Wednesday, October 3, 2018

Wait...What...I missed an entire month?

2018 Year of the New: Get it together, Arista!

So apparently after my experiment with waking up early to find time to write (which did NOT work for me), it messed up my schedule so much that I missed an entire month. Like, where did September go?

Did I do stuff? I don't know.

Did I forget stuff? I don't know.

So obviously I need to get it together. I've got a few friends who keep it together with bullet journals
or gratitude books or fancy ways of keeping to-do lists and coloring and writing out what happened that week. They write down their shopping lists, schedules, and keep track of goals in it. And they are all colorful and on pretty pages in fancy journals with fancy tape.

I've never been a journal person. Even when I was little and everyone would get me journals, I would just use those to write stories in. I've never really chronicled my life in any way. Perhaps it is because I know that my external life is really boring, while my internal one is cray-cray.

But I've been reading a few articles in conjunction with the Year of the New and several mentioned writing out small goals. I wrote out my goals in May and that seemed to work. I hit every one of those, so perhaps, a mixture of smaller goals with some sort of journal to help chronicle exactly what I am doing with my time. I know that it won't slow down time, but it will at least help me see what I've been doing (if not writing). Small goals most often take the form of pages editing or words written toward a set number.

So as you can see to the left, I've gotten myself a SIMPLE calendar to put my stuff on and have marked out my need for this month: A final polish on a manuscript before it goes on submission. So a 300 page novel, with a need for about 20 pages a day to make sure that I can have it in my the middle of the month.

And I swear I am not hyperventilating at the sheer number of things on my calendar on the third day of the month (breathes into bag).

The other part of this goal-tracking thing seems to be rewarding yourself for a job well done. I wrote in August about feeding your muse, so it makes sense that once my monthly goals have been written down and achieved that I should get some sort of carrot at the end of the rope, right? I mean, no one edits because they like it, right?


And Netflix, as always has delivered, in the handsome and English embodiment of
Charlie Cox. Daredevil Season 3 comes out on October 19th. I have a huge spot in my heart for this city-driven and super violent show and this adorable actor, so it seems like it is the PERFECT reward for completing my editing goals for the month.

So lets get this month done people!!


Carry Onward, dear readers.

Amanda Arista
Author, Diaries of an Urban Panther series
www.amandaarista.com



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