ROW80 – Page 12 – Linda Nelson

I’m not much of a goal setter except for maybe in the writing category. The past few years I have been setting my writing goals at one to two books a year. I don’t see this changing much, even though I need new goals. It’s a new year and new goals make old goals the things of the past.

At this time, I’m also supposed to be setting my ROW80 goals for the year.

Oh and it is Football season too!

Here they are:

Hit the treadmill for a minimum of 15 minutes a day.
Write something every day – whether it is blogging or that work in progress.
Write a minimum of 1k words a week. This would equal the word count of a short novel and is my average word count for my already published works.
Cut a minimum of 2k words from the beginning of the manuscript I am currently working on. If I do this as a rule of thumb, it may have a immense impact on how my stories will turn out.

So far for 2014, I have been meeting most of these goals.

Now I want to throw in a bucket list.

How many of you, out there, keep a bucket list?

I’ve had one for many years.

Go surf casting and catch a big fish.
Hike Mount Monadnock with son for his Climb for Recovery they have annually at the Phoenix House, a local drug rehab facility.
Trip to the beach. It’s been a while since I have been to a beach. Hampton would be nice.
Go to a Fisher Cats Ballgame.
I’d like to do some candlepin bowling.
Visit my Daughter and Granddaughter in Upstate New York
Attend the Deb Dixon workshop in May. (Oh right, that would be a writing goal – jeez)
Then here’s another writing one to add even if it fits my bucket list too. Attend the New England Romance Writers Conference. I’ve never been to a writing conference, and it would be neat to attend one nearby where I live.

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ROW80 will be starting up again this week. I have yet to post my goals for this round. Kait also asked if we would try to find things were grateful for during this round. So I will start off by stating what I’m grateful for this weekend.

I’m grateful for being able to spend the holidays with my son. This is a tremendous deal. Addiction is a big deal, and the child addict is not always able to spend a peaceful holiday with their parent(s). Peaceful is not a common word amongst addicts and their families. But it was for mine this year. Quiet and Peaceful.

While I feel as though I have cornered the market on the Peaceful Holiday season, I know of the many parents who have lost their child during this season to the illness of addiction. My heart goes out to them, and I hope that they may find the strength to carry on.

ROW80 Update:

I’m still working on that same #wip I was working on for NaNo. I was going to put it aside and work on something else, but the story kept calling out to me. With the first 19k words done on it, I couldn’t write anymore on it even though I wanted to. I was stumped.

I kept thinking and thinking about why, then it dawned on me. I needed to change up a couple of chapters. They weren’t working. So this morning, I deleted – that’s right – I deleted 2k words. I would never have considered do this had I not sat a year ago before my RWA group for a critique and they cut over 1k from Along Came Neil, and it did wonders.

So I cut, and I may have to cut more too.

I did manage to replace most of the word count afterwards, and the characters are behaving more realistic. Or as realistic as one can get in a fantasy – lol.

This leads me to another grateful mention – I’m grateful for those gals teaching me it is okay to cut a chapter here and there to make the story structure sounder.

How’s your ROW80 panning out for the week? Are you cutting and adding? Just cutting or only adding?

I’d love to hear from you.