Category Archives: goals

Bible study, Church History Novels, goals, Sharon Williams short stories, The Teachings, Writing

January Goals – Accomplisment

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This is Bessie’s first book. While it was a work-for-hire, she has obtained a license for a limited print run.

Last day of the month. Time to see how I did on my January goals.

  1. Blog twice a week, on Monday and Friday. I’ve been fairly successful blogging at this rate, and feel confident I can achieve this. Yes, did this. I don’t think I missed a regular day.
  2. 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. Yes, check this off as complete. I got this done not long after I posted the goals. I did a quickie cover, using PowerPoint and loading it into G.I.M.P. The quality wasn’t as good as we’d like, so I did it over from scratch in G.I.M.P. It was accepted by Amazon without needing correction, and have ordered copies. I was able to use G.I.M.P. without much consternation.
  3. The 5th story in my Sharon Williams Fonseca – Unconventional CIA Agent series.

    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. Not only did I get the editing done on this, but I also published it. The cover isn’t the greatest, but it’s the best I can do.

  4. 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. My writing groups held only two meetings this month. I missed the meeting of the Village Lake Writers and Poets due to travel but attended the critique meeting of Scribblers & Scribes of Bella Vista. 
  5. 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. I did this, but just barely. On Wednesday I created the files and reviewed my notes on the plot. Yesterday I entered the first words in the book. I think I wrote only about 250 words, but it’s a start. So yes, I did this.
  6. I found too many errors in this book to let it go. So I corrected the text and re-published.

    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. Done! I completed the editing mid-month, and uploaded the new insides around the 22nd. No changes in the cover.

  7. 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. As I said in the goal, this was a quick one, and I did it with no problem.

And, actually, I completed one other major task that came up long after I made my goals post.

8. Read/proofread a book for a member of SSBV, who has a short window of time to get some changes made to her previously published book about to be re-published. I was able to do this. I finished the reading yesterday and e-mailed corrections and comments to the author. I’ll eventually write a book review of it.

So, it was a good, productive month. Perhaps tomorrow, or perhaps not until my regular Monday post, I’ll lay out my February goals.

Church History Novels, critique group, goals, Sharon Williams short stories

October Accomplishments; November Goals

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It’s Friday, so a regular posting day. And, it’s the first of the month; time to blog about achievements and goals. Here are the goals I set at the beginning of October, and how I did on them.

  1. Blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays. Almost made this. I missed last Monday.
  2. Finish the short story “Tango Delta Foxtrot” and come close to finishing the editing process. Shared the first scene with my writing group, for critique later. Didn’t work on this at all. Other writing wound up taking precedent.
  3. Attend writing groups on the 9th and 16th. Yup, did this. I enjoy going to my writing groups.
  4. Finish the Leader’s Guide for Acts Of Faith. As of this morning I’m a little more than halfway done with it. This is doable, though might be a stretch. If I get it written, publishing will be in another month. I am very close on this. I think it’s just a chapter and a half of new writing to do, then go back and format it for e-book. I had a snag thrown at me on this, concerning how much I need to write about the second part of each chapter. My thoughts right now are to finish it as intended, then perhaps go back later and expand it.
  5. Issue my first newsletter. It may be shorter than I want, and may not have as many items as I planned, and for sure won’t have a lot of subscribers, but, hopefully, it will go out. I did not do this. I’m not sure why I hesitate, but I do.
  6. Continue an aggressive reading program, at least an hour a day. I’m in the midst of two books, one in print and one e-book. I should finish both and start one or two more. Yes, I continued this reading program, and perhaps expanded it a little. Some of it is for research on my next church history novel.

So, all it all October wasn’t a particularly good month for achieving goals.  I’ll try again in November, though with much family coming for Thanksgiving, achieving any goals may be difficult.

  1. As always, blog twice a week on Monday and Friday. I may have to write some ahead and schedule their posting.
  2. 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.
  3. Finish Tango Delta Foxtrot. I think this is about two hours of writing. Surely I can do that.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.

I think that’s it. I may be able to accomplish a couple of other things. If so, I’ll report on them on or around December first.

Bible study, Documenting America, goals, Short Stories

September Achievements, October Goals

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Last month I resumed monthly post of setting goals. Time for me to check in and see how I did, and to set goals for October (it’s not too late for that).

  • Blog on a regular Monday and Friday schedule. I’ve done fairly well at that this year, and I’d like to continue it. Yes, I did this. I don’t think I missed a day.
  • Complete publishing tasks for and publish all versions of  Documenting America: Making The Constitution. I’m close. The covers are the big holdup. Got this one done! I was almost ready with it when I posted goals, so I was pretty sure I’d finish it.
  • Complete publishing tasks for and publish all versions of  Acts Of Faith: Examples from the Great Cloud of Witnesses. I’m almost through with edits, but I can see this happening. Yes, I got this done too! I went through much consternation about the cover, but in the process of doing so learned much. So, book #30 is published. Well, some of them are short stories.
  • Write a short story in my Sharon Williams Fonseca series. I have a sheet or two of notes of what I’m going to do next, if I can only find them. Nope, not done. In fact, I started it on Sept 30. As of today I’m 2016 words into it, thinking it will be 4000 to 6000 words. I’ll roll this goal over.
  • Critique 2-3 poems at the Absolute Write Forums. I’d like to keep my foot in poetry somehow. Maybe this is the way. I regularly went to the poetry forum at Absolute Write and read new poems posted, but didn’t find any I thought I could do any good on. I’ll keep trying.
  • Attend writers groups on the 11th and the 18th. Done. Enjoyed both of them.
  • Complete reading three items and begin two or three more. Finished the three, and started two others, as per my goal.
  • Prepare my first newsletter for release about Oct 15. And figure out how to make it happen. I started this, but didn’t finish. I made up a list of what will be in it and have some of it written. I may make my Oct 15 goal.

Speaking of October goals, here they are.

  1. Blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays.
  2. Finish the short story “Tango Delta Foxtrot” and come close to finishing the editing process. Shared the first scene with my writing group, for critique later.
  3. Attend writing groups on the 9th and 16th.
  4. Finish the Leader’s Guide for Acts Of Faith. As of this morning I’m a little more than halfway done with it. This is doable, though might be a stretch. If I get it written, publishing will be in another month.
  5. Issue my first newsletter. It may be shorter than I want, and may not have as many items as I planned, and for sure won’t have a lot of subscribers, but, hopefully, it will go out.
  6. Continue an aggressive reading program, at least an hour a day. I’m in the midst of two books, one in print and one e-book. I should finish both and start one or two more.

That’s it for this month. I’ll check back in the first of November.

Dateline: 3 October 2019

 

Bible study, Documenting America, goals, poetry, reading, Short Stories, Writing

September 2019 Goals

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I used to do goals posts regularly. I’ll do it this month and see what comes of it.

One thing I’ve been doing in the evening is going through old posts on this blog and adding categories to them. My son helped me set up my website in June 2011. Part of that was creating this blog. I already had a blog over at BlogSpot, titled “An Arrow Through the Air”. He did the work of porting all those posts over to this blog.

I intended, at first, to run both blogs. This one would be my writing blog; that one would be for more personal stuff. I did that for a while, but soon saw the pressures of life wouldn’t allow me to do both. So, I abandoned AATTA and concentrated on this blog. Eventually I renamed this one to be An Arrow Through The Air. The old one still exists. Every now and then I make a minor post there just to keep the account open.

A few months back I went to the back pages of this blog, I forget why. I noticed that all those posts from the old blog came over but none of them had categories. The all show up as “Uncategorized”. That’s not a major problem, but…oh, wait, I remember now. I was trying to find a post I did back in 2008 on a certain subject, went to that category, and didn’t find the post. That’s when I learned none of the categories had stayed with the posts as they ported over.

So, slowly, as I have a night in front of the TV where I can’t really do anything else, I’ve been going back through the old posts and adding categories. It’s actually a tedious job but I feel that it needs to be done. As of last night I had completed all the posts for 2008. Looks like I have two and a half years still to go.

One thing I noticed was that in 2008 I made a monthly post about my goals for the month—writing goals mostly—and then an end-of-the-month post showing how well I’d done. That was almost a journal, of sorts. It made me think I ought to do that occasionally. So, here’s my first goals post in a long time. Perhaps on Sept. 30 I’ll come back and make a post of how I did.

  1. Blog on a regular Monday and Friday schedule. I’ve done fairly well at that this year, and I’d like to continue it.
  2. Complete publishing tasks for and publish all versions of  Documenting America: Making The Constitution. I’m close. The covers are the big holdup.
  3. Complete publishing tasks for and publish all versions of  Acts Of Faith: Examples from the Great Cloud of Witnesses. I’m almost through with edits, but I can see this happening.
  4. Write a short story in my Sharon Williams Fonseca series. I have a sheet or two of notes of what I’m going to do next, if I can only find them.
  5. Critique 2-3 poems at the Absolute Write Forums. I’d like to keep my foot in poetry somehow. Maybe this is the way.
  6. Attend writers groups on the 11th and the 18th.
  7. Complete reading three items and begin two or three more. As of this morning I’m halfway through two books (each around 260-280 pages) and a third through a 60 page article. I should easily finish all these with no problem. I don’t know what I want to read next, but I’ll start searching my stacks before lone.
  8. Prepare my first newsletter for release about Oct 15. And figure out how to make it happen.

That’s enough, I think. See you all on the 30th with a report.

Adam Of Jerusalem, Church History Novels, Documenting America, goals, Writing

A Rainy Morning of Busyness

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Here’s what I got up to this morning—a nice, steady rain. Yet, it didn’t put me back to sleep.

I’m starting this post at 7:05 a.m. I’ve been up since 5:20. I got up a little before 5:00 for a call of nature and never got back to sleep. My right shin was hurting and kept me awake. I finally got up, went to my reading chair and tried to sleep. It was raining hard. The noise of the rain from the open window behind my head, and on the skylights and the roof, was soothing, but didn’t do the trick for putting me back to sleep.

So, a few minutes before six I got up, put on the coffee, then came back to my chair and opened the book I’m reading on my cell phone. It’s Thomas Carlyle’s Miscellaneous Essays, specifically his 1829 essay on Voltaire. I don’t know much about Voltaire so was looking forward to this particular essay. Alas, 68 pages into a 73 page essay and I don’t know much more than I did before reading it. I’m either reading distracted or Carlyle’s style is working against comprehension. I won’t re-read it immediately to see which it is.

Now I’m in The Dungeon, typing this on the fly. It’s going to be a busy day. I have to call my dentist when the office opens. For some reason I think I have an appointment today that I failed to put on my calendar. Later, at 12:45 p.m., Lynda has a medical appointment in town that I’ll accompany her on. That will consume about three hours including the driving there and back.

Last night, via e-mail, I received the final information needed to publish Adam Of Jerusalem. At some point today I’ll plug that into the publication files, then complete the final formatting. I hope today I’ll get the Kindle e-book edition published, tomorrow the Smashword edition, and maybe Wednesday complete the print book and order a proof copy. This may sound like a lot but it’s all doable, depending on the time to make the print book cover from the e-book.

Of course, at 8:00 a.m. I’ll get on the elliptical for 5 minutes, then go into my Monday morning stock trading routine. Meanwhile, last night I completed my research in the source document for one chapter of Documenting America: Making The Constitution Edition, a chapter I hadn’t yet done any reading for. I identified the excerpt I want to use and will today add it to my book file. That will give me three chapters edited, waiting for my original words to be added.

Somehow, when adding the photo to the cover, I caused the text to be offset from center. I’ll correct that later today.

Then, I also need to spend some time on books for two other authors that I’m helping. One is the retired missionary from our church. I’ve written about this before. I’ve created a rudimentary cover for it, which, while not professional, will likely suffice for this book. I have the same publishing tasks ahead for that book, that I can start any time.

A second book, for a different author, is not as far along. She came to my attention through the critique group I’m in, as she’s the church friend of a young man who has attended a couple of times. Her book is encouragement for women who have a church background but are working to recover a strong spiritual relationship with God that they either lost or perhaps never had. I may work on that some today, though more likely tomorrow.

So there you have the outline of my day. How much of this I will actually accomplish is a mystery. But, I’ll try. With God’s help and strengthening I’ll complete much of it.

goals, Preserve The Revelation, Writing

The Forest and the Trees

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It’s St. Patrick’s Day. That’s not a day I normally celebrate, but since much of the world is, I figured I should mention it.

The real subject of this post, however, is one I touch on with some regularity: busyness. This is one of my frequent themes and complaints. Of course, I do it to myself. If I didn’t want to write and publish books and stories, I wouldn’t be near as busy as I am. If I didn’t insist on balancing my checkbook (as I believe most people aren’t doing these days), or keep up with a budget spreadsheet, or neatly file financial receipts and records, I’d have a lot less to do. So, yes, I realize that the way I want to live and conduct life contribute to that busyness, or maybe even create that busyness.

One metaphor frequently used to describe someone who is busy is to say “He can’t see the forest for the trees.” I suppose that doesn’t apply only to a busy person. It could apply to someone who focuses on individual tasks without being able to see the big picture.

My problem right now is just the opposite. I can’t see the trees for the forest. I have such a massive amount of items on my to-do list I can’t see my way clear which one to tackle first. I could do any one task, any two tasks, maybe even any five tasks, and see no less forest of tasks waiting for me.

When that happens, which has been frequently of late, I tend to back off and do nothing. Which isn’t good, since the tasks are still there and more are being added. That’s where I’ve been of late, backing off and doing nothing. That can’t happen for long, however, and I finally got back to my list and started looking for trees.

On the non-writing list, I tried to figure which were the time sensitive ones, and work on them. Income taxes, of course, are a big one. But before that came car registration. But before that came personal property assessment. All this can be done on-line these days. The last couple of years I waited too late to do it on-line and had to go to the DMV. This year, though, around March 1st I went on-line and did the assessment. Then around March 8th I went on-line and did the renewal. Yesterday the stickers for the license plates came in the mail. Today they got on the vehicles. One item down—or maybe I can count that as three items.

On the writing list, I have my novel, Preserve The Revelation, almost finished. It needs one final read and tweaking of chapter 1, then it’s publish. Then I have the next Danny Tompkins short story, then the civil war book, then another short story, then…the list gets really long. I took a stab at felling a couple of “maintenance” type trees: I re-did my biography on my Amazon author page and on my website. Neither ones were major tasks, but they were part of this huge, impenetrable forest in which I can’t see trees. Well, I saw those two, and they are gone, for now at least.

This Danny Tompkins short story is an odd thing on my list. I thought the series was over with the last story, but two circumstances in real life gave me the idea for one more. A couple of months ago I outlined it and wrote an opening paragraph, mainly to get it out of my mind. But the day I finished the first round of edits on PTR, I had an extra hour to find a tree to cut down, so I began typing on “Growing Up Too Fast”. By the end of that day I had the story complete save for a good ending. I finished that last weekend. Sent the story to three beta readers, getting comments back from two. Incorporated those comments into the story, fixed ALL the typos (I think), and, last night, I went through the steps to publish it on Amazon. It’s done, my 23rd publication there.

I’m going to wait a few days to announce the story, because it takes that long to get it added to your Amazon page and for it to sync up with your Amazon statistics. Most likely my Monday blog will be about that.

So some trees are gone from the forest. It’s still a forest, however. Still plenty of trees tightly packs, so much so it’s still hard to see them. But, I feel better. If I can get PTR published, at least in e-book, I can pull off writing all together to do my taxes. Once I get those done, I’ll feel like working in the forest again, finding one tree at a time and getting rid of it.

goals, miscellaneous, Short Stories, Writing

The Busyness is Overwhelming

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Right now, I simply can’t commit time to blog posts. I’ll still slip one in once in a while, but unfortunately I won’t maintain a regular schedule. Life has thrown many things at me right now, and just now I have to process through them. An example: the lock on our front door no longer works. We discovered this Friday evening. Rather than call a locksmith then and perhaps pay extra, I’m doing it today. I’ve looked them up, have three choices written, and will call shortly. Then I’ll have to call home and tell them whether a locksmith is coming. Such a pain.

At the same time I’m trying to maintain a little bit of a writing schedule. I published a short story last weekend, and last week I worked on my two Thomas Carlyle projects. I have that mostly worked out of my system at present, but not fully. Maybe by the end of today I will, then will put those projects back on the shelf for six months. But today I pick back up my book Seth Boynton Cheney and begin to make edits for it, and then to prepare a color edition for printing.

So, my couple of faithful readings, feel free to check in from time to time. Just don’t expect posts to be coming on a regular schedule.

family, goals, stock market, Writing

Hard to Return to Routine

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On June 11 our three grandchildren (ages 7, 4, and 2) came to stay with us while their parents went on a sabbatical trip: business mixed with pleasure. I immediately shifted my routines and established a new routine. I delayed coming in to work until around 10:00 a.m. I got the kids up, fed them breakfast, got them dressed, had the two older ones make their beds, saw that their teeth were brushed, then headed out for work. My wife took the day shift. In the evening we worked together on supper and jointly got them ready for bed. Afterwards I spent a little time in The Dungeon, working on writing and stock trading tasks.

Then, on June 23 their parents arrived, and the routines were shot. They all left two days later on the next leg of their trip, returned on July 6, and left for home on July 8.

So it’s July 9, and time to get back to our usual routines. Actually, I should have begun that on June 25. I tried, really I did, but there were things working against me. One was the Independence Day holiday, which gave my a 3-day weekend Friday-Sunday. The other was lack of a major writing project at home and delay of a certain project at work. So I was without a focus at each location. Consequently I floundered at both. I got stuff done at both, but my productivity was nowhere near what it should have been.

Also working against the routine is being the organizer/planner of my wife’s family’s reunion the last weekend in July/first in August. It’s going well, but it’s a one time thing, not a routine thing. What writing tasks I had were minor corrections to on-line listing of my books, again not routine. At work I had a series of one-off things to do. I also have non-routine things coming up the end of August, end of September, and end of October.  Planning for those has already begun—another thing to draw me out of my routine.

I don’t do well with the non-routine. I’ve long noticed that, but it was certainly confirmed this month. Last night I found myself at home, the kids and grandkids gone, and the evidence that they’d been there mostly cleared away. So I went to The Dungeon in the evening, was confronted with some non-routine tasks, and almost got nothing done. I finally concentrated on my stock trading routine, and was able to enter one trade with my broker, which filled today. Yea! Back to routine.

We’ll see what happens over the next four months. I hope I can be productive, but I’m afraid I will be only marginally so. I have most of the non-routine things on my to-do list (the non-work ones, that is). If I just work that list I’ll be okay.

goals, Writing

January 2013 Sales

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January has closed. It’s time to post my book sales. Here’s the table and graph.

As you can see, it’s not a particularly encouraging situation. Since October I’ve had 8 – 7 – 7 – 7 sales per month. True, I’ve not done a lot to promote my books (a FB post here and there; speaking to a few people about them), but it’s still pretty dismal.

With baseball season coming on I need to figure out how to promote In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. I also need to have the cover re-done, but not sure I want to spend the money at this time.

goals, Writing

Review of 2012 Publishing Goals

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Back in January 2012 I established some publishing goals for the year. Since I just did the same for 2013, I thought I should go back and see how did on those goals. I wrote them in three posts last January. I’ll summarize them here and tell how I did.

Fiction

Publish my second short story, titled “Too Old To Play”. I did this in January, exactly on schedule. It’s only sold three copies, but it’s there and available.

Publish my novel Doctor Luke’s Assistant. I did this in March, exactly on schedule. It’s been my best selling work so far.

Publish my novel In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. I did this in August, a little later than I’d hoped, but I delayed it for consideration by a publisher, and by then I was too engaged with other projects to jump right back in this. It isn’t selling, but baseball season is just around the corner.

Publish another short story in the Danny Tompkins series. I did not do this. Instead I wrote a different short story and published it, and it’s sold 10 copies.

Begin work on my third novel. Okay, I suppose this was a writing goal, not a publishing goal. I did this, beginning China Tour in October.

Non-Fiction: Articles

The no-money one of these is Suite101.com. I did not write any articles for Suite101 this year. As I wrote in January, “The site is soon to go through a major re-vamp. I’m waiting to see what they do, and if anything I want to write on will still be suitable.” The revamp occurred. I’m making a little more residual income there than I thought I would, but I still don’t expect to write any articles for them any time soon, almost certainly not in 2013.

The one for decent money is Buildipedia.com. As planned I wrote for Buildipedia for several months. Then they axed my column. I haven’t had any ideas for feature articles for them, so that prospect is dormant for a while and probably will remain so.

The third gig is a site named Decoded Science. I wrote and published one article with them in 2012. I still like the concept of Decoded Science. I like the owner/editor. I just haven’t had any ideas for articles. I wanted to do a series of articles on low impact development. The owner/editor was favorable, but I haven’t found time or energy to do them. It’s a possibility in 2013, thought not all that likely.

Non-Fiction: Books

The Candy Store Generation. I wrote this and published it in July 2012, more or less on schedule. I liked how it came out. It’s sold about 15 copies, which is a big disappointment.

John Cheney of Newbury, Massachusetts. This was to be a family genealogy book. I found no time to add to the research I’ve already done, so did not write anything on this. Maybe some day.

Articles written about floodplain engineering that would form the basis of a decent book. Yes, they would, but I’ve done nothing on this other than brainstorm a little.

A second book in the Documenting America series: the Civil War years. I wrote the first chapter of this, or most of the first chapter, then abandoned it for the time being. The research was going to be much more than I thought. I read some as research, maybe 10 to 15 hours of reading. I wish I could have written it, and hope to do it in 2013.

So, I didn’t do too badly, did I? I hope I do as well, relative to my goals, in 2013.