Planning for February

Yesterday was a super productive day for me. I’ve had a rash of unproductive days lately, so it was nice to have this time where I actually got shit done.

I did about 26 pages of revisions and added about 3700 words to the book, LOL. But I always seem to add a lot of words in the revision stage. I think I tend to write lean because the story just needs to get out of my head, so by the time I’m done with the book, it’s mostly action and dialogue. That’s why I usually refer to it as a zero draft or a glorified outline with dialogue. No one ever sees that version, not even my critique readers.

Anyway, I also recorded a Story Nerd podcast but I didn’t get it edited yet so that’s on today’s agenda. It’s the first time in a couple weeks I’ve had time to sit down and record, and I found that like blogging, I really miss it when I can’t do it.

I also did a month end review of where I am in my goals for the quarter and the year and did some preliminary work on February’s goals, which I’m going to finalize today. I’ll update my Kanban board, write down the updated goals in my work planner, set up February’s monthly page and set up next week’s overall plan. I thought I had planned everything out for January, but I kind of blew some things off. The thing is, I always seem to overplan. I schedule too much stuff I want to do and then I’m upset at the end of the month when I don’t get them done.

My goals for February are simple.

Finish the damn revisions.

Okay, there’s more than that, but it really does boil down to that being my ultimate priority. I extended my own deadline for one week. I think that’s enough time for me to get my butt in gear and get this book finished and off to the editor.

Once I get the revisions done, I think I want to go back to this sweet little novella I was writing in my free time. It’s probably going to be a new freebie for my newsletter peeps. I love the book that folks get now when they join, but it’s a six-year-old book at this point and my writing style has changed a lot in that time.

Also, I’d like to do more free stuff for my newsletter folks and vary it up a little so it’s not getting stale. I can’t promise a book a month or anything, but maybe something once a quarter? Not a novel-length, because I need to focus on the Reapers for now, but I could do a novella.

Anyway, that’s all I got for today. I’m going to go sit down with my work planner and my coffee, figure out my day, and then get to work. I have to work tonight, so ideally, I’d like to be done with all the writerly things with enough time to get some sleep in the afternoon. We shall see how it goes.