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!

March Recap

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This month was a little mixed after the euphoria of finishing my draft. I left the manuscript to steep for a while because I was taking a course, and wanted to give it my full attention

The first draft didn’t fair so well. It wasn’t that it was a bad story, it just wasn’t the right story. I had a big AHA moment about the whole series so it changes things in terms of structure. That isn’t a bad thing, it just means I’ve had to take a few steps back.

 

And of course, Spring has sprung and my granddaughter celebrated her 16th birthday on International Women’s day. Our mimosa (the symbol for the day) has almost had it’s day but has been beautiful, despite the snow! I cannot wait to see and hug my family again.

 

 

 

Books Read This Month

Here are the titles I’ve read this month, a more fiction than non-fiction. Any recommendations are welcome!

  • The Night Raven by Sarah Painter
  • Echoes of the Gidat by Eme Savage
  • Mistress of Masks by C Greenwood
  • Blood of Elves by Andrzej Sapkowski
  • Structuring Your Novel (finished up) K M Weiland
  • Beautiful Demons Box Set Books 1-3 by Sarra Cannon – just started.

Stories Published

I decided not to publish any short stories for the time being. It’s not attracting much attention and it takes quite a lot of time. But… I have had book one of the Luna Legends proofed and I’ve sourced a cover – well several to choose from – so I’m going to be launching it very shortly. I’ve also changed the title (it was Wolf Moon) as part of my series AHA moment. All will be revealed. So watch this space.

Goals Update

I continue to make great progress with my goals using the HB90 system. As this blog is published I actually have started Quarter 2 which is amazing and we’ve yet again entered full lockdown as Italy (and lots of Europe) are experiencing the third wave of the pandemic. And don’t mention the vaccination programme. Still, plenty to keep me going.

Goal 1 Writing and Editing

  • Edited Book 1 for publication
  • Plans made for Q2 which included participating in NaNoWrimo
  • Reviewed Season 1 of Luna Legends series

Goal 2 Publishing and Promotion

  • Completed Publish and Thrive Course – which has generated a load of actions and a strategy to go forward.
  • Prepped Book 1 for Publication and sourced a cover

Goal 3 Healthy Writing Habits

  • I started monitoring my mood again and there are more smileys than others
  • Completed the #vss365 challenge every day and published them on Twitter. In fact I’ve managed to complete this challenge for most days of this quarter and penned over 3400 words!

As well as my writing I’m trying to pinch a little part of the day playing around on Procreate, a drawing app on the iPad. I created this, with a lot of help from Art With Flo, for #EarthHour day which also fell on what would have been my Dad’s 87th birthday. I so miss him still.

This month was the hardest yet, a combination of things beyond my control sent me into a bit of spin to be honest. But I’m back at the desk and even more determined to work my way through the mire of being an Authorpreneur. I will do it.

Hope you’ve had some successes this month, would love to hear about them.

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 🙄

 

Monthly Goals: June

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Now as still I’m away travelling, I’ll be carrying over my goals from May. These goals were chosen as being the most realistic to achieve and I’ll report on my progress in the July.

 

🎯 Schedule all Social Media posts as far as I can up to end of June

🎯 Re look at Journals for Writers and plan relaunch (for my return in June)

🎯 Organise and clean up my One note Bujo (which is essentially my whole life) and Pinterest Boards

🎯Work on scene list and world building for Rainbow Chronicles

🎯Read, read and read!

 

Writing Goals: May

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Last Month’s Goals (April)

A better month health wise and I think I’ve made great progress with my aim for getting ahead. As we leave for a six week trip in Bobbus, our camper van, on the 8th May I need to be prepared… as well as think about what I can achieve realistically whilst we’re away.

😛 Post four more chapters of Wolf Moon on Wattpad – yep, I continue to keep on target with Wolf Moon and most of all it’s helping me to get the edits done. All about accountability.

🙂 Market Short Story as a giveaway – well I’ve finished The Earth Dragon of Sassi and it’s now available here… as for marketing it, well I’ve given a little nudge but as writers we all find it hard to blow our own trumpet… but it’s finished and that’s a big thing

😕 Marketing Plan for Journals – this keeps being pushed back, but that’s okay. It’s one of the projects I might spend some time on whilst we’re away as it’s easy to pick up in small windows of time. I hit a brick wall because I have spent some time creating new covers but the format of the interior has gone all awol… and I’m not sure why

😎 Complete snowflake for the Rainbow Book 1 – I’ve had so much fun with this over the past four weeks and I’m so excited about the story. I’ve started the scene list and again it’s something I’ll dabble with whilst I’m away.

😉 Plan timeline for for the first draft of Rainbow Book 1 – well, I’ve not given this much thought but I shan’t be drafting it until I get back. So by the end of summer (2019 that is) I hope to have the first draft done.

So this month and half of June is going to be a little scatty in terms of goals. I don’t want to set the stakes too high, yet I do want to maintain momentum so these are my initial thoughts for this month…

🎯 Complete all edits of Wolf Moon – before I leave on 8th *gulp*

🎯 Schedule all Social Media posts as far as I can up to end of June

🎯 Re look at Journals for Writers and plan relaunch (for my return in June)

🎯 Organise and clean up my One note Bujo (which is essentially my whole life) and Pinterest Boards

🎯 Work on scene list and world building for Rainbow Chronicles