500 word max. So I chopped out some of the backstory for the series for Martini and her Intern Brandon. Then I chopped character actions and streamlined and hacked some more. Finally I had 495 words and I titled it “Three Losses”.

I placed – didn’t win. That went to Mermaids and Monsters, a flash close to what I expected most submitters would be putting forth. I broke the rules – although all three of the characters of Three Losses lost their battle after a fashion – so I’m not surprised I wasn’t number one. I was surprised to place in the “runner-up” category with five other writers. There had been 37 entries.

So “Thee Losses” is published in the July E-Zine “Dare to Write It” ) put out by All For Writers. I will publish the flash sometime next year as part of my normal Sunday materials.

It’s a sequel to Archaeology is the Best Major. Let me know if you want the third installment. By the way Martini Martinez, as the name kind-of indicates, is meant to have a humorous story approach. I do not know why she showed up here. This is much more a Younger type of story.