So, I’ve talked a lot of talk in my first entry. What exactly have I done to accomplish the, so called, walking of the walk? Well, let’s see. On the first Saturday of every month, I will be making a list of what I have accomplished in the month before and my goals for the one following. I think it’ll be a good practice in accountability.

Check out the Current Projects page to see what I’m trying to get done this year, and to see my current progress, read below the cut.

Feel free to harass me about any failed goals because I assure you, they were 100% possible and I just grew lazy. Any failures are fault of my work ethic and not my circumstances, and for that I should be criticized.

U8 – Chapter 1 of my online novel series, Crossing the Line, is now available on this blog! (At least it better be, future-me, since I am writing this post two weeks in advance). It will be updating on a monthly schedule unless I somehow finish the whole thing ahead of time.

• Feb. 1, 2016: Status update from the future, past-me, and the chapter is still not done. I have taken a mental health day from my morning classes in attempt to accomplish this today. Let’s see how this goes.
• Feb 5, 2016: So this is the day before the story’s gotta go up, and it is substandard, past-me. I have learned a lot in this past week, and I’m going to share my findings below.
• 9:19 AM: I was so dissatisfied with yesterday’s draft that I have started over this morning, and I am definitely not going to make it within the hour.
• 10:03 AM: I have failed to complete the chapter, but there is enough here to read if you want. I’ll make another update when it’s done.
• 3:41 PM: I have completed my Saturday  afternoon responsibilities for now. I must now finish the chapter before my Saturday evening responsibilities.
• Feb. 11, 2016: Finished the rough draft of the chapter. Way overdue. I’ll have to do better next month.

First of all, I need more work ethic. Like I said, this was an exercise in accountability, so I should have expected some weakness in this department, but wow. I could have baked a wedding cake in the time I spent on Tumblr instead of writing. I had a snow day and I still wasn’t done. I don’t think I wrote for more than a consecutive twenty minutes at a time. Completely unacceptable, me, for shame.

Secondly, I need to write by hand more – if I know for a fact that it will get the raw feeling into a draft more effectively, why aren’t I doing it? Why, laziness of course. Unfortunately, that’s not an excuse I’m allowing myself this year, so I’ll have to fix it. Writing by hand is somehow more cathartic and less structured, so it allows me to be more free with my thoughts. I mean, yeah, the writing style sucks, but the story progression and dialogue ends up so much more natural!

Thirdly, and most importantly I have learned (writing this at 9:22 of the morning this post is going up;;), I need to write the way I want to. There’s no point in catering to my audience if I strangle my voice in the process, which is exactly what I did for the past week, and the reason that 3k+ words were scrapped the day before deadline. There is no point in me writing my stories unless I write it in a way only I can, in the way I want to.

As for my other projects, uh… well, they’re not relevant just yet. Stop by later and give Chapter 1 of Crossing the Line a read, if you’d like!