Round 3 Sunday Check-in 2

Hi, all!  I’m still looking for your suggestions and favorites to add to the ROWriter’s Resource page that I’m setting up for the site.  Beyond a few references I use a lot, Beth Camp and Elizabeth Anne Mitchell have offered a few, but not so many others yet.

I know y’all are out there.  Toss me a word or two.  What resources have you found extra helpful in your writing processes?  These can cover the gamut from initial planning to copy-editing and networking…  We’re writers and author here, and we’re going to all use a few of these somewhere along the line.

Oh, yeah, and it’s Sunday…  time for another check-in and a linky:

 

Round 3 2nd Wednesday Check-in

Forger of Worlds, via hunsci.com

Howdy, howdy creators and explorers of words and worlds…

Welcome to week 2 of this third Round of Words for the year.  Who knew it would take this long to regain our stride after the passing of the reins last fall?  I mean, really…  it’s blogging. isn’t it?

Well, no, and yes.  Maintaining this page is blogging, but the ROW80 is so much more that.  Or at least it’s supposed to be.  Which is why I and some of our other dedicated volunteers, many who you’ve met as sponsors in previous years, are working to bring you some changes in the next month for our community.  Some of the changes that will be coming:

• a monthly Featured Author, because we have so many wonderful creative people in our community
• a Writer’s Resource Page of ROWers, these are your choices of pages and resources you’ve found useful
• a services offered by ROWers page are in the works, because many of your fellow ROWers offer those services we all need, copy-editing, marketing, beta-reading … and who knows?  You might find your perfect match in our friendly community.

…and if you have other suggestions, let me know.

For now, it’s time to check-in with the linky (here and/or on our Facebook page) and your fellow ROWers.  Letus know how you’re doing on those goals.  And let us know if you have ideas for the new pages or would like to be one of our monthly Featured Authors either in the comments or via email: mousefir at gmail . com

Mid-break Goals Post

I know…  late again.

I did mean to post this on Sunday, but, well…  with our wedding anniversary on Thursday and a lot of chaos that day beyond our planned distractions, the weekend became regulated to all things non-internet, including the ROW80.

We are mid-break, so no one needed to check-in nor did anyone miss a linky, but I probably should have warned people there wasn’t  supposed to be a Sunday post.

Sorry.  Though…  I do have to confess; it was nice.  We had lovely weather and spending some time away from my computer enjoying it, felt good.  And a long weekend with my awesome family just can’t be beat either…  😀

But now it’s time to get back to the grind, so to speak.  Time to make a plan and set some goals for upcoming Round 3.  It starts on July 3rd (which may, depending on your nationality, inspire some revolutionary creative sparks).

So here is your new “Goals linky”.  Remember… S.M.A.R.T. goals where you can will get you where you want to be.  But also. remember to enjoy the journey as much as the dreamed-for destination.

–– Eden

Round 2 11th Wednesday Check-in

cred: Me.me (Facebook)

The End is Near

Oooh! Look at that counter (see the right of the screen… well, unless you’re using as phone that doesn’t show the side-bar… then, look down the page). Now… that does look like the round is coming to an end. Or is it? This is the ROW80… and we do this challenge all year round. So… does it ever actually end? (I know that some of our ROWers actually do keep going all year round, even when the challenge is officially on break.

Next week’s Wednesday post will be the last of the Round (though you can still check-in with your goals on the following Sunday when I put out the Round 3 “Goals Post”). Even with my constant panicking about the end coming… it doesn’t really feel like we’re already there.

Does it to you?

Tell us at the linky:

Round 2 Goal Post

No, this is not a post about one of these.  This is that part of the ROW80 where we plan for the next Round.  Round 1 is done, over…  it can’t be changed, for good or ill.  But that’s OK.

We have a beautiful new 80 days coming up to achieve something special with our writing lives, and to do that, we need to start out with some goals.  What do you want to do, how do you think it will take get there, what will you get when you reach the end…  So set yourself some S.M.A.R.T goals and use them.

The image pretty much says it all.  S.M.A.R.T goals are:

• Specific — work daily on The Greatest Magnum Opus Ever as opposed to write every day
• Measurable — do 10 pages of revision each week on TGMOE instead of revising things as they catch your eye
• Attainable — set a Test Mile; if you exceed it, great, but plan to do an amount of work you can guarantee to do.  I’m a big fan (of course!) of Those Five Sentences, but maybe you’re working on queries or line edits…  you can use the same strategy there with a bit of tweaking
• Relevant — if you’re trying to write an article on hippos, you may not want to spend your ROWnd researching the craft of iron smelting in Industrial New England (though, with enough time and effort, I’m sure there is a story there!)
• Time-based — because our Rounds of Words go for 80 days, there is already a built-in time-frame to your goals, but not everything you do will need that long.  Some things might need a day or a week…  some might need all year; the point is to make sure you give yourself a time to get those things done

---

So… now you’ve done it…  you’ve created some goals, and you’re ready to ROW80.  Well, then add yourself to the linky and share your intentions with your supportive fellow ROWers.  That way we can all help you meet those goals…  and you can help us meet ours.  See you in a week for the opening of Round 2.

And remember….

Round 1 2017: The End

Those two words are some of the most powerful a writer can use… The End. Sounds pretty intense, hm?

And well they should.  This is the final day of the first Round of Words in 80 Days of 2017, and I don’t know about you all, but I feel like I need at least one or two more of these little darlings before things are working the way I’d like them too. That means goals and plans for Round 2 in 10 days, but no more check-ins until April 2nd. I will post a linky this coming Sunday for people to post their goals at, but there will be no post next Wednesday (unless someone wants to volunteer and write something inspirational 😉 )

Speaking of inspirational… do you know all the great people involved in the ROW80 these days? From our founder, Kait Nolan, to our Facebook admins, Shan Jeniah and Denise Young, to our great members… and even myself, the ROW80 is seething with friendly, inspiring creative types. If you have been peeking into our blogs but haven’t joined, why not do so in our upcoming Round 2?

For now, let’s just do our end-round check-in and assessment of our progress. Just add it to our linky:

A #ROW80 Partnership and Time To State Your Goals

Welcome back on this glorious holiday weekend, y’all!  

The Geek Out

If you were around for the tail end of Round 2, you got to see me geek out over one of my new favorite tools, Pacemaker.  Pacemaker lets you set your goal (words, pages, etc.) and your timeline–and THEN it allows you to adjust things based on life stuff.  Got a business trip out of town scheduled?  You can set those days to either skip or have a lower goal.  Want to work more on weekends?  You can set that, too.  And the system updates everything to show you what you need to do in order to reach your goal by the deadline you set.  Even better?  You can turn your project into a widget or into an iCal in order to make sure your writing time is FRONT AND CENTER on your calendar!  It is the absolute perfect tool to enable you to manage your writing goals!  And it’s free!

Turns out the makers of Pacemaker thought so too!

The Partnership

So ROW80 has OFFICIALLY partnered up with Pacemaker for Round 3!  They have designed for us a special page for our challenge.  You can create up to 5 projects (since often people work on more than one thing during the course of a round).  Or, if you’re less focused on a specific book, there’s absolutely an option to track your writing as a habit.  On our challenge page, you’ll be able to see everybody who’s participating and how they’re doing on their goal.  You can copy their plan and customize to make it your own or start from scratch.  Here’s my first project for the round, which I’m already 2/3rds finished with.  You can see how my productivity jumps around, and how I’ve scheduled time off for my vacation this week.  There are so many options to customize.  While writing is the most obvious, you can also track editing, reading, study or work as a goal.  You can measure words, pages, chapters, characters, verses, acts, scenes, stanzas, lines, items, minutes, hours, or tasks.  And there’s a whole long list of types of projects already built in.

My Challenge To You

Pacemaker is an incredibly powerful tool that can enable you to take control of your writing life.  I can’t count the number of times participants goggle at what I manage to get done with everything I juggle.  And the fact of the matter is, it’s as Thomas Jefferson once said, “It’s amazing how much can be done if we are always doing.”  This is pretty much the theme of my life.  I’m always, always doing something, whether it’s plotting the next book, working on a character sketch, or just spewing out a hundred words in a spare ten minutes.  I don’t sit around waiting for inspiration to strike, I don’t wait for the perfect time.  And I don’t beat myself up if I don’t reach some lofty, perfect goal (most of the time…).  Because the absolute truth of the matter is that any progress is better than no progress.  If your goal is 1,000 words a day and you only manage 250, that’s 250 that you didn’t have before and your brain stayed at least a little bit in the story.  THAT is what I want to reward this round–ANY consistent progress toward your goal, no matter how small.  Whether you’re chipping away at that final word count by inches or feet, I want you to make an effort to do something each and every day.  Stop letting everything else in your life come first.  No excuses.  If you want to be a writer, then writing has to be a priority.  Just remember that making it a priority only means making SOME kind of progress, not ALL the progress (although if you can make All the progress, that’s awesome!).

What are you waiting for?  Go sign up for Pacemaker today and set up your project for Round 3.

Set Your Goals

Don’t forget to write up your goals on your blog and link back to the post on the linky below so we can all swing by and cheer you on.   And if you’re jumping in after this linky is closed, just scroll to the currently active check-in linky and do the same thing.

Powered by Linky Tools

Click here to enter your link and view this Linky Tools list…