I’m still working on my annual goals for 2020. I’m just not sure of what I’m going to attempt this year. So, I’m going to start on goals for January. That’s a short enough time frame I should be able to project 30 days ahead. Here are my goals.
Blog twice a week, on Monday and Friday. I’ve been fairly successful blogging at this rate, and feel confident I can achieve this.
Finish producing a book for a writing friend. This project is well along. I might finish it today; if not, it should only be a day or two from now.
Edit my short story “Tango Delta Foxtrot”. The story is finished, and I’m in the editing process. My critique group hasn’t particularly liked the plot, but I don’t know how to change it. Whether I can accomplish this in January is a little iffy.
Attend writing group meetings as much as possible. My travel schedule may make it impossible to attend one, but hopefully I’ll be at the other.
Start my next book, tentatively titled The Teachings. This will be book 3 in my church history novels series. I plan on starting this later this week. Writing will take several months.
Finish a proof-reading of Acts Of Faith and republish a corrected version. I’ve proofread about a third of it and found more errors than I like.
Create a PDF version of Acts Of Faith: Leader’s Guide in 8.5×11 inch format. This is a brief task that should be no problem to complete.
I think this is enough. I’m writing this Friday evening to post on Monday morning. It’s possible I’ll add an item or two.
The writing of this book was finished in December 2018. Editing took some time, and I didn’t publish it till May 2019.
One year ago I entered the world of retirees. It was unchartered territory for me. I knew I had more than enough interests to stay busy, but how would I structure my days? What would I accomplish? Would it be more or less than I wanted to do? How would writing and stock trading and property upkeep and a dozen other things vie for my time?
At that time, in January 2019, I did not write a blog post about writing goals. It was all too new. I didn’t know what I could accomplish in my writing. I had recently completed the first draft of Adam Of Jerusalem and I was letting it simmer while the Christmas busyness was in progress. So that would be on the table early in the new year. But what else would I accomplish?
I think I will start this year on An Arrow Through The Air by three posts about goals. First will be what I accomplished last month, then will be a look-back at the whole year, then will be a look-ahead to 2020 and what I hope to accomplish. I’m still thinking about the new year, so this schedule will give me time to think some more.
I last posted about goals at the end of October, for November. Not sure why I didn’t do a December goals post. Here’s what I said for November, and how well I did on them over a two-month period.
As always, blog twice a week on Monday and Friday. I may have to write some ahead and schedule their posting. I did fairly well on this. Some of them I did write ahead of time for later posting. I missed one day in each month.
Attend writing groups. One group is considering adding a second meeting in the month, so it might be three instead of two meetings total for the two groups. I attended every meeting available. One was cancelled. Another was a time to wrap books as Christmas presents to go to a middle school. It was a fun time.
Finish Tango Delta Foxtrot. I think this is about two hours of writing. Surely I can do that. I finished this, and gave it to my critique group (Scribblers and Scribes of Bella Vista). Waiting on a full range of critiques, but initial response, but for installments and for the full document isn’t good.
Finish reading in two books that are research for The Teachings. This is quite doable. I’m not reading all of Josephus—just enough to know about a certain action in Jerusalem at the beginning of the war in 66 a.d. Yes, I got this done. From Josephus I have selected the dates and locations for certain scenes. From the other book I have a good idea of the composition of The Didache. From the two I’ve made an outline. When I sit down to work on it, probably next week, I hope it starts to flow.
Finish the Leader’s Guide for Acts Of Faith. This should be doable, in the original concept only. I’ll be working toward publishing it in December, most likely as an e-book only. Another thing finished. I received some feedback about potential changes that would have taken time, but decided not to make them. For now this is an e-book, but I’m planning on making a PDF in 8.5×11 format to give to people who ask.
So, two months of reasonably good accomplishment. Hopefully this will continue into January 2020.
Well, this weekend was certainly different than last.
I don’t know that I ever formally announced this book on the blog. Maybe I’ll do that on Friday.
I have a list of blog posts I intend to write on. The problem is, each on the list takes a fair amount of forethought. I can’t just open the post box and write about rugged individualism, for example, without some research.
So, that list of posts is going to have to wait. I’ll just write about the weekend, as I did last Monday. Friday afternoon, as we were waiting for company to arrive, I received a message to say my order from Amazon had arrived. Great, I thought. That’s my copies of Documenting America: Making The Constitution. Went to the front door—to find nothing. Checked the notice again and saw that they went to my old office in Bentonville. E-mailed the receptionist there, and sure enough that’s were the package was. Even though company was en-route, Lynda and I hopped in the car to go fetch it. Took an hour in craft fair weekend traffic.
We had a good time visiting with our company, one of Lynda’s cousins. Talked all evening then again Saturday morning, and they were off to their next stop. Just as they left a light rain began falling. It continued for an hour or so, making everything outside wet, too wet to do the outside work I had planned for the day.
Confined to inside activities, I did paperwork tasks for a while, such as updating the checkbook and budget, as well as organizing the miscellaneous receipts and filing them. Food for meals was already prepared and waiting (meaning leftovers), so there was nothing else to do but read and write. Well, I suppose I could have cleaned, but that will be a next week task. The carpet in our main living area is desperately in need of shampooing. A day of vacuuming and dusting prep work, then maybe tomorrow I’ll begin shampooing. Well, if we have all the supplies, that is, which I believe we do.
It’s selling well in person. ‘Twould be nice to have some on-line sales as well.
Sunday I taught Life Group, Chapter 1 of Acts Of Faith. I sold the last three copies of it but have more on order, hopefully to arrive on Wednesday. Sold 26 of them from my order, but still no sales on-line. Alas. I napped some Sunday afternoon, continuing to read in Mere Christianity, and in the evening in my research into the Didache. The day concluded with another storm line and, after going to bed, a phone call from the county alert system saying we were in a tornado watch area. That soon passed, and I went back to bed and slept well.
Oh, yes, walked 2 1/4 miles on Saturday and 3 miles on Sunday. My weight is down a little, and my blood sugars have been nicely under control.
Today will be a writing day, as storms overnight will make it too wet to work outside. Tonight we eat with my cousin who moved to Bella Vista, and get to know him and his wife some. Hopefully I’ll be one or two chapters further in the Leader’s Guide for Acts Of Faith.
The view from my ladder, five steps up. The limb looks large in this photo, but that’s deceiving. It was only 3 to 4 inches diameter.
After writing about a difficult weekend last weekend, I had a good week. That blah Monday turned out to be restful, and I recovered. It was almost as if my day of rest was Monday instead of Sunday. I hope they all won’t be like that as I teach this lesson series. I teach again this Sunday, so we’ll see how it goes.
I did some good work on the Leader’s Guide for Acts Or Faith. It’s far from finished, but I feel much better about it than I did even five days ago. I took my notes prepared for teaching last Sunday—the Introduction to the book—and worked them into that chapter of the Leader’s Guide. I went on to two more chapters, and am now well-along on Chapter 11.
I attended critique group Wednesday evening. We had five writers present, no visitors. Four of us shared, and we had good discussions. I shared the first four pages of “Tango Delta Foxtrot”, the next short story in my Sharon Williams Fonsesca series. I’m 2,000 words into it, heading to somewhere between 4,000 and 8,000. I hope to work a little on that in the days ahead.
I began a new activity in my daily routine: an hour or so of yard work in the late morning. Perhaps I should say I resumed that activity, for I was doing that last spring. After the late-August storm, I worked on the wood lot north of our house, clearing away the debris left after two large trees fell. Now it looks almost like a wooded, leaf-covered park. I’m now doing the same with the woodlot on the south side. This had two smaller trees down, and much deadfall from normal tree life. This is actually a much bigger job. I’ve spent four mornings on it.
On Wednesday, with all the large limbs removed, I decided to get up on a ladder and cut away a broken limb on a tree close to the house. I’m sure certain family members would be aghast at my leaning a ladder against a tree I was cutting on and then getting five steps up on that ladder. But, it was just a 3 to 4 inch limb, nothing major Having only a small, folding pruning saw that would fit the place where I wanted to cut. I got it done, taking frequent rests. It was a task accomplished that make me feel good about my work.
Speaking of tasks accomplished, on Wednesday I had this comment on my Facebook author’s page.
“Preserve The Revelation” is terrific! Each book in the series stands alone. So many authors constantly “explain” what happened in the previous book or you won’t understand the story, which I find irritating. Watching for #3 publication!”
Good feedback on this. Though fourth in the series chronologically, it is the second published, in March 2017.
It’s great to get positive feedback, especially from one who’s now reading a third book of mine. This spurred me on to work a little on the third book in the series (numbers 1, 2, and 4 currently published; she’s reading #4). For over a week I’ve been reading for research and making good progress, learning a lot. Wednesday, after reading that comment, I spent an hour making an outline of book #3, tentatively titled The Teachings. It stands at just a notebook page in length, but it’s a start.
I don’t intend on writing this book until I finish “TDF”, and perhaps one more short story in the Danny Tompkins series. Perhaps a December start is most likely. Between now and then I’ll search my various paper piles for two or three pages of notes I made earlier this year on the book, each time starting from scratch. I’ll see what my earlier thoughts were and whether I remembered them and worked them into my outline.
Speaking of various paper piles, we have company coming today for an overnight stay, one of Lynda’s cousins and her husband. The clean-up of the house and yard started yesterday, and will consume much of today before they arrive. The paper piles have to go, along with other clutter.
So, I end this. I hope all who read this had a good, productive, satisfying week, and will experience the same in the weekend ahead. See you in my post on Monday.
