Resolutions and Amazing Gifts

Ah, it's good to be back on my Tuesday routine. The stress of 2019 kinda rolled into the start of 2020, but it's dying down again a touch. My normal routine is still a bit off this month, however. There is a new hire at a different branch of the store I work for, and, for whatever reason, I'm apparently the Go-To-Gal for training new-hires. I've done so in the past, and I'm tapped to do so again this month. The added trick, however, is that the store she was hired for is so understaffed right now that the poor manager hasn't had a single day off in over a month! I thought MY December was rough!

To try to help a fella out, I'll be going to that store once a week to both train the new hire, as well as man the store - as it were - so the manager can finally have days off again. By the time I'm done training the new-hire at the end of January, hopefully she'll feel confident enough to run the store once or twice a week so the manager can continue to have his days off, and I will no longer have to commute roughly 90minutes round trip each week.

My own poor manager now has to work six days a week in order to cover for me being at the other store on one of her normal days off. So this is not the greatest arrangement all around. But it helps give someone his days off again, and it trains someone new, and I'm getting paid mileage, so it all works out, I guess.

Still, I won't be home until closer to 7pm on the days that I'm down at the other store, which means still no Zumba for me. I feel like it will do more harm than good to only go on Mondays, especially since I haven't been able to go for two months already. Soooooo, guess February will be my grand return finally???

Dear lord, I'm going to die when I go back....

NuaNia Facebook sticker
by PRANEAT

I also missed the first Writer's Group meeting of the year because I had to work on Tuesday - which was the 31st, so technically NOT the first of the year, but close enough - and I'll be working again when our next meeting comes around on the 14th! Which means I'm also going on month 2 of no writer's group meetings. This is killing me!

Hopefully, I'll be able to make the meeting on the 28th. Otherwise, February will be my true Restart Month: back to normal work week, back to Zumba 2x a week, back to Writing Group every other Tuesday, etc.

In the meantime, January is going to be more of a "trial run" for 2020.

I heard recently that the best way to create lasting New Year's Resolutions, and other such new routines for the new year, is to start the new resolution/routine in December. That way you can get into the routine and iron out any problems with it before the year starts. You would be less discouraged then - because if something falls through or otherwise fails you have time to correct it before the new year, whereas once in the new year you feel like it's not worth trying anymore - and you are more likely to continue with the resolutions.

So I'm a bit late to the party with this "trial month" attempt. However, December was far too chaotic for me to do a trial run of anything. I just completely collapsed and crumbled last month, and adding to those stressors would not have done anyone good.

Instead, I'm using this mindset of January being the "trial month" for my resolutions and new routines to try to refine things. Especially since I wasn't TERRIBLE with my resolutions last year. As I noted last week, I definitely tripped through my resolutions a lot, and fumbled quite a bit, but in the end, I didn't give up on them, so that's a win... right?

Let's check out how well I actually did with those resolutions, shall we?

2019 Resolution #1: Try yet again to write at least 4 out of 7 days of the week

With the chaos of frantic cleaning for my mom and sister to visit, I somehow packed my planner in a "safe spot" that I cannot find right now, so I don't have the stats for January through June of 2019. I vaguely remember them being fairly good with keeping to this resolution. I also did fairly well in July, working on One and the Same during my Camp NaNoWriMo. The rest of the year, though????

• Aug: This was the start of me slipping with my time audits. I only have 13 days marked as having written; 4 of those were my weekly blog posts.
• Sept: Even worse, I only have 11 days marked as having any writing progress.
• Oct: Thanks to Kyoru week and trying to finish my original story gift to Ronoxym, I have marked that I wrote every day for the first 18 days of October - minus Monday the 14th. I don't have any days after the 18th marked though, so I think I only wrote my blog for the rest of the month? Totaling in 19 writing days. Still not very good.
• Nov: Ironically, I only have 3 days marked on my calendar, but I also did the worst with keeping up with my time audits in November. I know I at least worked on my blog, and then on my story at Group, every Tuesday, and I have a single Thursday marked as having written something, so I know at least 5 days were spent writing. I know I was stressed in November, and certainly didn't write daily, but I feel like I wrote more often than 5 days....
• Dec: Ug. December was the worst offender for forgetting to do my time audits. I only have 2 days marked on my calendar, but I know I wrote a blog post for 4 out of the 5 Tuesdays, and I wrote my Plagg one-shot on the 13th. I also got my ML Secret Santa exchange done by the 24th, and had worked on that for a couple of days. I want to give myself the benefit of the doubt, and say I wrote at least 10 days out of the month???

So, yeah... didn't do too well with this resolution during the back half of the year. I'm hoping I can get myself into a much better routine so that I don't slip around July again, when life starts to get more and more frantic for me.

2019 Resolution #2: Finish and post my fanfic sequel One and the Same

I don't know what it is about this story that is so hard for me to write! Clearly I just full-on failed this resolution/goal, but I didn't give up on the project either. So there's that. I worked on it for every NaNoWriMo attempt. It was my project for April's Camp NaNo, and again for July's Camp, and once more during the original NaNoWriMo in November. I've chipped more and more and more away at the project. I've solidified scenes. I've gotten rid of others. I've strengthened the plot concept. I've gotten the rough draft past 50,000 words. I. Just. Can't. Complete. The. Dang. Thing!!!!

I think part of the delay is that I feel like this story isn't as strong a showing as Peeping Tomcat was, and I want both stories to be equally good. Especially after the long wait, I don't want to disappoint my patient readers by having One and the Same feel inferior. So it's certainly a struggle, and OatS beat me in 2019, unfortunately.

2019 Resolution #3: Post at least one new completed story per month

I mentioned this last week, but I both succeeded and failed at this goal. I did not manage to post a completed story every month. I DID, however, manage to post over 20 completed stories this past year. While the resolution did state "at least" one story - already implying that I'd write more than one in any given month - and therefore should cancel out the abundance I produced in August and September, I'm still going to call this resolution NEARLY successful. A... B+ grade for the effort I put in to complete it and the added "extra credit" stories to make up for the "missed assignments", as they were.

2019 Resolution #4: Win NaNoWriMo again this November

Yeeeeeeaaaaah... No. This did NOT happen. Fail. Super fail. Nope.

HOWEVER, I also didn't give up attempting to write in November. I kept wanting to. I kept telling myself it wasn't working, and yet I pushed on. I chipped away word by word right up until I left to visit family on the 29th. I made sure that this was NOT going to be my worst showing at NaNoWriMo. It is only my SECOND worst showing; I managed to irk out a little more than 3900 words. Still 3900 more than I had going into November, right? So... yay?

2019 Resolution #5: Continue my weekly blog post routine

I was so close! I had gone MONTHS without missing a post. I may have been days late, but I got it done before the week was out. Then, in June, I tripped and missed a week. I was going to make up for it by writing my normal blog post, as well as writing up my feelings about the novels Graceling and Bitterblue that I had read over the summer as a bonus. I wanted to wait until I finished the trilogy, and never did get a chance to read Fire, so that bonus post was never written. I tripped again in November. While I also kinda-sorta tripped last week by having it be my first post of the new year instead of the last of 2019, I'll leave it to you to decide if I was down 2 or 3 posts in 2019. Either way, 50 posts out of the year is fairly consistent. It seems to be my norm: out of the nearly-ten years that I've had this blog, I started writing in it weekly back in 2012. Since then, I have written 50 posts/year 3 times - including 2019 - and more than 50 posts also 3 times. I have only managed to write once per week in 2017, but even for that year I missed weeks and then double-posted later so....

As for that "reading challenge" I was going to write up, and post later? The one that became "Meh, I'm reading a lot of fanfic this year; I'll just try to track the words read"? Yeah. That ended up going virtually nowhere, sadly. I did read a lot of fanfic - especially in December - and I did manage to read at least three professionally published novels. All-in-all, though, I feel like I slacked off in my reading.

It may simply be because I read quick fanfic one-shots while on brief work breaks, and so mentally I slotted them away as "don't count" for whatever reason. So I'm going to try to do better with that as well.

Which brings me to....

*~*~* New Year's Resolutions for 2020 *~*~*

To be completely frank, they're going to more-or-less be the same resolutions as 2019. As I said above, my goal this year is to REFINE. So let's see if I can do better with these goals this year.

2020 Resolution #1: Try yet again to write at least 4 out of 7 days of the week

I must tackle this goal first and foremost by getting into the routine for my time audits; track where my time is going so I can better see when my best writing time even is. These audits also hold me accountable for my time. Plus, they really do help when I reflect back on the year and try to see how frequently I did get to work on writing.

I also need to get back into finding set times to write. I have an alarm on my phone that goes off every night at 8pm, telling me to go write. However, due to TV shows Hubby and I wish to watch, socializing, or just chores getting delayed, I haven't actually stopped to write at 8pm in MONTHS. Maybe even all of 2019! So clearly that is not a good time for me to write. I fear that my best writing time is in the morning, before I start my day since I have such limited time post-work day. Which means training myself to actually slide out of bed instead of hitting snooze for an hour so I can cuddle my husband. We'll see how well I do with finding a more routine writing time.

It does help when I routinely work on this blog every Tuesday morning from about 8am until.... whenever it is I get to finish it. So maybe a similar routine will help with consistent fictional writing as well.

2020 Resolution #2: Finish and post my fanfic sequel One and the Same

I. Am. Determined!

I have lived with this story for so long, and I've had TWO WHOLE SERIES SEASONS to give me new fodder to work with. My readers have patiently waited for an extra YEAR past what I promised them. I can't keep delaying this story. I'm going to try to be realistic though. So here is my sub-goal breakdown:

• Jan: Get my bearings. Re-read what I have of OatS. Re-read PT to get back into the feel of the story. Re-read and re-tweak my outline.
• Feb: Get back into a writing rhythm. Refine the outline using the notes I took in January. Refine what I've already written for OatS, again using the notes I took in January.
• March: Now that I'm back in rhythm, and no longer distracted by other writing projects, start working on figuring out the dang akuma attacks, as well as other "middle bits" that have been halting my progress on this story.
• April: Use Camp NaNoWriMo to finish the rough draft of this dang story!
• May: My manager's daughter is getting married in May, so I might be working extra hours the last week of April. If this hinders my writing, use May to finish the rough draft. Otherwise, use it to recoup from Camp, and work on other projects. Let OatS sit.
• June: Polish OatS. Go through and edit what needs to be edited so that the "rough draft" is in its nearly-polished form at the very least, and the first chapter is as good as I'm going to be able to make it.
• July: Spend Camp editing OatS so that I can post a new chapter every week, just as I did with PT.
• Aug: Finish polishing up OatS in order to get ahead of my posting schedule; having the whole thing as perfect as I can make it before the end of the month. Keep publishing new chapters weekly.
• Sept: I will most likely be publishing weekly chapters still. Use this time for any catch-up spill-over from August, and focus on the next big writing project; whatever that is.

We'll see how well I stick to this scheduling. Encouraging words and gentle pokes/prods to stay on track are appreciated.

2020 Resolution #3: Participate in at least one fandom event per quarter.

I switched this one up a bit. Last year, when I gave myself the goal to write a story a month, it was partially a way to make sure I kept writing as a priority. It was a means to hold me accountable so I wouldn't slack off. It was a way to train myself to produce a bit faster. Most importantly, though, it was supposed to be a way for me to build up readers.

My name would pop up in feeds more frequently. I would be closer to the top of "recent uploaded" lists within the fandom tags on FFN, AO3, and Tumblr. There would be more content for readers to consume if they liked one story, and that would give them a better feel for my over-all writing. Hopefully, that would lead them to like my writing in general and want to subscribe to/follow me. Also, if I posted moderately frequently - once a month - then perhaps that would also be enticing to readers: this content creator does so with moderate regularity. I knew I wouldn't be as quick or popular as those who posted daily, or at least weekly, but it would be a start.

In the end, I fear that my drive to complete SOMETHING monthly forced me to focus more on those monthly stories, and less on OatS, which could have helped with my overall delaying of the project. Especially when some of my time was spent just trying to figure out WHAT to write. Sure, there were points where inspiration struck and wouldn't let go - Prescription for Love in March, Love Taps in June, Sparks for the Moment in July, and both Painfully Close and evolving Stranger in a White Dress into I Don't Care in August - but most of the months had me painstakingly plan something, and usually as a gift for someone.

Participating in events will probably have a fairly similar affect on OatS, sadly, since I will be working on those stories instead of dedicating that extra time to my main project. HOWEVER, events usually come with prompts. Sure, there were days during Kyoru Week where I spent most of the day trying to figure out how to use the prompt, but there were also days where the story came fairly quickly. Prompts help direct me, so I'm not as stressed trying to figure out what to even write about. Truthfully, that was part of my issue with the fandom gift exchange for Christmas. I didn't really have much of a jumping point, whereas I had more direction when writing my gifts for Taurus Pixie and ChibiSunnie throughout the year. For February's Secret Admirer exchange, we will be provided with two prompt ideas from our giftee, and I know it's going to be Lukanette-centric, so it should be a lot smoother sailing than the Christmas exchange was. In theory, these prompted events will be less stressful and easier on my creative muscles then pulling a random story out of thin air monthly. And, most importantly for my over-all goal for the year, much like with my monthly posting attempts, I hope participating in these events will help get my name out there more. Part of the draw of the events is that the host will reblog the participants' works. This puts it in view of the event's followers: an audience of the other participants, as well as non-participants who may have followed specifically to enjoy the new content. That is most likely a much larger audience than what I currently have.

The long and short of this resolution is that I hope it helps ease my stress of having to come up with something new monthly. I also hope it helps me learn to produce faster, it helps refresh my creativity when I run into writers blocks with OatS, and it helps increase my name recognition within the fandom(s). On top of all of that, I hope that - while I have two different events in February already - cutting down to one event every quarter - January through March, April through June, July through September, and October through December - will also cut down on the overall distraction from OatS. We'll see how this new resolution fairs compared to my "once a month" one from 2019.

2020 Resolution #4: Plagg Appreciation Days

Another new one for the year. I need to recover from my poor showing at NaNo last year, so I won't aim to "win" this year; just to again participate and maybe succeed with a half-NaNo. So, instead of having a NaNo-focused resolution, I'm instead focusing on a fun, semi-sporadic fandom event I want to get trending.

Since the show Miraculous Ladybug includes both a black cat themed superhero and a black cat looking super being, I love the idea of focusing on those two boys every Friday the 13th. People equate that day with black cats and bad luck, and the reason Chat Noir has the powers he does is precisely because of the black cats and bad luck connection. Add in that we don't get to see Plagg on screen nearly as much as we do Tikki, and Chat Noir rarely gets a chance to shine in the show, it is very often that Plagg is overlooked, and Chat Noir is only used in MariChat romance fanfic or as a main character in a demon  or enemy AU. They need better representation than that, so I wanted to turn Friday the 13th into Plagg Appreciation Day (and/or Chat Noir Appreciation Day) within the fandom. I already wrote two Plagg-centric stories on the last two Friday 13ths since I came up with this concept. I want to make sure I hit both Friday 13ths of 2020 as well, and possibly get the concept trending within the fandom.

For those who would like to help me with my stretch goal by participating in Plagg Appreciation Days, we have a Friday 13th in March, but we don't get another one until November. Poor Plagg, at least he had three relatively in a row: September, December, and now March... One every 3 months is pretty cool....

2020 Resolution #5: Continue my weekly blog post routine

This will forever and always be one of my resolutions, until it becomes second nature to me. I will attempt to write one blog post each week. I will try to not miss a week and then have to make up for it via a double-posting. I will try to plan ahead so I have the blog post ready ahead of time on Tuesdays where I work or are otherwise busy. Considering it's already past my noon posting time, and I was three days late in posting last week, I won't bother attempting to post at a regular time. This year is just "once per week; preferably on Tuesdays" and I'll build from there next year.

2020 Resolution #6: Track my reading

Once again, due to how crazy December was for me, I neglected to find an official reading challenge for 2020. I also neglected to write one up myself. Instead, I'm going to try again with simply track my reading: How much do I read, how frequently do I read, how much do I read in fanfiction compared to traditional publishing, etc?

With the frantic pacing of this year, I don't recall going back and reading anything yet. Great start, huh? Especially when a friend of mine has already blown through her first book. Still, January is "Trial Month" this year, so I have time to "catch up", as it were. So, from now on, at the end of each blog post, I will attempt to include a QUICK recap of what I read that week, to better keep track of it all. Along those lines, I am a fan of fantasy, urban fantasy, "modern" sci-fi - so stuff set before 2100, Steampunk, and comedy. If anyone has any recommendations, please feel free to leave them in the comments section below.

Now, if you couldn't quite tell based on my post being roughly 80% about my resolutions, I haven't really done much writing yet this year. I spent last week cleaning, working, and trying to get my blog post up. Then post-blog-publishing on Friday, it was back to cleaning. Saturday was the tail end of last-minute cleaning before the fam showed up, then it was a weekend with them. They left about 3pm on Sunday, and then it was time to do more cleaning; mostly 4 loads of laundry.

Yesterday I just needed a break. After I was done with work, I picked Hubby up from his job, and we did quick grocery shopping. Then we made dinner, ate, and I crashed. I tried going through the countless Tumblr posts I have backlogged, or read and comment on reviews I received, or read and comment on Taurus Pixie's latest blog post, or reply to ChibiSunnie on Facebook. Each time my mind just went, "Nope. We're shutting down now. Catch ya tomorrow."

So I did indeed hit all of that - minus the Tumblr feed - first thing this morning to make sure I had the energy to do so. One of the reasons this post is late... but... priorities.

I did intend to spend last night starting this blog post, as an attempt to get the post written Monday nights, and simply edited Tuesday mornings; making it easier to publish on time.

Generated by Bitmoji

With laundry caught up on, I don't have to do that tonight, and with Hubby and I doing our shopping last night, that's another chore I usually do on Tuesdays and don't have to. I also don't have writing group tonight, so that's two extra hours in the evening. Perhaps I can use all of that newly found time to get back to writing. I'd love to give you an update on that next week.

In the meantime, though, holy smokes did I get awesome gifts this Christmas!

Hubby had given me the SOFTEST throw blanket in the shape and style of the Hylian Shield from the Legend of Zelda franchise.

Found on Amazon

He also got me a set of Steampunk D&D dice that are brown and yellow with gear designs on each side. There was also a bunch of "little things" sprinkled throughout December, but those were the two "main gifts" from him.

I also got a copy of Muppet Treasure Island from my sister-in-law. This has to be my favorite Muppets movie, and up until Christmas, I only had my VHS copy. My father-in-law gifted me a journal, pens, and a book on grammar. My manager also gifted me a journal and pens, because people are enablers of my addiction to journals/notebooks. My other co-worker gifted me a room escape game that will be fun to try out.

I already shared last week the story that I was gifted in the Secret Santa exchange.

Then there was my mom! I got two new bracelets with encouraging inscriptions on them and other such positive meanings behind them. She also got me an assortment of books to help me with writing prompts, and world building, and even map drawing! Whoot! Then there was also the friggen Ocarina!

Found on Amazon

I've wanted one pretty much ever since I found out they recreated the Ocarina of Time from the Zelda game of the same name. I kept delaying my purchase for whatever reason, but Mom swooped in and got one for me. Now to try it out and see if I can actually learn how to play the thing. It didn't really go well when I tried learning the alto horn and trumpet in middle school, but that was MIDDLE SCHOOL. I'm much older, more mature, and more determined to learn now.

I'm just nervous to start with anyone around. I'll most likely be squeaky and out of tune to start, and I don't want to annoy anyone with my practices. I'll keep you posted on my progress with that, though.

I also got a message from ChibiSunnie last week, wishing me a happy new year, and to digitally gift me my annual Christmas card. Look at how amazing it looks!!!!

Christmas card created by Chibisunnie
See the full-sized image on her art blog

EEEEEE, it's steampunk Kyoru! I love it! You can see how much I love it in my reblog of it. I'll spare those of you who didn't click that link by simplifying my feelings to: LOOK HOW PRETTY! EVERYONE GIVE IT LOVE!!!!


Now... as much as I hate stating that one gift in particular "won" over all of the other fantastic and amazing and heartfelt gifts I received, I'm certainly leaning towards stating that my sister kinda "won" Christmas this year.

Last year, while I was still gushing about how well Peeping Tomcat had done the first year it was live, my mom asked for a Word document version of the story. It's hard for her to read it off the sites I posted to, and for some reason she wasn't a fan of the PDF or other e-reader download options available off of AO3. So I went ahead and sent her the original document.

A little while later, my sister also asked for the file. I found it odd that she needed her own copy, but I ran with it. For her, I sent the Word document as well as the PDF. About a month or so later, she asked me about the image I used for the PT cover:

The official cover art I used for
my FFN and AO3 postings

The banner image I used for promotions
since it took up less space.
I also used this for each of the AO3 chapter titles.

My "spidey-sense" was tingling when she asked for the cover art images. I had suspected that she was planning on doing something with them to help commemorate my first novel-length bit of writing.

That was back in like May or June, though, so when my birthday came and went and I didn't get anything, I just shrugged it off, and kind of forgot about it.

Until Saturday, when I opened my sister's gift, and saw this.

I flipped open the book and....

MY SISTER FRIGGEN PUBLISHED MY FANFICTION FOR ME!!!!!

Now, it isn't available for public consumption in physical form; it's not for sale since it is fanfiction and I don't have the right to sell a story filled with someone else's characters and world-build. Still, IT'S FLIPPIN' PUBLISHED! I CAN PUT PEEPING TOMCAT ON MY BOOKSHELF!

How cool is that!? How have I not thought to do this myself?

The poor thing was having one heck of a time with the story, though. The formatting kept fighting her - must be a family trait - and my copy is actually the third one she bought, which is why I didn't receive it as a 35th birthday gift. The first publication turned out way too large - from how she described it, it sounds like a Coffee Table Book - and so that's now my mom's copy. She likes that the font is so large, so it's easier for her to read. Plus, Mom prefers reading physical novels over e-books. The second version was with a matte hardcover, but my sister wasn't a fan of how that turned out, and there were still formatting errors within the text, so that's now her copy.

My copy still has - I think she counted six? - formatting errors in the text itself, but the gloss finish cover and size were closer to what she wanted to get for me, so that's the version I now own. I don't mind the errors. As Hubby joked, it's probably fewer than what appears in most professionally published work. I'm just so friggen excited about having a physical copy of my work like this!

Maki Natsuo from the anime Love Lab

So, super duper humungo thanks, Sis, for the gift. It is suuuuch a motivational boost for my writing! Plus, it's further incentive to get that re-read of PT done so I can better get a feel for OatS.

Also... now I know where to go to print off a physical copy of OatS once I finally have THAT story done!

Okay, it's now 2:30, and this is yet ANOTHER epic post. So I'll cut off here. Until next week, you guys.

Generated by Bitmoji