Monthly Goals

All Things New – May Recap

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Can’t believe this month is over… Mamma Mia time is flying by! So this month has been one of new beginnings.

A New Workspace

My lovely, gorgeous Simon has built me a new workspace! We were going to go for a shed on the drive but I decided I’d feel too lonely! What with three dogs, six cats and my lovely husband milling around for inspiration I was worried that I’d just sit there.

So this is the before pic, with my lovely muse, sadly no longer with us.

Before Pic: My very much missed muse, Simba

I love the length of my new ‘desk’ which is simply built from planks and it will serve lots of purposes as I’ve just bought myself a new sewing machine and am searching for patterns and fabrics. I used to sew a lot back in my twenties, from evening gowns to curtains!

A New Release

The first of the books in my series, The Luna Legends is now out! You can grab your copy at the links below.

Amazon

Other Vendors

A New Grandson

Jax Benjamin George entered the world on the 12th May at 3.45 am. He’s ‘lush’ according to his dad and elder brother and sister and I just can’t wait for cuddles. In the meant time we sent this Italian doll for hugs. My sixteen year old daughter has the girl doll, named ‘Doddy’ and she has had several surgeries but is still going strong!

So onto the nitty gritty of my month. . .

Goals Update

Shiny new planners…

 

I have some new planners and am loving them. I use one for my quarter planning and one for my daily and weekly planning. I’m always changing my system, one just hasn’t stuck yet. So these are now the brain house of JoAnna Lamb Authorpreneur. It’s where all the action happens 😉

 

 

 

 

 

Goal 1 Writing and Editing

  • Rewrote Thunder Moon, the first book of Season 1 (40k words)
  • Summarised books 2 and 3 of Season 1 had planned to plot them but ran out of time

Goal 2 Publishing and Promotion

  • Published Season of the New Moons
  • Developed my freebie, a reading journal – grab yours here
  • Set up my email list – if you grab the journal you’re on the list
  • Sent out my first newsletter

Goal 3 Healthy Writing Habits

  • I monitor my mood with smileys and May was almost 100%
  • Completed the #vss365 challenge every day and published them on Twitter, approximately 4000 words.

Oh, and I’ve been sketching, here are my efforts. Am loving Procreate and these classes.

A goldfish called Bob
A rocket to take me to the Moon
A Ballerina for my granddaughter

Final Thought for the Month

“Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life”

Confuscius

Ciao for now!

Oh and if you want to sign up for my newsletter and receive a free reading journal in return, follow this link!

February Recap

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It was my birthday this month and I don’t usually pay much attention, age has never bothered me. Not a lot I can do about it, but I am hurtling towards 60! My darling Simon, pulled out all the stops and cooked a wonderful three course meal. Having him in my life means I have Valentines every day of the year . . .

And we had snow this month, whoopee! But for poor Nell that meant ice balls all over and she wasn’t best pleased. She was booked in for a haircut a few days later.

Books Read This Month

I’m so happy to have my reading mojo back!  Here are the titles I’ve read this month, a good mix of fiction and non-fiction. Any recommendations are welcome!

  • Kingdom – Jo Nesbo
  • Successful Self-Publishing – Joanna Penn
  • Deathmaker – Lesley Buroker
  • Ninja Newsletters –
  • Revision and Self Editing -James Scott Bell
  • The Smudger – Angeline Travena

Stories Published

I’ve been publishing a weekly short story/flash over at My Writer Within for some time now. I’m not sure that I will continue on that level. Perhaps a couple a month. I may consider putting these in my newsletter… I don’t know.

  • The Knot of Isis
  • Angels of War
  • Summer Hat
  • 9 Weeks and Counting – A Good(Expat) Life story

Goals Update

I continued to make great progress with my goals using the HB90 system. It really has changed the way I work and think. All for the good!

Goal 1 Writing and Editing

  • First Draft of The Fire Walker book 2 in the series Luna Legends – 30,000 words transcribed onto Scrivener, printed. The editing process starts today!
  • 2000 words written or edited for micro fiction, shorts and blog
  • Edited short story (5,000 words) for initial ‘cookie’ to offer readers

Goal 2 Publishing and Promotion

  • Completed three modules of Publish and Thrive Course – which is fabulous!
  • Reviewing and Revising Newsletter for subscribers – if you’re not already, sign up here!

Goal 3 Healthy Writing Habits

  • I stopped monitoring my mood but I may start again as the black dog is never far away. Twelve months of lockdown in some form or other, rising numbers and rollout of the vaccine is slow. But I keep telling myself I have so much to be thankful for!
  • Completed the #vss365 challenge for full 28 days – I’m really enjoyed doing these, they help to warm up my writing muscle and as I’m a very visual writer, I’ve started using images.
  • Purchased a raiser for my laptop and blue tooth keyboard which has helped with my posture
  • I’ve also started listening to podcasts when I’m on the treadmill – it’s such a boring activity but I mix it with yoga, dog walking and getting out on our bikes. At least two activities per day.

 

Still happy with my progress although I did find this month a little more difficult. I think, finishing a draft can leave you a little empty, if you know what I mean. At least that’s how it felt for me, a mixture of elation and sadness. But the hard work now starts with the editing and re-writing. I’ve given my self some time in between to help things mull.

I would love to hear what you’ve been up to this month, reading, activities, eating… the whole shebang.

Ciao

JoAnna Lamb

January Recap

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I haven’t blogged regularly for some time, in fact I’ve not done much of anything for some time now, but things are changing this year. Every month I shall be sharing my wins and losses, hopefully more of the first and I promise to learn from the second.

Books Read This Month

Like many, I’ve struggled with my reading this past year. However, I’m realising that it provides great escapism, so I’m spending less time on reading news and more on books. I’ve signed up to read 50 books on the Goodreads Reading Challenge. Here are the titles I’ve read this month, a good mix of fiction and non-fiction. Any recommendations are welcome!

  • Black Narcissus – Rumer Godden (watched both TV versions over Christmas)
  • Quite – Claudia Winkleman
  • How To Write Dynamic Scenes – Randy Ingermanson
  • Throne of Glass – Sarah J Maas
  • River Magic – M.A.Phillips (my Indie Author Recommendation of the Month)
  • Peaky Blinders The Real Story – Carl Chinn ( I got half way and abandoned it)
  • Blood Rose Angel – Lisa Perrat (could have been written about this last year!!)

Stories Published

As well as regular Social Media posts I try to publish a short story or flash fiction once a week. I decided that I’d rather publish them than submit them to competitions which is time consuming and often unrewarded. Also, this month, I’ve been responding the #vss365 challenge on Twitter which are stories under 100 words, mine average around 40 words. You can find all these stories over at My Writer Within.

  • Mistaken Identity
  • The Decision – a story from The Good(Expat)Life series
  • A Room of My Own – first published in Woman’s Own some years back
  • A Slip of the Tongue
  • Forever Reunited

Goals Update

I started a Quarterly planning system after taking the HB90 course last September. I can honestly say it’s been the best investment I’ve made. I haven’t been so productive in a long time and it’s really given me a boost.

Goal 1 Writing and Editing

  • First Draft of The Fire Walker book 2 in the series Luna Legends – 30,000 words written long hand, in ink over 14 days…
  • 10, 000 words written or edited for flash, shorts and blog
  • Redesigned series aesthetic for inspiration which I may share at some time

Goal 2 Publishing and Promotion

  • Enrolled in Publish and Thrive course (delivered by Sarra Cannon from the HB90 method)
  • Cover art research for the series and book 2
  • Review of Social Media schedule

Goal 3 Healthy Writing Habits

  • Monitored my writing session moods – which are generally good! I just use a simple smiley system in my journal
  • Participated most days in the #vss365 challenge as part of my daily ‘warm up’
  • Daily Morning Pages – before I do anything else, animals willing that is!

I’m really pleased with my focus and sticking to my plans this month, despite it being gloomy in so many ways. One of the main points for my success was to get my writing done first thing, before I do anything else and making a concentrated effort to stay off social media until my words were down on paper.

Hope you’ve had some successes this month, would love to hear about them. And any reading suggestions you may have!

Ciao

 

Bootcamp Bubble July 2020

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It’s been some time since I’ve posted. I have no excuses, not real ones. I could blame the virus, but then it’s here to stay for some time and we’ve been on lockdown since March so I can’t use that.

So instead I’m going to become one of my female characters who needs to get herself into training to slaughter the monster of procrastination and prioritisation. It’s not a matter of time, I’ve always hated the excuse of ‘I’m so busy’. It’s such a lame lament. We all have the same number of hours in the day, it’s how we choose to use them and what we consider as important.

For far too long, I’ve put my writing at the bottom of the list. Well this month things are going to change and I’m going to fight and destroy the creature that has pinned me down, eaten my muse and trampled over my confidence. If I don’t. It’s time to hand in the towel. And I have fight left within me, so fight I will.

This month in my little Boot-camp Bubble I shall be committing to the following:

  • Time out from my online group, Writers Abroad. We are currently in the midst of celebrating our 10 year anniversary and there is a lot going on but it takes a lot of my energy. They will all be there when I return, as lovely and as supportive as ever, but this is a fight I have to do on my own.

 

  • Musing every day, for 31 days. Every. Single. Day. I will write to a creative writing prompt. I generally do this every week day morning but I also plan to turn at least one of these musings a week into a short story or a scene.

 

  • Journaling I’ve been doing ‘Morning Pages’ almost every day since 2015. It had purpose way back then when I was struggling with so many things. But it’s not challenging me any more, it’s a daily diary, of my daily, rather mundane life. So I’ve purchased the Journaling Compendium by Amie McNee and shall be using her daily prompts to explore myself as a writer, if she’s willing to stick around.

 

  • World Building My writing project priority is the Moon series. I published the first novella back in early March just when we went into lockdown and I’ve not done a thing. So I shall be pulling the publication and exploring and revisiting the world I created to define the next in the series and perhaps a third. Who knows?

So, I hope to be sharing my progress on a short weekly post and I hope to pop out of my bubble at the end of the month. That’s if the monster doesn’t eat me first.

“The soul always knows what to do to heal itself, the challenge is to silence the mind.”

– Caroline Myss

 

Ciao for Now . . .

 

Writing Goals: December

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Last month I only had one goal:

😎Participate in National Write a Novel in a Month Challenge – and I clocked up over 56k words (yes, fifty six thousand words). My plan at the start was to write 2k a day for 6 days, having Sundays off – they are usually my PJ and off screen days – and I obviously wrote a little more than my target. The first half of the month I wrote longhand, with a pencil and notebook. A staved middle finger on my writing hand made that a little difficult as well as a pulled back muscle!  I reverted to transcribing scenes and character development via the keyboard. I’m still working on transcribing and still have a lot of decisions to make, as things changed, as always, as the story fell out of my head.

How did you get on?

For the month of December I’m going to be realistic. We go away in our van on 15th December to spend the festive season and the New Year in Spain and I don’t plan on doing much, other than walking with the dogs, cycling and sight seeing. 🙂 So for the next two weeks my goals are:

  1. Continue to transcribe my NaNo project five days a week
  2. Complete the authorschallenge2019plus on Instagram (I can plan these posts ahead)
  3. Draft out my Social Media plans for 2020
  4. Finalise Wolf Moon for publication – hard copy proof has arrived!

Let me know what you’re planning to work on and what plans you have over the silly season – you may have guessed I don’t particularly enjoy this time of the year 🙄

 

Writing Goals: November

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It’s that time of the month again…planning goals for the next four months ahead. November is an easy month, in terms of choosing my goals. But first, lets see how I got on last month *takes a deep breath*

 😉 Sketch out two more Wolf Moon sequels – for development as NaNo project #1 – I decided early on in the month only to concentrate on one NaNo project. As usual, I set myself up to fail before I’ve begun. But I have given some thought to the sequel of Wolf Moon, made a third edit following a Beta Read and planning it’s publication.

 😎 Revisit snowflake for Rainbow Chronicles – this will be my NaNo project and I’ve spent most of the month getting to know my characters, sketching out the world they occupy and having too many ideas!

😛 Schedule responses to #FantasyWiPOctober – the first time I’ve ever completed one of these Instagram challenges and I’ve met some wonderful people along the way, and increased my followers by 200!

So can you tell what my intended goals for this month are yet? There is just one.

✔ Participate in National Write A Novel in a Month Challenge – my umpteenth year and I don’t think I’ve ever been so prepared. So the idea is to write 50k – or more – within the month. I might also use the Flash NaNo Competition as a bit of inspiration but we’ll see.

Writing isn’t about the end product, not always anyway. If you’ve ever dream of writing but think you can’t do it… I say you can. Dare to dream big. All you need is a pen and paper or laptop, a sprinkling of inspiration and a bucketful of motivation and you’ll do it. I know, because I have. Follow your dreams.

And if you are taking part in NaNo and have registered on their site, let me know your username, or send me a buddy request – I’m ‘The Duchessa’. See you on the other side!