Life would be so much easier if I could get advance warning of chaos. If I could just plan for it…

…well, it would be less chaotic.

Now for my ROW80 Goals post! The last round (AKA the NaNo round) has begun.

I got my wish!

I now have two kids in school full time. In fact, they’ve been in school full time for about a month now.

So why haven’t I accomplished more writing?

Chaos. It happens. And this past month has had a ridiculous amount of it, from hubby recovering from surgery to managing our teenager’s special needs. Tomorrow… (wait… it just passed midnight…so today…) I have the wonderful gift that I get to sleep in and not worry about either kid until at least 4pm!

There shall be great rejoicing!

And much writing.

And hopefully we’ve got a handle on the chaos now and I can begin acting on my plan to write in the mornings instead of at night. The trick is, I have to do it before I set a single toe on the stairs. Once I’m down, there are too many things meowing at me and demanding my attention and I won’t be able to sit down and write. I’m fine with drinking tap water, and I’m planning various breakfast items that can be brought upstairs the night before so I don’t even have to come downstairs to look in the fridge.

The goals:

Spend October preparing for NaNoWriMo. 

• This means planning meals ahead, which is different this year because hubby has had gastric surgery and his eating routine is very different. I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do about this. It might mean having my teenager taking a more active role in dinner preparation.
• I need to decide what story I’m going to write. I’ve succeeded with stories in my Kingdom Come series in 2010 and 2011. I failed miserably in 2013 with one of the Pangalactic Sojourner stories. To complicate matters more, I’m currently concentrating on my Victoria Pontifex series, but those are probably going to be novella length. I may do two novellas and call it 50k total between them…
• I need to reestablish a daily writing routine. I can’t dive into NaNoWriMo cold. I need to warm up and be ready to crank out 2k every day.
• I may decide to write an outline of whatever story I decide to do. I haven’t done that before, but I think it would help me go the distance from start to finish if I don’t have to pause in the middle of writing to think about what has to happen in what order.
• My little goobear will turn 6 in November, so I’ll need to plan party stuff in advance.

Spend November doing NaNoWriMo

• I can write 2k per day. Heck, I can almost write 2k per hour. But that’s different than finishing a novel, which is the goal of NaNo.
• Hopefully, I’ll have the prep done to make the mad-cap writing marathon possible.
• The mini-goal will be a daily word count of 1k=barely acceptable, 2k=on track, 3k=pretty good, 4k or more=great!

In December, accept that real life will place more demands on my time

• I always end NaNo either wanting to immediately dive into the next novel or to completely re-write the ending of what I’ve just finished. It never works.
• I will still write during December, but it won’t be the plugging-away-at-the-WIP type writing.

Nurture Writing Relationships

• Help another writer in some way every week. I’m helping Kat Brauer with her Crits For Water campaign. It’s a great cause… click the link and check it out!
• I sometimes edit for friends. I have a current project I’m finishing, and a few others on the horizon. I love doing this, but it is very time consuming.
• Figure out how to handle friends/fans who ask for too much. I struggle with this on both ends…I have so many writers whom I consider friends, and sometimes it’s hard to tell whether we’re really connecting, or whether they are just being nice about interacting with me as a fan. I do love it when I’m in the middle of a nook book and I get a notification that the author of said book has just played their turn in Words With Friends.
• Keep up with the SciFi Q of the Day and other interactions on social media. I’m approaching 30,000 followers on Google Plus, which is amazing! These are not just fans, they are peers and readers and all kinds of people. Interacting with them is important not just for name recognition, but for the enrichment we provide each other.
• Send more thank-you notes.
• I used to do interviews every week. Now I do them every-other. I might switch to once a month. They are great, but I need to concentrate more on writing and less on blogging. My successful web interactions take place primarily on facebook and Google Plus, not my blog. I definitely will continue to keep the blog up to date, but it’s not the main way I connect with people.