Joely Sue Burkhart

On April 21, I set a goal of 10K by the end of April.  I’m pleased to report that I wrote nearly 15,700 words before 4/30.  What’s even more impressive?  My totals for May are already over 13K.  Yes, I’m on a roll, or rather, I’m on the ROAD to Shanhasson.  I’m in good shape to finish the first draft this month as I hoped.

This week, more of the same.  I’m getting pretty high word counts so far in May, nearly 1900 a day, so I hope to keep this pace until Shannari finishes her business in Shanhasson.  I do have another round of revisions to complete on BD this week, so I might take a slight hit in word count.  We’ll see.

May is looking to be a NaNoWriMo type of month.  I easily have 40K to write yet, even though I feel like I’m on the downhill slope.  What do you hope to accomplish this month?

I was hoping to get 10K last week while in St. Paul for work, but that didn’t quite happen.  I did get up around 4:00 a.m. most days, and worked hard to write and not goof off on the internet or e-mail.  Combined with the weekend’s count, I made almost 7K words last week.

For the month (including today), I’m at 19,930 words.  I really wanted to hit 30K this month, so I’m setting a firm goal for myself.  1K a day for the rest of the month.  I’ve got tons of story to get through in Road, and another round of Beautiful Death edits are likely by the end of the month.  We’ll see how much I can get done.  I promised Deena she’d have Road by July, so I must get this first draft done by the end of May to give myself time for edits in June.  If anyone wants to beta read Road once I finish it, let me know.

(Sis, I’ve already got you on the short list, as always!)

Looking forward to reading about everyone’s experiences at RT this past week!

Not counting today, I’ve written just under 25K in March.  Not bad… but not where I need to be.  I’m at 59K for the year, and averaging just over 1K a day.  Now that’s pretty good, actually.  1K a day ends up to be three full-length novels.  Considering that I’m writing a full-length novel from scratch right now (I don’t count the old first draft from like 3 years ago), and have significant revisions to several other full-length stories in the works…  I need that 1K a day.

This week, I’ll continue Gregar’s book, or The Road to Shanhasson.  I’m almost through the wedding.  *snorts*  Remember when I was trying to decide where to start and I almost skipped the wedding?  Now I have over 20K just to get through it.  See why I thought about skipping it?  However, some really, really wonderfully horrible conflict came out of this first night.  That stuns me — 20K and I’m not even through one night yet.  Gulp.  I feel some summary coming on very soon.  I have so much story to get through…..  Maybe some of this angst will get cut in revisions.  Oops, Gregar is not liking that idea and is rolling the ivory rahke on his palm.

I’ll also try to work on Gregar’s prequel a little this week for a new Friday Snippet.  Whew, he sheathed the knife.

Deena also asked me about perhaps another Keldari-themed novella to accompany the others, and of course gave me an incredible, challenging idea to think about.  That’s percolating on the back burner.  Something with FIRE of course, but an entirely different angle from the others.

Don’t forget Letters.  Or RHP.  Or Night Sun Rising.  All slated for significant revisions this year.  I must keep the pipeline full!

Beautiful Death is in editor revisions and the first pass will likely come very soon.

I’ve been mailing out bookmarks like a fiend.  VistaPrint definitely loves me.

I have a home office trip in two weeks.

I still need to do our taxes!  *panics*

Sigh.  I have so much to do!  And so very little time.

April goals:  hit at least 50K in Road and hopefully make weekly snippets of The Shadowed Blood.  How about you?

Although I’m struggling to still get up Dark & Early before work, I am getting up at least 3 days a week and getting a few hundred words before it’s time to head to the EDJ.  Every hundred adds up, especially when I can add another few hundred at night.  I had one huge day last week nearly 6K in one day *gulp!* but my average is slowly moving up to around 1K a day.  I’d like to bump that up to 1.5K a day, though, so I can catch up with Sven.  Gregar’s holding the ivory rahke to my throat, whispering Type faster, faster yet…

His book, The Road to Shanhasson, is up over 15K.  Yeah, that surprises me.  Here I feared that I wouldn’t have enough story to fill 90K and now… I’m making a mental tally of all the story I have to cover yet and I don’t know that I’ll make it. 

This week, I’ll pull out my notes for his prequel and see if I can put together something that’s NEW that I can give away week by week in its entirety, without spoilers to the entire series, and won’t detract too much from my progress on the second book in the trilogy.  Gregar’s a challenge to rein in, as I’ve hinted already.  Covering his prequel and what drove him from his position as the most honored Death Rider — assassin — on the Plains to Khul’s second-status Blood without giving away his most secret heart’s desire will be quite the challenge.

I’m starting to get antsy about a contest I entered Letters in, too.  I’m expecting to see a list of finalists any day, now, and if the miracle happens… My revisions aren’t finished.  A final would definitely light a fire under my ass, though, so I could whip out the last few thousand I’m planning to expand that work.

It’s the last week of March.  What do you hope to accomplish before you have to flip the page over to April?

February in Review

It wasn’t the greatest month but not bad.  I wrote 16,500 words, about 10K new words to expand Letters to an English Professor.  (About half of what I planned.)  I don’t know that I’m going to get the 30K I needed or not.  I wasn’t able to finish the revisions by 2/29 like I hoped, but that’s okay.

The Evil Day Job was crazy and demanding, so that took a toll on my desire to get up D&E to write.  I did make it several times, but I wasn’t as productive as usual.  I was simply too tired.  This month will hopefully be better, although I have several big things due by 4/1.

This month will be huge for a lot of reasons.  My first novel will be released 3/9, the dreaded book of my heart.  The first book I wrote and completed, the book that haunted me until I got it right.  To say I love the book is an understatement, and I’m so thrilled to see it coming out shortly!  Of course, that means I’ll be busy getting promo items lined up, requesting reviews, etc.  If you have a blog and are interested in reviewing either The Rose of Shanhasson or The Fire Within, please let me know.  (Ann, I already sent the ARCs to you, my dear.  Hopefully you got them.)

This month, I’m not sure exactly how the writing will all play out.  I’ll be straddling two projects:  the Letters revision and The Road to Shanhasson, book 2, otherwise known as Gregar’s book.  I don’t have an outline prepared for the second so it might be touch and go.  In this case, knowing exactly how the book ends doesn’t guarantee writing the middle will be a piece of cake.  Let alone the beginning, in this case.  But I did start wading through notes and old files this morning and made a little headway.  I’ll continue muddling my way through a plan the rest of this week.

Sven:  2501 words

My goals were simple last week, which is a good thing because I really didn’t have a lot of free time at all for writing.  I did finish the zombie story, edited it a dozen times (it’s amazing how much work four thousand little words can cause) and shipped it off to Deena at DP.  I made it 3 or 4 mornings dark and early, but didn’t get more than a couple hundred words each morning.  I started work earlier each day, and worked later, and still haven’t caught up yet.  This week, wash, rinse, repeat.

Back to Letters and trying to finish the major new sequence of scenes rather early in the story line.  I’m almost done.  I wrote [this is boring] at one point, so these scenes will take a ton of work to spiff up, but there were some really good conflicts that came up too.  Another facet of Conn’s character revealed.  So it’s worth the work.  The next few tough scenes will be taking existing scenes in Rae’s POV and switching them over to Conn’s.  Finding the balance, searching through his emotions, etc.  Tough.  I was hoping to finish by the end of Feb but… That might not be possible.

I also finished Patricia Briggs’ Iron Kissed yesterday.  I hadn’t planned to — in fact, I planned to work a few hours for the EDJ after church.  From the reviews, I knew it was a pretty meaty book in the series.  I can’t say I’m thoroughly happy with how things turned out, but I didn’t hate the book either.  I’ll admit it made me cry.  Dang, maybe I’m turning into a softy — that’s 2/3 books for the year that have made me bawl!

When was the last time a book made you emotional?

Since the beginning of 2008, I’ve really been struggling to get up Dark and Early (D&E) again, and my writing has really suffered.  With three kids, a full-time job, and That Man, I just can’t depend on having any time at all in the evenings to write.  If I stay up late, then I get up later in the morning, and I hate that rushed, late feeling all day.  I really do better when I’m up early.  If I can actually get up…

That’s where having an accountability partner can help.  I made an appointment with my friend Anna to meet just 1-2 days last week at 5:30 a.m.  I knew she’d be up, waiting for me, and so the last thing I was going to do was sleep in and blow her off.  As a result, I ended up getting over 6K last week. 

Anna and I both work, and in between snow/ice storms this week, we could only make appointments with each other 2 days.  However, I still got up this morning.  I’m getting into the habit again.

Even better:  I stuck to my diet plan despite getting up D&E again.  In the past, that’s been a real challenge for me.  (See my diet blog.)  This week, I plan to continue getting up D&E at least 4 days and I’m stepping up my commitment to exercise.  Meanwhile, Letters is progressing nicely.  I’ve completed 4 brand new sections and revised several others into Conn’s POV.  Still in good shape to finish up the revision this month.

It’s been awhile since I fessed up, because I didn’t think I had that much to report.

January was a bust in many ways.  I didn’t get up Dark and Early (D&E) to write.  I felt sluggish, sleepy, and lazy for most of the month.  I didn’t come out the gate fast and hard like I planned, so I was rather bummed.  Then came the last of the Brava contest finalists, of which Letters was not included, and my well-laid plans for the year had definitely gone awry.

However, looking back at January, I actually accomplished quite a lot, if not what I expected.  I finished a first draft of the Arcana project plan, no easy feat.  I got a few opening passages written.  Yeah, they need a lot of work and the rhythm of the speech isn’t right yet, but I’m not going to stew about it now.  There are some really good elements in there. 

I finished a massive read, Passion by Jude Morgan, at 661 pages, and also finished The Spymaster’s Lady by Joanna Bourne.  Awesome books.

Then I developed a project plan to revise Letters by adding Conn’s POV.  This wasn’t as easy as I thought.  I’ve got 16 new sections outlined for Letters, as well as 14 existing sections to revise into his POV.  I added another subplot with his best friend.  All in all, I might have enough to get me to 80K.  That’s what I’m hoping.

Meanwhile, I completed the second and third pass of editor revisions on The Rose of Shanhasson, another brief pass on The Fire Within, as well as extensive discussions on cover, promo, etc. with Deena at Drollerie Press.  We’ve got some awesome things lined up for this month and next, not to mention gorgeous covers we’ll be unveiling soon.

I also overhauled my website.  Although it still needs work, it’s streamlined and much faster to load.

Including all the prework for Arcana, I ended up with over 17K new words.

All in all, not a bad month.  In February, I’m shifting priorities.  I worked over the weekend to get Letters in shape for a contest.  I’ll be entering it tonight.  Then my goal is to finish the expansion this month, while I work on the outline and Day Sheet for book 2, The Road to Shanhasson.  I wasn’t sure where it’d fit in the year’s goals, but it was always on my list to write this year.  After discussing a plan with Deena, I moved this priority up higher so we could tentatively slate its release for September.

I’ll also be sending out review requests for both Rose and Fire over the next few weeks.

In my free time, *snort* I’ll revise the Arcana plan and try to get a full “proposal” written, first 3 chapters.  I think that will make it easier to come back to once I get Road finished.

So what’s the biggest thing you accomplished in January, and what are you working on in February?

Thirteen Goals for 2008Since I blogged about 2007 for TT#50, I thought I’d make a list of some of my goals for 2008.  What do you hope to accomplish in 2008?   1. Write every day.  This is tricky, because not every day is going to yield new words, even if I’m working really hard on a story.  That’s okay.  When I’m in draft mode, I want 1K a day.  Otherwise, I’ll be doing some part of writing every day, whether it’s career related (updating the website, requesting reviews) or revisions. 2. Write 300K. 3. Write another draft of Arcana (formerly RHP), polish in first quarter 2008, and query. 4. Write another draft of Night Sun Rising (the NaNoWriMo novel), polish in second quarter 2008, and query. 5. Editor revisions (completed the third pass 12/31/2007, so this one’s close!) and promotion on The Fire Within. 6. Editor revisions and promotion on The Rose of Shanhasson. 7. Editor revisions and promotion on Beautiful Death. 8. Develop a revision plan to extend Letters to An English Professor from long novella to single title length. 9. Finish a first draft of ANTs (may get bumped to the bottom of the list, but it bugs me because this story is 75% finished). 10. Write The Road to Shanhasson (not sure of timing yet). 11. Write at least one short story to give away as a free read. 12. Revise the website for quicker downloads and easier maintenance (done last night!). 13. Read 52 books.

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A new year is a new beginning, but often fraught with regrets about the past year.  I regret that my diet plan has gone out the window and I pretty much have to start all over again.  I regret that I squandered a few months last year and didn’t write a thing.  I regret that I never made it to the theatre to see Clive Owen in Shoot ‘Em Up.

But hey, it’s a new year, a new chance, a new beginning. (And Clive is on DVD.)  I don’t do “resolutions” really; I set goals every month.  But January does give me the opportunity to sit down, think ahead, and try and guess what the year will hold.  In the 2007 farewell, I wrote that I wanted to write every day, consistently.  That’s the key determining factor for the year’s success.

My goals for 2008 are as follows:

1. Write 300K.
2. Finish the second draft of RHP (now titled Arcana) and submit.
3. Finish the second draft of NSR (the NaNoWriMo novel) and submit.
4. Write the second book in the Shanhasson series.  I could call this “second draft” since I do have a first draft of the story; however, I wrote it back in 2003!  Needless to say, a few things have changed since then.
5. Decide what to do with Letters, and thus with ANTs.  They’re my “Bubble” projects for the year.

Of course, I’ll also have editor revisions and promotional activities for The Fire Within, The Rose of Shanhasson, and Beautiful Death.  I need to get excerpts on the website, prepare ARCs, request reviews…

I’m also going to exercise more and work on a more balanced approach to food and health.

Here’s to a crazy, exciting, busy year!