April Goals 2022

So I don’t know about you, but in my corner of the universe, time is hurtling ahead at a truly breakneck pace. Spring is tentatively here, after several late frosts, and getting my work done is less a task of time management, and more an exercise in staying focused long enough to not get lost outdoors. I’ve had quite the busy month, with course registration, housing selection for next school year, a bunch of STEM outreach events through the college, Easter travels, and backyard mad science experiments with my friends. It’s funny to see the giant gaps in my writer tracker that prove just how sporadic my habits actually are. Never let it be said that you have to write every day to be a productive writer! It’s about finding a rhythm that works around your other obligations.

Won by 2 points – 6/8 Goals

Catch up on Tumblr drafts – I took a fast from social media for Lent to reclaim my time and stop scrolling mindlessly and while I found I didn’t miss Instagram at all, all my writing friends are on Tumblr. Every Sunday when I checked in, I would save all the posts someone had tagged me in to my drafts folder, so I could answer them later. I’ve caught up on all the cool writing and games I missed in the last month and I’m happy to be back in our little community.

Decide how to monetize blog – I want to be clear about this goal: I write and maintain this blog because I love it. I love talking about writing, being active in a community of like-minded folks, and accumulating resources that other people might find helpful. This won’t be going anywhere. I debated for a long time whether or not I should monetize this hobby. My financial situation is relatively stable, and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit one of my reasons for pursuing an engineering degree was the salary. I’m not a starving artist (yet).

But I haven’t graduated yet, and as I move forward with the publishing process for Runaways, I realized I need to budget for the self-publishing costs, such as hiring an editor, proofreader, formatter, cover artist, ect. This blog doesn’t cost me a lot of money to maintain, but it is an enormous time investment, and it would be worth it to set up some kind of monetization, however small, sooner rather than later. I don’t like the idea of cluttering up my corner of the internet with ads (though I’ve heard WordPress ads are a joke anyhow), and I don’t have the energy or time to run an exclusive subscription model like Patreon, so I decided the best course of action was a tip-box.

You might have noticed on my last couple posts a link at the bottom to my new Ko-Fi. If you feel so generously inclined, that is now available, and any donations are greatly appreciated. I promise I won’t be annoying or pushy about this beyond the end-post link, but here’s the formal announcement that it is now a thing that does, in fact, exist!

Set up runaways dnd game – In a completely contrived and self-indulgent excuse to have my best friends from home meet my uni friends, I offered to DM a one-shot for all of them. In a completely contrived and self-indulgent excuse to make illustrations for my book and show off my OCs, I set the game in the feywild. I’ve put a bunch of new illustrations on my Gallery page if you’re interested in seeing some of my prep work. This one is my favorite; these are the Semivera Twins, who feature in the most recent story on my mailing list, which you can read when you sign up.

Get caught up on reading goal– My reading goal for the year is 50 books, and right now, I’m at 11 (including those which are not counted on Goodreads). This puts me 5 books behind my goal. This summer, I’ll be driving quite a lot for an internship, and I should hopefully be able to put on audiobooks in the lab, so I plan to make up for lost time soon enough.

Website and Instagram schedule – I abstained from posting on Good Friday out of respect for the holy day, but other than that week, I posted every week this month.

Runaways beta check in and timing warning – I will officially start editing this summer! We’re getting closer! I’ve also combined all of my comments into one document and it’s positively plastered in colors.

Edit 25,000 words in Storge for Camp NaNoWriMo – I did 30K! I broke this goal up into two chunks because A) I usually track edits by chapter, not word count, because often editing involves removing words or adding a paragraph of description here or there, rather than rewriting/2nd drafting from scratch, and B) 50,000 words is pretty arbitrary and I have never “won” NaNoWriMo during the school year. This gave me a chance, and that’s 30K more words than I had on April 1st.

50,000 words in Storge for Camp NaNoWriMo – This could have been totally doable if exams hadn’t kicked my butt in the last two weeks. I don’t know what kind of masochist professors want to grade extra midterms less than a week before finals because I certainly don’t want to take them, and yet here we are.

I’ve finished through chapter 9/28. Excluding this upcoming summer for Runaways edits, I’ll have to do roughly 2 chapters a month in order to finish by the time I graduate. Should be doable!

Thanks for reading! What are your favorite spring activities? What are you working on this month? Next week I’ll be back with a writing advice post, but I want this blog to be more than me shouting into the void. If I can use this platform to help boost other creators, I’d love to see your work too. If you want to have your recommendations and/or your own writing featured in a Resource Rec post, or if you want to collaborate with me, you can leave a comment below for both, or contact me on either tumblr or IG!

If you feel so generously inclined, you can support my writing by leaving me a tip on my Kofi or donating using the secure box below. Until next time, thanks for reading and happy writing!