It's February. I'm not sure how this happened because it seems like I just blogged about patience being my focus this year *. Hubby and I have done more adulting in the last two weeks than we've probably done in the 13 years we've been together, but it's all going to be worth it. Our cluttered apartment is becoming a pretty mature looking home bit by bit and hopefully it will clear out my brain enough to be able push through revisions, writing, and all things businessy. How I Did Last Week I rewrote the beginning of my new first chapter and then stopped again because the household stuff actually had to take precedence. Hopefully this week it will be different. Biggest Challenge I Faced This Week The adulting again. It really is a two-team effort. Plus, if we didn't continue with The Great Purge of 2016, we wouldn't have found a dozen cat toys hidden under the couch. My Goals For This Week Complete the new first chapter. Print out paperwork I ne...

To keep myself on task with everything I have to do outside of my day job, I've started Accountability Monday where I'll share my successes and failures from the past week and my goals for the upcoming one. If you too need something to keep yourself honest, feel free to join in. How I Did Last Week I managed to complete both of my goals for the week. I did two read throughs for SFLN and wrote about two paragraphs towards my new opening. Biggest Challenge I Faced This Week Adulting. Hubby and I for Christmas decided we were getting a new couch and kitchen table, which we did purchase. They will be here by March. (Hooray!) But with the new purchase coming means we have a deadline to make sure we have room for the larger couch. So there was a lot of cleaning and organizing this weekend. My Goals for the Week Continue to work on this new first chapter. Even though I'm not happy with my writing progress, I am loving our almost 100% organized and clean kitchen. We f...

To keep myself on task with everything I have to do outside of my day job, I've started Accountability Monday where I'll share my successes and failures from the past week and my goals for the upcoming one. If you too need something to keep yourself honest, feel free to join in. November is over. Or it will be tomorrow. I can't even think of words because all the words were used during NaNoWriMo. But, I can officially put up my tacky Christmas decorations now. So, YES to that. How I Did Last Week Write about 10K more on The SNI. Success! I've written over 18K this week. Leave the house by 5.30 during the week. Meh. Kinda sorta happened. Most days. Continue to take the stairs at work. Success! My Goals for This Week Complete The SNI draft at about 80K Read all the things. Walk up the stairs at work Biggest Challenge I Faced This Week Hubby's birthday was this past weekend so I figured I wouldn't get any writing in, but Hubby being Hubby m...

To keep myself on task with everything I have to do outside of my day job, I've started Accountability Monday where I'll share my successes and failures from the past week and my goals for the upcoming one. If you too need something to keep yourself honest, feel free to join in. Well, we've entered Week 4 of November. It's a week of all the things at Chez Gregoire: Thanksgiving, continual writing, and a milestone birthday for Hubby. It's also been 4 years since The White One had that horrible surgery because we couldn't figure out what was wrong. (Note: we're still paying off that surgery.. Gladly.) How I Did Last Week Write about 10K more on The SNI. Success! I've written over 17K this week. Leave the house by 5.30 during the week. Meh. Kinda sorta happened. Most days. Continue to take the stairs at work. Success! My Goals For This Week Since last week's goals were attainable and still valid. Let's do a repeat of them, shall we? ...

To keep myself on task with everything I have to do outside of my day job, I've started Accountability Monday where I'll share my successes and failures from the past week and my goals for the upcoming one. If you too need something to keep yourself honest, feel free to join in. How I Did Last Week Write between 10,000 and 14,000 words this week. Nailed it. 19K written this week. Write the Week 3 Pep Talk for NaNoBoston, the Boston region for NaNoWriMo   Done! Continue to wake up at 4 and out the door by 5.30 the latest. Meh... a little dicey there. Continue taking the stairs at the day job. Yep. I'm surprised I haven't died from all the stairs yet. My Goals for This Week Write about 10K more on The SNI. Leave the house by 5.30 during the week. Continue to take the stairs at work. Biggest Challenge I Faced This Week The day job. There, I said it. Something I Love About My WIP That I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. My world buildin...

To keep myself on task with everything I have to do outside of my day job, I've started Accountability Monday where I'll share my successes and failures from the past week and my goals for the upcoming one. If you too need something to keep yourself honest, feel free to join in. So, it's November. It's NaNoWriMo . I'm lucky I know my name right now. I'm about 18,000 words into the SNI and I have a whole lot of work in store for Future Alicia, which you will undoubtedly hear about down the road when I talk about how Past Alicia did no prep work at all. How I Did Last Week   Well, last week I had no goals because I had no post. So let's look at goals from a few weeks ago: Send out SFLN to the two agents I promised it to. DONE Complete my plotting and preplanning for The SNI. Meh, I got *some* done. Most of NaNo is being pantsed this year. Stretch goal--> Exercise. I've been taking the stairs at the day job for the last week because we mo...

To keep myself on task with everything I have to do outside of my day job, I've started Accountability Monday where I'll share my successes and failures from the past week and my goals for the upcoming one. If you too need something to keep yourself honest, feel free to join in. I'm not ready for it to be the end of October, Lurkdom. I'm not prepared. At the day job, our department is relocating on Friday to a different floor and I haven't begun the desk packing process. NaNoWriMo is in a week and I'm not done planning. Hubby's having one of those milestone birthdays in about 33 days and I still haven't planned a single thing for it.  Actually, it's almost like I'm in a version of tech week for a play. The lighting still isn't 100% solid and half the cast is missing their costumes, but come opening night everything magically is ready. Credit How I Did Last Week  Complete query and synopsis. DONE Begin formally outlining The ...

To keep myself on task with everything I have to do outside of my day job, I've started Accountability Monday where I'll share my successes and failures from the past week and my goals for the upcoming one. If you too need something to keep yourself honest, feel free to join in. It's official. We've reached the end of the nice weather. New England had its first freeze over the weekend, and I am nowhere near ready for winter wear. Call it denial, or laziness, but for the walk to the mailbox Sunday, I wore two sweatshirts instead of locating a jacket.  The weather is even too cold for The Stripey One. She's taken to burrowing under the covers again. Staying warm. Or plotting cat things. How I Did Last Week Hahahaha. Alicia of Last Week was hilarious in thinking she was going to achieve all the things. Alicia of Last Week didn't realize that all the sleeping and all the TV was important to recover from a full month of revising. Everything could have be...

To keep myself on task with everything I have to do outside of my day job, I've started Accountability Monday where I'll share my successes and failures from the past week and my goals for the upcoming one. If you too need something to keep yourself honest, feel free to join in. Hubby and I celebrated 8 years of marriage this past week. In honor of that, we apple picked this weekend.  This is what 8 years of marriage looks like How I Did Last Week I completed revisions of SCENES FROM LAST NIGHT.  My Goals for This Week Incorporate the revisions into Scrivener  Update query letter and synopsis Stretch goal--> SNI plotting  Stretch goal--> Exercise, because it has to happen at some point  Biggest Challenge I Faced This Week Burnout. It makes revising hard. Something I Love About My WIP That I'm done. Random Factoid From The Week Nothing to report this week. I was too focused on getting this revision complete to...

To keep myself on task with everything I have o do outside of my day job, I've started Accountability Monday where I'll share my successes and failures from the past week and my goals for the upcoming one. If you too need something to keep yourself honest, feel free to join in. We're in October. For real. I'm not sure how this happened, and quite honestly I'm not a fan. I saw egg nog in the grocery store Sunday. EGG NOG. Also, it's been cold the last few days. Like, the heat came up cold. So, like any good New Englander, I bought fleece sheets. This is both awesome and horrible because now I fight with the cats as to who actually gets the bed. The White One can't face the fact it's October. How I Did Last Week If possible, worse than the week before. I ended up doing some SNI research Saturday, not Monday. And I'm lucky if I averaged 90 minutes a day revising SFLN. And that exercise thing. Hahahahahaha. I should just scratch that off th...

To keep myself on task with everything I have to do outside of my day job, I've started Accountability Monday where I'll share my successes and failures from the past week and my goals for the upcoming one. If you too need something to keep yourself honest, feel free to join in. How I Did Last Week Ha ha ha. Past Alicia is hilariously deluded with her expectations because those goals? None achieved. I only got 15 revision hours complete out of my proposed 56 maximum. This revision is much harder than it looks. (That alone is a separate blog topic.) Also my goal of up to 6 hours of revision a day was way too optimistic. I work full time in a job that uses the same side of the brain used when revising. Even though I know this I'm angry at myself for not meeting or exceeding my goal. Progress is happening though, Lurkdom. If you remember last week , I was on page 48 with almost 300 comments that needed addressing. But now? I'm closing in on page 100! And look at a...

To keep myself on task with everything I have to do outside of my day job, I've started Accountability Monday where I'll share my successes and failures from the past week and my goals for the upcoming one. If you too need something to keep yourself honest, feel free to join in. How I Did Last Week Much better. On the revision front. I did about 18 hours of revisions this past week, but I still need to step up my game if I want to actually hit my goal of having this done by mid-October. Past Alicia left me so much work to do that it's actually daunting at times. I mean, look at this screen shot from my revision session today. Each revision item makes the WIP stronger. This was taken when I was on page 48 and I still have 298 comments that need to be addressed. That's right, queue panic. And lack of sleep. Alicia, what about that exercise routine you've been talking about? Shhh... Let's not talk about that now. My Goal(s) For This Week  Achieve...

Ready. Set. WRITE! is a summer accountability series that is hosted by  Jaime Morrow ,  Katy Upperman ,  Alison Miler ,  Erin Funk , and  Elodie Nowodazkij . We set goals for the summer and check in weekly.  This is it. The final check in. Queue up the opening chords to The Final Countdown. (If you have no idea what this is, click here .) I managed to knock off everything  on my summer goal list plus plot out a the sequel to PHOENIX RISING. Because of RSW, I seriously accomplished so much. So a big thank you to Jaime, Katy, Alison, Erin, and Elodie. You guys helped me get so much done. My summer in a nutshell was research and work on three different projects. I can only hope that I'll continue to be this productive come the fall. (Which you'll be able to find out every Monday where I continue with accountability posts. Unofficially, I'm taking this week off.) How I Did Last Week Complete the beta I started last week.  DONE Figure out...

Ready. Set. WRITE! is a summer accountability series that is hosted by  Jaime Morrow ,  Katy Upperman ,  Alison Miler ,  Erin Funk , and  Elodie Nowodazkij . We set goals for the summer and check in weekly.   Welp, summer is winding down. (Still no beach in sight). And the first local apples have hit the grocery store. Which is fantastic, because I love apples. However, it's just one calendar page closer to Snowmageddon Part 3. I know, I know. We're far, far away from dealing with that. I will continue to enjoy August. (And hopefully get a beach day in) Some of my recent weekly goals have been a bit challenging because of the day job. Some stuff I can do when it's quiet, like figure out a revision plan or do some light research. Anything that requires intense concentration -- betaing, revising, drafting -- can't be done due to the nature of working in a call center*. But, we all have our crosses to bear. How I Did Last Week Do my final pass on t...

Ready. Set. WRITE! is a summer accountability series that is hosted by  Jaime Morrow ,  Katy Upperman ,  Alison Miler ,  Erin Funk , and  Elodie Nowodazkij . We set goals for the summer and check in weekly. So these goals things. When I'm not actually doing something creative (like brainstorming The SNI) and focusing on more other side of the brain (like revising), everything crashes to an almost stop. No joke. Plus, this weekend I was at ComiConn at Mohegan Sun because Hubby was doing that joke thing. He killed it. Hopefully, this means he'll get serious about his comedy again. Also, I get bored at casinos. And claustrophobic on exhibition floors. The things you learn about yourself at the most random times, right? How I Did Last Week Complete the beta I started last week. I completed 2 rounds of it, but sometimes a third is in order. THAT hasn't happened. Walk every day. 6 out of 7. Complete reading final workshop of PLANNING YOUR NOVEL. DONE...

Ready. Set. WRITE! is a summer accountability series that is hosted by  Jaime Morrow ,  Katy Upperman ,  Alison Miler ,  Erin Funk , and  Elodie Nowodazkij . We set goals for the summer and check in weekly. Whelp, We're fully entrenched in August. I'm not sure how this happened. And now that I hauled through one of the major, major goals for the summer, I'm a little bit lost as to what needs to be done next. I still think there's something wrong with this WIP, but I can't articulate the problem. Like, people love dialogue heavy things, amiright? How I Did Last Week  Continue SCENES FROM LAST NIGHT revisions. DONE. Now I just need to send it to betas.  Get up at 5 AM Tuesday-Friday so I can walk to work before it gets way too hot. ACHIEVED, sort of. I woke up at 5 every day, but only walked 4 days because I carpooled with a coworker. Walk every day. Nope. I only managed 5 days. Beta a friend's manuscript. In progress. My revisions took ...

Ready. Set. WRITE! is a summer accountability series that is hosted by  Jaime Morrow ,  Katy Upperman ,  Alison Miler ,  Erin Funk , and  Elodie Nowodazkij . We set goals for the summer and check in weekly. Because of the revision cave, I wasn't able to pre-game today's post. So, I'm writing this from the confines of the day job desk before I get some revision time in. This, by the way, seems to be the preferred revision method for SFLN. I prefer the bed and The Stripey One. It's so weird how fickle WIPs can be. How I Did Last Week  Continue SCENES FROM LAST NIGHT revisions . So, so close to finished. As of last night, I have 40 pages left to revise. Then I have some new scenes to write. Get up at 5 AM Tuesday-Friday so I can walk to work before it gets way too hot. Done. And because of that, I've been revising in the morning. My brain is toast in the evening. Walk every day (except today). Erm, well. I walked every work day. Stretch goal-->...

Ready. Set. WRITE! is a summer accountability series that is hosted by  Jaime Morrow ,  Katy Upperman ,  Alison Miler ,  Erin Funk , and  Elodie Nowodazkij . We set goals for the summer and check in weekly. I started the week off with bang, clearing out the small goals so I could focus on the bigger one. Then, I dragged my feet. A lot. How I Did Last Week  Continue SCENES FROM LAST NIGHT revisions. DONE, but still in progress. Send out 3 queries. DONE  Beta a friend's picture book. DONE  Get up at 5 AM Monday-Friday so I can walk to work before it gets way too hot. DONE. Well, sort of. I was up 5.10 every day. Even Saturday.  Walk every day, even if it's to Dunkin and back. Only 6 days, not bad. Add voice exercises to Scrivener template. DONE  Stretch goal-->Get at least halfway through final workshop of PLANNING YOUR NOVEL. Ha ha. No. Because I was dragging my feet so much on revising SFLN. My Goal(s) For ...

Ready. Set. WRITE! is a summer accountability series that is hosted by  Jaime Morrow ,  Katy Upperman ,  Alison Miler ,  Erin Funk , and  Elodie Nowodazkij . We set goals for the summer and check in weekly. Week 7. Still no beach. this past week was definitely a challenge week. So let's see how I shaped up, shall we? How I Did Last Week Work on some business stuff for The Writers' Loft . DONE. For now. Send out 3 more queries. This didn't happen. Get at least halfway through Workshop 9 of PLANNING YOUR NOVEL - completed entire workshop. DONE. I completed the entire workshop. Begin revisions on the last third of SCENES FROM LAST NIGHT. Nope. I had to dial it back and work on the timeline for SFLN first. That, at least, is done. Read. DONE Continue to walk every day, even if it's just to Dunkin and back . Nope. I only managed 4 or 5 days. My Goal(s) For This Week Continue SCENES FROM LAST NIGHT revisions. Send out 3 queries. Beta a ...