Monday 29 September 2008

Monday Memo: September Round up + Flexibility

Monday Memo: Be flexible.

At the start of the month I posted a memo about my aims for the month. Now that September is over, I figure it's probably time to go back and see how I did.

Here we go...

Write at least 1,000 words a day and 50,000 over the month. I'm on track to pass the 70k mark today, so I'm happily ticking this one off as done.

* Do whatever edits my editor sends to me. Done - The edits were a lot lighter than I expected, so this one didn't actually require that much work on my part.

* Re-write, edit, polish, write a synopsis and submit Whispers to TEB. It ended up 3k longer than I planned it to be, but his one went off earlier this month - a whole five days earlier than I planned!

*Re-write, edit, polish, write a synopsis and submit For the Duration - Book 3 in Perfect Timing series to TEB. This one is going off tomorrow, but it's far from the story I thought it would be at the end of the month - for a start it's about doubled in length! It's now a novel rather than a novella, so I've had to re-jig the other stories in the series to make a novel fit as the third book. But I'm pleased with it now. Once I finish this post I'm going to write the synopsis for it.

* Re-write Time Out – Book 11 in Perfect Timing series. Here's where it gets really complicated, I thought re-writing it would involve tweaking. It actually involved starting the whole thing pretty much from scratch. Twice. I've added 45k to a 33k story, but with the bits I've deleated, it's only actually grown 2k. But it's done now. Another tick, so it's all good up to this point.

* Re-write By the hour – Book 12 in Perfect Timing series. Nowhere near. I re-started this one from scratch, but the way the other projects grew meant there wasn't really time for this one. I've moved it into next month.

* If I have time or need the words (because I can't work out how many words the re-writes and edits will actually come to) start working on Book 1 in my next series of novellas - Hot + Wet. I actually thought I would have time and need extra words to hit the 50k mark. Poor nieve child...

* Name all the characters in the Hot + Wet novellas. Didn't get this done either. My excuse is, since I've had to alter my schedule a bit, I'm not actually going to write them until next year. The characters don't need names yet. It won't do them any harm to wait a bit longer.

Overall, not to bad, I got most of the important ones ticked off. But the fact is none of the projects turned out quite the way I expected them to. So, I had a choice between trying to make my writing fit the plan or changing my plan to fit in with my writing.

I'm quite pleased I chose the latter.

However, I'm going to leave my plans for October until Wednesday, I'm not ready to wonder on then quite yet.

Enjoy the end of September everyone.

See you in October :)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, great job, Kim! Proud of you. Wish tou could rub off on me! But Oct. is a new month and I now to get my act together.

Kim Dare said...

Thanks, Chelle :)

I'm sure you'll find it all so much easier once everything is settled in with school and everything.

Happy October. Here's to it being a happy and productive month for you.