S. W. Raine

Happy One Year Anniversary to my Website and Blog! 

That’s right.  S.W.Raine.com turns ONE!  Thank you so much to those of you who have stuck by me through the year and supported me.  I couldn’t have done it without you.  I am a massive beginner when it comes to this kind of stuff.  I have learned a lot, and I definitely have so much more to learn.

Well, it has definitely been a busy few months since my last progress update.  My progress for Sky Pirates of Faugregir hasn’t gone as well as I had hoped. I came to the realization that the reason behind my lack of progress is that I have no schedule.  No deadlines.  Nobody specific to hold me accountable.  And no rewards.  I was kind of irritated with myself at the fact that I can be so organized- despite the chaos- in November during NaNoWriMo, but so lazy when it came to the eleven other months of the year.

After doing so well and making a habit out of writing mostly every day during the month of November, I usually take a break in December because 50,000 words in one month is a lot, and I would quickly burn out if I kept up the pace.  Plus, the craziness of the holidays is enough to give me a burnout in and of itself, let alone paired with NaNo.  So I always plan to return to writing in January. And I did.  And I also tried really hard to live by a saying that I learned from my Health Coach: No More Zero Days.  That means that you accomplish one thing, no matter how small, toward your goal.  One is more than Zero.  Unfortunately, there was also a saying of allowing yourself to rest.  And boy, did I rest. But I’ll never get anywhere that way.  I’ll never join the ranks of Neil Gaiman, J.K. Rowling, Ellen Dugan, or even my NaNoWriMo friends Holly Ash and Jordan J. Scavone if I just sit and rest. 

I will be getting with a friend later this week to go over my writing plan (planning is so hard for this Pantser!), but here is a very rough draft of the beginning of the plan:

-1K words a day to finish elaborating those “speed chapters” 
Due: by 5/31
Reward: Professional massage
-1st layer of revisions
Due: 6/15
-2nd layer of revisions
Due: 6/30 
-Alpha readers
Due: 7/15
Reward: ?

As I said, it’s a very rough draft.  The timeline will change because I should be done writing well before 5/31, and I need to research exactly how long revising should take.  But it’s a start.  It’s something.  I have a couple of accountability buddies set up, and might be getting a couple more.  I need to think up more rewards for myself, but that’s not too hard to do.

So here we go.  Here’s to a full year at S.W.Raine.com, here’s to many more years to come, here’s to success, here’s to getting published.

Cheers!

Raine

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CURRENTLY READING

For myself: Gypsy at Heart (The Gypsy Chronicles book 1) by Ellen Dugan
For my son:  The Big Blue Book of Beginner Books by Random House