Last week I laid out my tentative plans for the month. As we discussed, December’s always a bit of a pit for me, creatively-speaking. Too much other things to focus on, burnout from November in one way or another, a new year and new possibilities looming…
…and yet, I always try. Maybe one year I’ll take the month off and just…watch Christmas romances on Netflix or something.
(I’ve actually read two Christmas romances in the last few weeks, so…)
As a reminder, here are my goals for the month:
- Write an additional 15K on my Nano story. Historically it has been hard to keep going on the Nano story post-Nano, but every time I hold out hope that this is the year that it actually happens.
- Put out my fourth nonfiction book (this one is on writing consistently) and its associated workbook.
- Finally finish updating my email list and its automations.
- Start drawing now–don’t wait til January.
- Read 4 additional books, which will get me to my yearly 50-book goal.
- Outline next SkillShare class.
- Start programming again.
We’re a week and a half in, so how are things going?
- I’ve written maybe 300 words on my Nano story. I mean, the month is young, 15K is ten days of 1500 words, but…well, we’ll see.
- The pre-order for the fourth nonfiction book is up (here) and I’ve made the cover and gone through my beta comments for both it and the workbook. Next step is to do the final edit on both and write the book descriptions.
- I finished updating my list! My automations are going, I’ve fixed a few bugs, I’ve managed my audiences, and frankly, made more progress in the last week than the other two years I’ve had the list. (If you’re interested yourself–I’ve got the list streamlined by different books, with free short stories for each–click “get updates” in the header up above.)
- I started drawing! I took a class on making any animal cute, and am currently working on a coloring class.
- I’ve read five books. And I’ve got more than half the month to go! This might explain why writing’s not really happening.
- I’ve picked a topic for the next SkillShare class–planning writing time into your schedule–but that’s as far as I’ve gotten.
- I did a practice exercise in Python, but the test program kept rejecting it. Finally looked at the solution, and for the life of me, I don’t see the difference between my program and the solution. Which is about how programming typically goes for me, which is perhaps an indication that I’m barking up the wrong tree.
I bought some watercolor pencils off of Amazon on Black Friday, but I don’t think they actually are. Watercolor pencils, I mean. I used them to color the tiger and the squid, and then I tried to activate them on the tiger, which, as you can see, did not happen. (It mostly smeared things about.) So now I’m just using them as normal colored pencils, and my mother gave me a set of watercolor pencils she’s not using at the moment.
(I tested them and they work as expected. Lesson here is to not fall for Amazon’s lightning deals, though I needed colored pencils so it’s not a complete loss.)
(I mean, they came with a paintbrush and everything, they just don’t work. I don’t know.)
I’ll force December to be productive yet! How’s your month going? I’m actually fairly on top of holiday things too, which almost never happens.
