Saturday, May 30, 2015

Monthly Summary: May 2015




Oh. My. Gosh. This has been a busy month, the busiest one of the year by far. I've been traveling and seeing family like crazy, plus writing to get my books ready for submission to editors and agents. Writing has been TOUGH to squeeze in, but I have managed it--except I fell behind and now I have to catch up. Still, it has been a fun month.

What I did:

1.) I've been writing every day this month with a minimum of 1000 words and a max of 3000 and I'm finally nearing the end of the rewrite of Red Hood! I've also been writing in Subsapien Biomech when I can, but I may not finish until participating in the July Camp NaNo (which I was not planning on, but this book needs to be done. :P )


2.) I wrote a review of Age of Ultron for Geeks Under Grace! I looooved the movie!


3.) I went to my cousin's wedding in Tennessee and saw a lot of my family! It was so fun. We stayed in an awesome hotel with clear elevators and my own little desk for writing.

Me (left) and my sister Mc'Khayla (right)

4.) I finished From the Mouth of Elijah by Bryan Davis and Failstate: Legends by John W. Otte! Reviews coming up soon!


5.) I did (and still am at the time of writing this post) visiting my best friend down in Florida for her high school graduation! We've been writing together the last few nights! She pretends to hate it, but we both know better.

Me (left) and bestie Cassidy (right)
6.) I've finished at least one drawing this month: Happy Matt! The first happy one I've drawn lol. I'm trying to finish the Matt expressions, but this month has been so busy ... Oish. I'm chronicling my drawing challenge over on my deviantART which I really need to update ... I will when I get back from my trip lol.



What I Learned:

1.) Don't Procrastinate - I'm really regretting procrastinating with Red Hood. It was due to busy-ness yes, but I should have focused more then I wouldn't have to write 20,000 words in two weeks. So basically stick to your project and stay focused and schedule around vacation time.

2.) Writing in Bits - To catch up on writing I've had to get over 3,000 words every day before going out of town which is way above my average. What helped me accomplish this was writing in bits. Every hour I would write for ten minutes, in which I would get 250 or more words written. This way it spread out the work and made that large word count far less intimidating.

3.) SCHEDULE - Like I've said, this month has been nuts and I would never have gotten all my posts in consistently if I didn't plan out what I was going to post and scheduled as many as possible. I cannot stress this enough. If you want to be consistent then planning your blogging schedule for the month (or even further ahead), then posting on time becomes far easier.

4.) Line by Line Editing in Person is Fun - Since I've been at my bestie's the last few days, I've been able to be with one of my writing buddies in person. During that time, she has helped me edit blog posts (like this one). It's really fun to read out a post and have your friend give you live critique of it.
(EDITOR'S NOTE. Yep. This has been happening. ^ ^ Frequently and often. It's fun for the editor, too :P)

Me (left) and my bestie Cassidy (right)
5.) Word Warring in Person is Fun - My bestie and I have also been word warring the past few nights despite our full schedules. It's really been a motivator and it's fun to discuss the warring sessions between each war. Doing it over chat is fine, but in person is definitely the best.


What I'm Going to Do:

1.) I'm going to finish the rewrite of Red Hood by June 7th and start micro edits that Monday! Normally I would wait a bit, but I'm on a time limit since I want the book to be ready by September. I'm also going to continue to try to get Subsapien Biomech done. July for sure. Working on two books at the same time is hard.


2.) In the drawing department, I'm going to work on Emil's and Mor's expression challenges and hopefully finally get to that Matt and Bryce drawing of them happy.

3.) My cousins are coming to visit from South Carolina!

4.) Some friends of mine are coming up to go the zoo!

5.) I'm currently reading The Seventh Door by Bryan Davis. Next I'm going to read Omega Dragon by Bryan Davis and Failstate: Nemesis by John W. Otte.



Last Month on Stori Tori's Blog ...

The top five most popular post on the blog for May 2015 were:

1.) Writing Lessons from TV Shows: Avatar: The Last Airbender



2.) Beautiful People #9: Ingrid



3.) The Book of Encouragement


4.) Interview with Dina (Red Hood)


5.) 7 Tips on How to Give Your Shorts Stories the Power of a Tornado, A Guest Post by Cassia Taylor



Coming Soon to Stori Tori's Blog ...

Here are some of the posts coming up!

For Tea Tuesdays, we've got more Firefly blends coming up!

June 5: I'm calling for questions for Faol, a werewolf from my steampunk fantasy Red Hood! The interview will be following two weeks afterward. 


Faol
June 6: On this day, I'm doing a post on Inciting Incidents.

June 12: I'm contributing in a blog tour for Turning Point, a really exciting YA collaboration project. 

June 13: A book review of Song of the Ovulum by Bryan Davis.



June 20: A how to post most likely on anime relating to writing. I'll probably update this with a confirmed title. 

June 26: Beautiful People!


That what be happening in the life of this aspiring writer! I'm slowly working my way toward my goals and I'm hoping one of these publishers for Red Hood will be the one. *crosses fingers*


How was your month? What did you do? Are you looking forward to any of the upcoming posts?

If you liked this post, come back every Saturday for more writing advice, character interviews, book reviews and more! On Sundays I have Soundtrack Sundays where I post a new score piece, Tuesdays are Tea Tuesdays with tea reviews, Wednesdays I have Wonderful Word Wednesdays where I post a new vocabulary word, and Fridays are Fan Fridays where I post tags and other goodies. To help support my dream to be an author follow this blog, like me on Facebook, watch me on deviantART, and follow me on Pinterest and Twitter. If you want to know more about my books check out them out here. Thank you! :)



2 comments:

  1. WOW! That's a lot of writing! Great job!! I did horribly with my writing this past month. I need to get control of my life. XD


    In tomorrow's post, I'll be linking back to your Book of Encouragement post, because that was an awesome idea that I want to share with my readers! :D

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  2. Thank you. ^ ^ You can do it! :D

    Oh that's so awesome! I'm so glad you like it! Have you tried doing an encouragement book? Thank you for commenting!

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