Tag Archives: NovPad 2012

A to Z Challenge, Consequence, Goals, NaNoWriMo, Niteblade, NovPad, Personal, Shadows, Twixt, W1S1

Looking Back at 2012

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Rearview -- Photo by Rhonda ParrishIt’s that time of year again, when I look back at the goals I set the year before and create new ones for the year to come. These are not resolutions, I was sorely tempted to begin and end my yearly goals in the middle of summer just to get away from the R word, but it turns out that my desire to be lazy outweighs my desire to be contrary 😉 So here we go, how did I do on reaching my 2012 goals?

For 2012 I wanted to address not just writing, but also editing and schoolwork so I broke my goals up into four categories: Health (because that affects every part of my life), School, Writing and Editing. My specific goals for 2012 were:

Health:

  • Continue to eat healthy. In my case that is a low-sodium pescatarian diet.

I’m going to call this one successful (hence the bolding ;)) though there is definitely room for debate. I eat when I’m emotional and it’s been an emotional freaking year, but overall, I’m pleased with how I’ve done, not least of all because this year I was able to recognize when I was eating for reasons other than hunger. It’s a small step, but at least it’s in the right direction.

  • No drinking energy drinks

Um, I did pretty well with this at first, and I’m not drinking them now, but there was a period when my sister and niece were staying with us and also when my mom died that I used energy drinks as a crutch to get through the day without napping. Understandable, I think, but it means I didn’t reach this goal.

  • Remember soft drinks are a ‘sometimes food’ (Thanks Cookie Monster)

Erm… yeah. I started out strong on this one but as I write this blog there is a Diet Dr. Pepper sitting within reach on my desk so… yeah. Goal not accomplished.

  • Workout at least five times a week

This I was good at for most of the year. I was working out six days a week and was making Danica do it with me. We did some 30 Day Shred stuff, Couch to 5k (before I screwed up my ankle. Again) and were only a couple weeks away from completing the P90x Lean program when my Mom died. It sounds like an excuse, but when she died my world sort of tipped upside down and I am still struggling to get back into the workout habit. It will definitely be on the goal list for 2013. I’m calling this goal accomplished though because I did very well.

  • Lose 40lbs

Not even close. This has been SUPER frustrating for me because I felt like I was working really hard and the scale just wasn’t moving the way it was meant to. (I say that in the past tense because I sort of fell off the ‘working hard’ wagon in November and December.)

School: I think this year is going to be more writing and editing-centric so my school goal is optional, depending on time and stress.

  • Finish one, or, if I’m feeling super energetic, two more courses toward my degree

I didn’t do any courses toward my degree in 2012. I intend to change that up for 2013.

Writing:

  • Write the first draft of Consequence

Didn’t happen. I don’t have a great excuse as to why it didn’t happen, I just got distracted.

  • Participate in the monthly version of Write 1 Sub 1. I have a habit of writing ‘cast-off’ poetry for things like this when I become overwhelmed. That’s not acceptable here. Poetry only counts if it is in a complete and publishable form that I’m proud of. Same goes for stories.

Thank gawd for W1S1. Without it my writing productivity would have been even lower than it already was. I was successful in doing the monthly version of W1S1 and I look forward to doing a modified weekly version in 2013.

  • Figure out what to do with Shadows and my zombie poetry and get to work on doing it. This can mean looking for an agent, a publisher or any number of other things. I can’t be specific until I’ve made a decision

Done and done. Shadows has been shelved for the time being. I keep having ideas on how I can improve it and feeling the temptation to pull it out and revise it again but so far I’ve resisted. I think I need to move on for now. I’ll come back to Shadows someday, but not anytime soon. As for the zombie poetry, I’ve also figured out what I’m going to do with it… I just haven’t actually got it done yet. I will definitely be including that in my goals for 2013. The zombie poetry project is stalled temporarily while I wait on something I need from someone else, but soon… soon…

  • Either finish a first draft of Hollow Children or a transcription of Twixt

Hmm… I don’t know whether or to call this accomplished or not. Technically I didn’t do either of those things so I guess it’s not accomplished, however… instead of transcribing Twixt (I wrote the first draft long hand and so needed to type it up) I started doing the How to Revise Your Novel course using it as the project I was working on. What I discovered in the process of taking that course and doing the exercises was that Twixt, as it was written, was fatally flawed so I didn’t transcribe it. I didn’t begin working on a new draft either because it wasn’t until the end of November that I figured out what exactly I’d done wrong and how to fix it. Interestingly enough, that is also true of Hollow Children. I was hopelessly stalled on it until the end of November when I had an epiphany and figured out how to fix it. So there’s that…

  • Revise the whack of ‘mostly finished’ short stories sitting in my Dropbox and start looking for homes for them

I did manage to do this… and then I participated in the Whittaker Prize (see below) and added a bunch more ‘mostly finished’ short stories to my Dropbox to work on. Wheee!

  • NaNoWriMo is optional. So is NovPad.

I participated in NaNoWriMo and was successful despite restarting several times and switching projects three times. I attempted NovPad but was far less successful. The good thing about NovPad, as my friend Beth pointed out to me is that the prompts are always there. So I’ll keep working through them. Just like I did last year (see below). Ya know, it seems I’m not really very good at this NovPad thing LoL

  • Participate in the Whittaker Prize again this year, but in only one category, not both.

I participated in the short story section of the Whittaker Prize this year and ended up placing 10th overall with a final score, after six rounds, of 453. I… don’t know how that compares to how I’ve done in previous years but I feel really good about the work I produced for the Whittakers this year. In fact, one of my stories even tied for first on one of the rounds O_o That had never happened before LOL

  • Finish writing poems for all the 2011 Novpad prompts

Done. One of these years I may actually finish writing poems for all the NovPad prompts in November. One day…

Editing:

  • Implement the new payment system for Niteblade

Done. And best of all, it seems to be working. I haven’t finished all the totals for Niteblade’s sales for 2012 but I strongly suspect that when I do we’ll find that we had our best year yet. Yay!

  • Run a fundraiser and increase promotion in order to move out of the red

Done. We raised $108.78 to help pay our writers and artist.

  • Super Sekkrit Projekt w CJD (not Niteblade-related)

I’ve done what I can on this project and it’s now in other people’s hands. I’ve got my fingers crossed that something will come of it, but right now I have to wait and see.

Also? I blogged every week. Whoot!

You know, looking back, I’m actually super impressed with myself. I didn’t accomplish everything I set out to do, but overall I did pretty damn good. Even without factoring in all the challenges I had to overcome (because really, though this year feels like it was exceptionally bad for that, every year comes with its own set of obstacles, right?). Maybe I’m getting better at this whole goal setting thing LOL

In addition to the goals I set for myself, 2012 had a few other highlights for me as well. A few, just off the top of my head are:

I am seriously looking forward to seeing what 2013 has to offer 🙂

ETA: Edited to reflect the fact I’ve only read the first book in The Song of Ice and Fire series.

Just Stuff, Personal, Stream of Consciousness

Faster Than The Speed of Life

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Indiana Jones ParrishFor the most part I have a fantastic life. I’m relatively healthy, I have friends and family who love me (and who I love), I’m able to spend my days doing what I love (writing and editing) and, ya know, overall things are pretty good. They aren’t perfect, of course, but they are pretty good. But it always seems like just when I’d really like a nice, quiet period in my life the most something happens to make sure I don’t get it.

My mom dying last month was… traumatic, to say the least. It was pretty sudden — she was doing well, and then suddenly she very much wasn’t. I’ve been working to come to terms with her loss and with all the circumstances around it, and I’ve been doing pretty well. I was down, of course, but grief is a funny thing — it comes at you in waves. I was able to get things done, still, to lead a more or less “normal” life. I kept busy, which helped, and thought “Hey, you know what would be a great idea? I’ll do NaNoWriMo and NovPad and get the December issue of Niteblade ready. No problem.”

Then life stepped up and said “Nu-uh. No you don’t.”

We have three cats. They are all awesome and all very different from one another. Indiana, Eowyn and Absinthe. Indiana is the cuddly one, Eowyn is the proud/bitchy one and Absinthe is the shit-disturber. On Friday we had to rush Indiana (you can see him in these pictures) to the animal hospital because he had an obstruction in his urethra. He was diagnosed with FLUTD (Feline lower urinary tract disease), admitted and catheterized under sedation. Before they performed the procedure they asked if we wanted to visit him to say goodbye. I couldn’t. Just the idea of visiting someone I loved in a hospital again after my Mom… I just couldn’t do it.

On Saturday, the hospital called to say there had been a complication in removing the catheter and Indy was going to require surgery to get it out. We consented to that. Very late on Sunday night he was released and we brought him home. When we went to pick him up at the animal hospital they brought him out in his (huge) cat carrier. I knelt down to see him and stuck my fingers through the bars. He rushed over from the back of the carrier and tried to bonk me through the bars, and when that didn’t work he just rubbed against my fingers as best he could with his cone of shame on. It made me cry. Jo and the receptionist pretended not to notice, because they are awesome.

Now he’s home, but the stress doesn’t stop. There’s money stress because stays in the animal hospital and emergency surgery are not cheap. We’re lucky in that we were able to pay for this without too much hardship, but if it becomes a recurring thing that may not remain true. What’s more, the urinary tract obstruction he had does tend to be a recurring thing, and if it happens and it’s not caught in time, it will kill him. Straight up. So we have to watch and make sure he’s not straining to pee or showing any of the other signs of obstruction. Indiana Jones Parrish

But wait, there’s more! He has three medications to take; pain killers, antibiotics and antispasmodics. Happily Jo is all over keeping track of and dispensing that as it would break my brain. Seriously.

Indy also has a cone of shame on, and he can’t quite figure out how to eat or drink normally with it, so we are essentially hand-feeding him (or had been. We’ve recently decided to take the cone off when we are able to supervise him to make sure he’s not licking his incision, and hopefully he’ll feed himself). He’s not eating as much as we’d like (I think partly because of the cone and partly because he doesn’t like his new, expensive, prescription food). But he seems to be in good spirits and has lots of energy (in between painkiller doses, anyway), so I’m tentatively optimistic.

This is more than a little stressful on our other animals too. The other cats have to switch over to the same diet as Indy and they aren’t fans. Neither of them is eating as much as they should be. We can’t really feed them prescription kibble (which I think will help as they will be able to eat when they want, not just at mealtimes) at least until Indiana is out of his cone of shame (middle of next week) and able to drink enough water to make dry food a viable option for him. Even Tre’s (our dog) eating has to be altered because we can’t let him have hard food sitting in his bowl because Indy will steal it, eat it and obstruct again.

I freaking suck at ‘wait and see’ and this is one big-ass case of ‘wait and see’.

I’m not handling it very well. I’m the sort of stressed/depressed right now where all I want to do is sleep. That really isn’t good for NaNoWriMo, November Poem-a-Day, Niteblade, or, ya know, life.

I’m doing the best I can though, and I’m still writing. Not as much as I should be, and I’ve switched NaNo novels again to something that requires a little less thought than Hollow Children, but I’m writing. If Jay Lake can write through all the crap he’s been dealing with over the past five years, and all my friends on Team Thalia can write through the curve balls and hardships life throws their way, then I can write through this.

And besides, when I’m writing, when I’m actually in the middle of the action, then all this just goes away for a little bit. It’s only for a few minutes at a time, but I’ll take it. Oh yes, yes I will.

ETA: I spent the afternoon working on catching up on my NaNo project and I’m currently only about 2,500 words behind. Yay!