2020 Goals

Happy New Year everyone!

I hope this year will be good for us all. But we shall see.

So, seeing as it is the first day of the new year, we all know what that means! New year resolutions are being thrown around left, right, and centre. And I’m no different. I’m getting on this bandwagon and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop me.

So, what are my goals for the new year? Well, let’s get into that.

1. Firstly if you haven’t seen my update post about what I”m going to be doing with TftPR and WftGK, I’ll link that HERE for you to check out, otherwise, this won’t make sense. I want to finish the edits for War for the Good King(which I think is the working title I’m going to keep referring to it by), get it all clean and polished and ready to be torn apart by beta readers. Which brings me to my next point.
2. I want to get WftGK put through at least one round of beta readers this year. If possible I’d like to get it through two and start querying by the end of the year, beginning of next year, but we’ll see.
3. I want to get serious edits with the anthology done. I have several things I need to reconsider as it is, so this will need some serious work. I’m hoping to get at least a good chunk done this year.
4. I would like to participate in NaNoWriMo this year. I’ve never done it before, I’ve heard things from people who swear by it and from people who think it’s ridiculous. But, I don’t have any personal opinions on it just yet, so I want to try it myself. I’m not quite sure which project I want to work on for it yet, but I’ll figure that out, probably come summer.
5. Now, if I do end up doing NaNoWriMo, and not having a break down like I did last year, I would like to do daily updates on here about my progress and my word count thus far. Why? Because I’m a masochist, that’s why.
6. One of the bigger projects I’ve been planning out last year and one I’m super excited about is something I’m calling ‘Side Quest’ for right now. I have it mostly figured out, but I’m trying some new things in terms of world-building, figuring out characters, and even my outlining. So, for this year I want to get my character creation and world-building done. If I can also get it outlined that would be amazing, but I’m not going to hold myself to just yet.
7. This is a heavy outlining year for me because I have another project I’m super excited for, and that I really want to get outlined as well. This one, because the working title I have it under gives a little too much away, I’m just going to call project ‘death’. I’m sure everyone has a death project in the works somewhere. So, I want to get that outlined as well if I can.
8. I would like to enter at least one writing contest this year. Last year writing contests just did not happen at all for me, so, I’m gonna give it another shot with something much more manageable than before.
9. Once again we venture back into my mind and wonder just what the hell I’m thinking because I have another giant project that I want to get outlined and get a proper working title for because right now the best I got for it is ‘Steampunk 4’… I will give you a minute to get over how ridiculous that sounds… We good now? Cool. You understand where I’m coming from. Now, this project is much more in the preplanning phase than it is the outlining phase, so I’d like to get it completely planned out and the outlining at least started before the end of the year.
10. I got Realm of the Demon Empress outlined last year. This year I would really like to get the rough draft written. Whether or not this is the project I’m going to use for NaNoWriMo, I don’t know just yet. But I can say fairly confidently, probably not.
11. Now, this one might sound a little bit insane, and that’s okay. I got my start/love of writing from writing fanfiction. I stopped writing it when I decided I was going to start getting serious about my actual writing and focus all my energy on that. But I loved writing fanfiction, and I want to get back into it. So, this year I wanna pull the dust off my old blog and go back to posting on that. It’s not going to be every week like I had posted before, but at least once a month I’d like to aim for.
12. Just like last year, I want to try and read at least 25 books. I’m sure I can do it.
13. This goal doesn’t have anything to do with writing, but I want to take up bullet journaling. I’ve seen them everywhere last year and I really want to get into it. And what better time than the new year?

So, that’s all I have for you today. What are some of your goals for the new year? I’d love to know if you’d like to share.

I hope you are having a wonderful new year, and if your day isn’t going well I hope it gets better. And I will see you next time.

-T.R. Flynn.

2019 Wrap Up

It has been a year.

I moved. My parents opened up a restaurant. I took several long breaks, some were desperately needed, others were mandatory due to the move.

It’s been interesting. I have to give it that.

This was also the first year in which I had set actual goals for myself that I wanted to get done. Last year, 2018, I only wanted to see what I could and couldn’t do over the course of a year as I worked on my writing and building a platform.

So now, much like my usual monthly wraps, I’m wrapping up the year to see what I managed to do and see what I realistically can and can’t do for next year.

So, let’s get on with it.

Trials for the Princess Ryanne and War for the Good King are going through major overhauls right now. I’m writing this post before I’m writing the post addressing it. But needless to say, neither of those are done at this moment.

As for the anthology, I have the outlines fixes, most of the rough drafts written up, some of them are typed up and on my computer, most of them have titles, but I’m not really happy with the title for the book itself just yet. So, I would say I’m about seventy percent done with the first phase of this piece. As I have said before, I came up with a few more stories that I really want to put in that tie up some more loose ends, so I still have those I need to do.

I’ve abandoned the idea for a newsletter for this year. And, honestly, I think I’m going to leave that idea for now. At this moment, I don’t really feel like I make enough quality content, or am a popular enough author to warrant monthly newsletters. Perhaps in the next few years, I’ll implement one, but for right now it just doesn’t seem like a good idea for me.

As for the revamp of the site I wanted to do. Well… You can see how that turned out. It didn’t. I’m not even really sure what I was planning to do in terms of revamping the site. I think more than anything I just wasn’t super into the layout or pictures. But I can fix that eventually if I’m still so inclined. But I’m not going to worry about that right now.

About the twelve writing contests, I wanted to enter. Yeah… that didn’t happen. I even changed my goals for this to be one contest before the end of the year. That still didn’t happen. But that’s okay. I had so much going on, I’m not upset about it.

I managed to read more than twenty-five books this year. For those of you who follow me on Goodreads, you’d see that at this moment I’ve read twenty-six. I still have a couple weeks until the end of the year at the time of writing this, so I’m not sure what the actual final count is yet. But I’m happy I managed to do this. Especially when I changed this goal from twenty-five to twenty because I wasn’t sure I could do the extra five. But I did. So, I’m very happy about that.

I did manage to outline Realm of the Demon Empress. And I’m very happy with how it’s turned out so far. It took way longer than I first expected to properly outline it and add in all the detail and extra scenes I wanted. It ended up being sixty-something pages before, and about thirty-one after I typed it up and printed it out. So I’m very happy about that.

I didn’t manage to write three short stories this year, but I did manage to write one. And I’m very happy about the premise of it, less so about the way it ends. But, you know what, it doesn’t have to be perfect the first time around, it just has to exist.

I did do a blog event/challenge. The 12 days of Blogmas, which was actually a lot of fun.

I didn’t do a one year anniversary post. That time passed while I was still unpacking and trying to figure my room out after the move. So I couldn’t. But that’s okay, there’s always next year.

I haven’t finished ‘Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started Getting Serious About Writing Part 2’, but I am working on it. It’s certainly getting there.

I stopped trying the weekly writing prompts. I didn’t like how it looked on the blog, and on top of that, they weren’t my personal prompts. So I felt kinda icky taking them, despite the fact I tried to give credit where it was due. So that stopped.

I’ve made a few playlists on Youtube for the various pieces I’m working on, and the tone I need them to set. But they aren’t completely done, and there are a few I still need to make up.

And I did the research I needed to, to a degree. I still have a bit more I need to do to get it as accurate as I want to though.

So, calculating it all out, marking the ones I only partially completed as a half, I got five out of fifteen done. It’s not bad. Especially when you consider the fact I realized several things weren’t going to happen, and everything that happened this year.

Overall I’m pretty happy with what happened. And I’m looking forward to getting more done next year. Or, tomorrow I guess.

What did you manage to get done this year? What did you manage to tick off your list for the new year? I’d love to hear if you’d like to share.

I hope you’re having a great new years eve, and if it’s not great I hope it gets better. We’re about to enter a new decade, meaning we have new opportunities awaiting us. And I will see you next time.

-T.R. Flynn.

April 2019 Goals

So, a lot going on for me this month.

A big announcement right off the bat, a bit of a story to go with it. In the summer of 2018 my parents, whom I live with, put their house on the market. In January of this year, we got an offer. In February all the financing came through. So my parents bought a house with a restaurant attached, in a different town from where we live now because my dad works there. Our moving date is April 17th. In the meantime there is a lot of sorting, dump runs, packing, repacking after the two floods we’ve had, and cleaning that must be done. This is why for the past two weeks I haven’t had a regular post up.

Throughout all the stuff going on at home, I’ve still been babysitting for my neighbour. And with the kids on spring break until today things have been hectic, to say the least.

Thankfully they’re great people. So this week and the days leading up to the moving day I’m not working.

I wanted to start off with this because this has been a long time coming and we are officially in the thick of it. There is still so much that has to get done.

Only about half of the house, not even, is packed. we’re going to be throwing things out until the very end. And we still haven’t scheduled a thrift store run yet either to donate all the good stuff that is still usable but we don’t want anymore.

I’m going to do my best to schedule out some posts for the next bit for you guys as best I can, but honestly, that just might fall by the wayside because I just don’t have the time or the energy to do that. So if I’m not very active here or on Twitter, you know why. On top of that, because we’re moving to bum-fuck nowhere our internet is going to be taking a major hit. We aren’t going to be without it, but it’s not going to be the same quality.

Most important of all, we’re going to be opening and running a restaurant. Meaning there is so much that is going to have to get done once we are there.

As for my writing goals for the month, because I think I’ve rambled on and you don’t really care past the part of me moving.

1. I want to finish the edits for Trials for the Princess Ryanne. I’m only on chapter 10, so I have a bit of a way to go, but I really want to get there by the end of this month.
2. I want to start recruiting beta readers for May. Once I’m done those edits/condensing the word count there isn’t really anything I can think of that I can see I need to fix. At which point, fresh eyes are needed.
3. I want to read 4 books. I figure it’s probably not going to be a great month for hard work, at the very least I can read and get ahead on my reading goal.
4. If I have the time, I want to finish or at least work on War for the Good King.

On top of all that, it’s packing and cleaning. I have a feeling that I’m going to let my room fall by the wayside because I’m going to be helping my mom so much. So I feel like the last three days before we move will be me scrambling like a chicken with my head cut off trying to finish things up.

What are your goals for the month? I’d love to know if you’d like to share.

That’s all I got for right now. I hope you’re having a great day, and if it’s not I hope it gets better. Thank you so much for reading, and I will see you next time.

-T.R. Flynn.

March 2019 Wrap Up

Well, this has been an interesting month.

I know. I missed the last Friday of the month, I’ve been too busy and stressed to try to write something. The last thing I want to do is hate myself into creating content.

Stay tuned until tomorrow when I say a big announcement of what’s going to be going on.

So, I’ve got the story outlined. And I have all the anthology stories written! I am so happy with myself about that. I have names for all of them, and I’m working on figuring out a title for the actual book.

I have gotten the second list of changes for TftPR implemented. Yays all around!

I’ve been slowly working on getting the word count condensed for TftPR. And I’ve been slowly working on the second draft of WftGK. I haven’t had a whole lot of time this month so there wasn’t a lot I could get done.

I have not gotten any research for my newsletter going yet. Nor have I begun chipping away at the mile of edits for WftGK. These will come in time.

What I have gotten done this month?

Well, a shit ton of cleaning for one.

I’ve had three birthdays this month. My mom, my sister, and my neighbour whom I’m friends with. On top of this, the past two weeks the kids I babysit for have been on spring break taking me away from my usual office.

I’ll be honest, I’m not very happy with what I’ve managed to accomplish this month. That being said, I am satisfied I got a good amount done considering all the behind scenes things I’ve had to deal with.

I know I’m not going to be getting this much done next month because of what’s going to be going on, so I was hoping I could get a little more done. But I really need to understand that baby steps will still get me where I want to go.

So what have you managed to do this month? Any goals you’ve managed to achieve? What’s something you would have done differently to achieve them or feel better when you got there? I’d love to hear if you’d like to share!

That’s all I have for you today. I hope you’re having a wonderful day, and if it’s not wonderful I hope it gets better. Thank you so much for reading, and I will see you next time.

-T.R. Flynn.

February 2019 Goals

Alright, January has kicked my ass. Let’s see if February is any better.

Because it is a shorter month and I’m kinda in a funky mood right now, I’m giving myself a good amount to do but it’s more like busywork than anything else. So, without further ado, my goals for the next 28 days:

1. Finish the fourth draft of Trials for the Princess Ryanne. I’ve been dragging with that and I need to get it done.
2. Finish this wave of changes and fixes for it. It needs to get done, this piece is my main priority this year.
3. I want to write two anthology stories. I already have one in the works, I’d like to get a second one going.
4. I want to enter a contest this month just so I’m not so behind.
5. I need to get the changes for War for the Good King done soon. Preferably this month.
6. I want to read two more books. So that would make three books this month.
7. I want to continue with the weekly writing prompts, I really enjoy sharing them.
8. I want to get a newsletter up and going, sooner rather than later. So I want to get the research for it done. Maybe not up and running yet, but I want to know what I’m doing.
9. I have some playlists for my pieces done, I want to get all of them done this month.
10. I also really want to get a list of blog ideas going. I have several websites that I consult when I’m writing a post, but I feel like I’m starting to run out of ideas from there and I always want you guys to have one post a week. So I want a good list of interesting and engaging ideas that I can talk about for more than just a couple hundred words.

So, those are my plans for the month. What are some of yours? I’d love to know if you’d care to share with me.

I hope you’re having a great day and I will see you next time.

-T.R. Flynn.