The last couple months have seen a lot of thinking and soul-searching.

And resulted in some new goals for my life.

I’ve long struggled with how to ensure that I’m working toward the things I really want in life.

In reading Far Beyond the Stars, Everett Bogue’s site on minimalism, I found the answer.

In his post, The Stunning Truth About Focusing on the Important, he says this:

1, Identify the four areas of your life that are most important to you.

Simply write them down. It can be powerful to know what is most important to you, because then you can begin to focus on only the essential.

My four priorities are: Writing, Yoga, Cooking, and Reading.

Wow… what a wake-up call for me.

I could limit my priorities to just four things and maybe, actually get something done.

And what an easy system to use.

I sat down and wrote out my four priorities in life. Took a while to narrow it down.

Here they are:

Writing
Make money from writing
Eliminate credit card debt
Minimalism

Writing is a no brainer. This is what I do. I love to dream up stories and write them down.

Make money from writing – This is the marketing activities necessary to sell books. It’s on my list because while writing comes easy, marketing does not, so it needs to be a separate priority.

Eliminate credit card debt – I made an impulse decision a couple years ago and signed up for some online training that cost a LOT of money. I’m still paying it off. I want to wipe out that debt.

Minimalism - I’m getting rid of the excess in my life so that I can focus on the important things.

To make my four priorities work, I select one task in each area to work on each day.

That’s it.

I might do other stuff that’s not on the list, but not until the four daily tasks are done.

I might do more than one task in an area, but not until I’ve accomplished my daily task in each of the other three areas first.

Simple. Effective.

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To read more about Minimalism, check out Far Beyond the Stars. The original site is shut down, but the archives are still available. Start in October 2009 and just begin reading.

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After much planning (to avoid the need for five rewrites this time), I’ve started the first draft of Words of Stone, the second book in the Words of Power series. This book tells the story of Rayyan, a young woman of power, that catches Tesher’s eye, and the trouble that draws them together and threatens to separate them.

You can track my progress on it in the sidebar.

Off to write!

Writers need to work out the goals, motivations, and conflict that their main characters will face, so that they build interesting, intriguing story people to read about.

In working these up for my second book in the Words of Power series, I came across a shorthand technique for writing down these character components that is working well for me

I substitue these words for Goal, Motivation and Conflict:

Goal – Wants
Motivation – Because
Conflict – But

Here’s how it plays out:

My main character, Jane Doe WANTS to get a new job BECAUSE she feels like her current work is meaningless BUT her current job pays really well, her dad is sick and needs her financial support, and meaningful jobs are scarce.

This gives me her goal – a new job, her motivation – her work feels meaningless, and the conflicts standing in the way of her goal – sick dad, lots of bills.

I then take it a step further and add in the character’s first steps in achieving her goal by adding a SO into the middle of my sentence.

My main character, Jane Doe WANTS to get a new job BECAUSE she feels like her current work is meaningless SO she starts begins to search job listings BUT her current job pays really well, her dad is sick and needs her financial support, and meaningful jobs are scarce.

By adding the SO in there, I’ve ensured that I don’t have a passive character at the start of the story. She is taking some kind of action to meet her goal, even if it doesn’t work out for her.

This method gives me an easy way to figure out what each character wants, why they want it, what their first step is in achieving the goal and how many obstacles are standing in their way that goal.

What methods do you use for developing your characters?

My fantasy novel is finished! Yippy Skippy!! Happy Dance!

After months of work, it is finally finished, except for the minor tweaking I expect I’ll do on it. I was actually feeling kind of giddy and nervous as I neared the end of the edits.

Now I move on to the release activities:

1. Finalizing the cover art.
2. Formatting the electronic version.
3. Formatting the print version.
4. Announcing to the world that I’ve released a book!

5. Starting the next one in the series.

I have two more planned in the Words series with the possibility of expanding to more. Blame my friend Amy for giving me ideas for making this a longer series.

After that I’d like to get back to my scifi series and I have an idea for a young adult fantasy series. LOTS of work on the horizon.

I’ve been working hard on my novel – book one of my fantasy series. I’m on the fifth draft and in the final revisions. FIFTH DRAFT! I’m definitely not a pantser. I anticipate the next book in the series will go a lot smoother because I’ll be planning it out completely, rather than just winging it.

It has an official name – Words of Spirit. I have the cover art (I type that as “covert” art every time) done by Claudia of PhatPuppyArt. She is fabulous! Highly recommended to every writer out there. Such gorgeous work. I’m not revealing the cover until I have it completely finished, but trust me, the artwork is incredible.

I’m on track to have the novel released by the end of the month. Then I’ll be working on a short collection of fairy tales with a twist. Following that are the next two books in the novel series. Plenty of work ahead!

I’ve been slacking some the last month. I finished the first draft of my story, but something wasn’t right about it. Finally figured out what.

I’m not a pantser.

I started this story with an idea for a scene between a man and a woman. I quickly created some backstory to get them to this scene and then started writing with no plan or worldbuilding.

Turns out, that doesn’t work for me.

Sure, I finished the story, but I didn’t like my female main character’s personality or motivations. And I was unclear on my male MC’s motivations. And the world/culture were too vague and similar to other generic fantasy stories.

So I started over and reframed it.

It then changed from a fantasy romance (emphasis on the relationships) to a romantic fantasy (emphasis on the magic and world).

I realized I had strayed very far from my original idea of this man and woman and I didn’t like that. I wanted to write about the relationship between these two people and how they come together.

So I’m back to a fantasy romance story. I’ve done a lot of character and conflict planning along with worldbuilding. Next up, planning new scenes to fit the modified characters and conflicts.

Lessons Learned:

1. Pantsing is great for exploring a bit of a story idea or a character voice. FOR ME. (your mileage may vary)

2. For actually writing the story, I must do the planning work first or I end up with a chaotic mess that needs far more work to get it into readable shape.

3. Lord of the Rings soundtrack station on Pandora.com is excellent music to write and plan with.

4. All writing activities go better with Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs.

Have you ever started over completely on a story because your chosen method (pantsing or outlining) wasn’t working for you?

When I was young, I loved to read. A LOT. You could always find me with my head down and my nose in a book. I read at home, at school, in the car, on the bus.

I missed my stop on the school bus many times because I was reading and didn’t notice we’d reached my home. The driver had to drop me off at the end of the route then. I’m sure he loved me.

Once we could both drive, I let my younger sister drive us to school, so I could spend the time in the car reading.

I read during all of my free periods at school. I hurried from one class to the next so I could read for the few minutes of chaos before the class started. If I could have read while walking down the hallway, I would have.

The library was my favorite place to visit. I’d check out as many books as possible.

I would stay up late at night, reading, until my parents forced me to turn out the light and sleep.

I read so much that my parents issued an edict that I could not read at home in the evenings. They were concerned I wasn’t getting my schoolwork done. I was, in fact, doing my schoolwork during some of those free periods at school, as fast as possible, so I could get back to reading.

Naturally, I wasn’t going to stop reading. So I switched to reading during all my free periods at school and doing homework at night.

My mother used to tell me to get my “nose out of that book” and pay attention to the real world. She thought that I lived in a fantasy world by reading so much.

She was right. I did. The worlds in those books were far more entertaining and exciting than the real life she wanted me to join. At least, I thought so.

All that reading encouraged and fostered my love of writing.

Today, I’m a full-time writer. I spend each day living in a fantasy world of my own making and I love it. My life has never been happier or more fulfilled.

Today is the anniversary of my mother’s death, 13 years ago from cancer.

I think that if she were here today, she’d be proud to see me so happy and I think she’d even appreciate that my happiness comes from living in fantasy worlds.

I miss you, Mom.

I initially set a word count goal of 1K per day to keep myself on track and accountable for something. I’ve noticed a negative pattern though. Before I set the goal, I was writing more than 1K per day, up to 2K at times. After I set the goal, my output dropped to just over 1K per day and stayed there.

In each day’s writing session, my brain seems to say, “Okay, I’ve hit 1K, time to stop now.” And while 1K per day is a respectable amount of words, it isn’t going to get me to publishing goals very quickly.

Instead, I’m experimenting with time goals. I’m using Focus Booster to write in 25-minute increments with a 5-minute break in between. In one hour of writing this morning, I’ve managed 1267 words. I’m planning 3 or 4 more sessions today, so I should be comfortably in the 2-3K range for the day which is where I’d rather be.

I have the time, after all, so I should be writing more.

Time goals don’t work for everyone, but they seem to work for me. I generally keep my fingers typing the entire time with only short stops to think of details or the next line of dialogue.

I’ll keep reporting my progress, but I think I may up my goal to 2K per day and then maybe up to 3K as I get better with my discipline. Do I hear 4K?

What works for you–word count or time goals? Or something else?

photo credit: FDWR

So you may have noticed I added a word count widget over there in the sidebar.

And you may have noticed that there are no words for my scifi romance story, despite the fact that I was to be working on the new draft this week.

The scifirom train was completely derailed and then parked on a siding while a fast-moving fantasy romance bullet train took to the rails.

I woke up with the idea for the fantasy romance after an interesting dream last week and suddenly had to start writing this story. It will be a novella, not a full novel, so it’s going pretty quickly.

I plan to finish it, get it edited and then release it on the Kindle. Yep, here is my public announcement/promise. This one is going out into the world in March or April at the latest. (The possible delay is to allow time for cover art and making sure the end product is totally professional.)

I’m writing, just not on the scheduled project. It is on the list, though, and I will get back to it.

The WIP is going well. Outline is basically finished. It’s still mostly main plot line, not much sub-plot, but I have some sub-plot ideas that I can work into the existing scenes rather than creating stand-alone scenes for them.

Found some great inspiration online in pictures of spaceships and space station concept art. They’ll help me visualize and better describe my settings. Also drew up interior maps of two of the main settings – a ship and a planetary base. Now just need to draw up the second ship layout and I’m good to go.

This week will be starting the new draft of the manuscript. Will be incorporating a lot of the 50,000 words I wrote for NaNo, but modifying significantly as I’ve changed character motivations AND NAMES! Most all of the characters got a new name. Gonna be scratching my head for a while, trying to remember what each one is now called as they’ve had their original names for several months and are stuck in my head. I like the new names, but why did I do that? (Because the new names are better.) Right. Moving on.

Will be adding a wordcount widget to the sidebar to track my progress on the draft. Shooting for new words added each day.

Wish me luck and persistence!