Accountability Tuesdays – Week 42

I’m going to be honest right from the get-go: I have no idea what happened this week. It seems as though everything pretty much fell apart on me, or a couple of the days just vanished without me knowing. There was at least one day spent on a very long shopping trip, looking for the necessary materials for the little missy’s Halloween costume, so I know where that day went, but I’ll be damned if I can tell you what happened to the other six. So lets…let’s just go through the motions, shall we?

Health and Body Image Goal

I’ll admit right off the bat that there was no exercise done at all this week (unless you count that one day of wandering around malls for several hours straight). So I guess that completely demolishes my October mini-goal of exercising every day, hmm? I’m not entirely sure what happened, but it seems to have been a mixture of having a million other things to do and sleeping like death every night. Seriously, I’ve been sleeping about ten hours a night the last week. No idea what’s going on there, and it really cuts into the day.

Excuses, excuses, I know. But on the upside, I’ve been trying to do some little things to help myself perk back up, like forcing myself to eat something for breakfast (I am not a breakfast person; never have been, never will be), and drinking extra glasses of water throughout the day. As yet these little changes seem to be doing bugger all for me, so I’m starting to wonder if I’m not sick or something. Or maybe just stressed. Stressed is definitely a possibility.

As a side note, I bought myself two really cute, long-over-the-butt-style sweater shirts the other day…that has nothing to do with health, obviously, but I look really cute in them so I’m filing the purchase under “body image”. 😛

Editing Goal

This is my biggest disappointment this week because I was actually doing quite well and then just…crickets. Fields of chirping crickets. I did manage to get up an hour before the rest of the family yesterday and whip through a chapter, but I’m still behind if I want to finish by the end of the month. Hoping to grind through today.

The additional kick in the pants is that I’ve been sinking deeper and deeper into “evil internal editor” mode. Other writers will know this as the mode in which your internal editor starts to tell you everything that’s wrong with your novel and starts to scream obscenities about doing a complete rewrite. Successful writers will know this as the mode in which you have to grit your teeth, drown that annoying little voice in your head whatever way you can and just finish. No story is every really done, and it can always be changed, which is the kind of thing that drives an author mad, so you have to push past those impulses if you don’t want to be working on the same book for thirty years. I definitely do not want to be working on this book for the next thirty years. So I’m going to push through, throw it at my beta reader, and run away screaming. Hopefully once she’s read through it she won’t have a laundry list of items for me to change once NaNoWriMo is over.

1,000,000 Words Goal

Well I can’t say that it was my worst week, so I guess that’s something. Actually, it was quite a good week compared to some of my weeks from earlier in the year; it just wasn’t all I’d hoped for. Most of my word count came from scheduling blog posts, which hasn’t really be going as well as I’d hoped (why is it so hard to think of things to talk about in advance?), and a few are from yesterday morning when I realized I hadn’t been working on the editing and went nuts on a chapter. The grand total for the week is a respectable 7520. Respectable, but not good enough for my tastes. So here’s hoping I can get the fingers working again this week and rip through as much editing and as many blog posts as possible before month’s end. The NaNoWriMo monster is coming to steal me away, and he has chains and whips. o_o

Accountability Tuesdays – Week 29

Before I get on with the accountability today, I want to mention a couple of things.

First, a huge hug to the new followers I’ve been getting on this blog and on Twitter. I’m not sure exactly what I’ve been doing lately that suddenly has people sneaking in out of the shadows toward my sites, but I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Welcome, thanks for coming, and I hope you stick around! 🙂

Second, on a whim I recently tried Googling myself, and I was quite amused to find that the first three results were actually me. I rather don’t need my 9gag profile popping up on Google, but I was happy to see that the second result was this blog and the third was my 750Words.com account. It’s a good sign when your real persona pops up on Google, right?

Third: a call out for info and/or advice. I’ve Googled this problem many times but I can never seem to find anything that quite matches my issue. I’ve been having trouble sleeping again (it seems to happen for several weeks at a time, a few times a year), and the issue as far as I can describe it is that I spend an inordinate amount of time in dream sleep (REM sleep), meaning that my rest isn’t, well…restful. I’m waking up feeling like hell even when I sleep 9 or more hours, and it’s very wearing. I’ve consulted my doctor before and his only suggestion was to try antidepressants, which I thought was a little silly and insulting since I’m pretty damn confident that I’m not depressed. So since I can’t seem to find any information on my own, I thought I’d ask here on the off-chance someone may know something or suffer from similar. Help?

Okay, on to the accountability.

Health and Body Image Goal

If I’m totally honest, I’ve plummeted miserably on this one. I’ve been doing no form of exercise and have been eating rather terribly. It doesn’t help that I’m experiencing sleep issues, as mentioned above. I keep trying to convince myself to get up a little early in the mornings (before it’s scorching hot out) and do my zombie runs, but I haven’t been able to manage it because I’m so damn tired. I need some motivation, terribly, and that’s a fact.

Editing Goal

It’s been a surprisingly busy week so I haven’t managed to sit down at my laptop for very long periods of time, but I’m still (slowly) plugging away at my supernatural romance. Really, really looking forward to finishing so I can submit it to a publisher and move on to my zombie apocalypse.

1,000,000 Word Goal

It hasn’t been a great week, but I did manage to get a few words in. Between blogging and a return to 750Words, I managed to get in 4802 words this week. I’m hoping to ramp it up this week through a series of ideas I’ve compiled, one of which is to use 750Words.com in the mornings to empty my brain of the dreams I’m plagued with every night. It might be a pro-bono situation…I get extra words, and maybe writing down the dreams will make them go the hell away. Starting this Sunday, as well, I plan to start reading The Artist’s Way and work my way through the 12-week process, so look forward to that.

29 weeks down, 23 to go. Here’s hoping the remaining 23 start to look up a little!

Accountability Tuesdays – Week 24

Do I look super sweet and trustworthy? I only ask because today marked just about the hundredth time that an elderly lady picked me – out of an entire airport full of people – to ask where she had to go/what she had to do or to just sit down and start having a conversation with me like we were old pals. I’m not complaining, I just find it humorous. I’m a young adult wandering around an airport with a Batman t-shirt and “I didn’t get a wink of sleep last night” bags under my eyes, and somehow this translates to “ideal travel companion” to little old ladies. *shrug*

Oh wait, I’m traveling again… That must mean its time for more accountability. Huzzah! 😛

Health and Body Image
I’m sad to say that I tapered off on this one last week, mostly because it rained and rained and rained, and I just can’t deal with running in the rain. On that note, after my husband asked me what the hell I was going to do in the winter, I started working on cleaning up our basement so I can use the treadmill again. Not ideal (I find running on a treadmill really hard on my knees) but it’ll be better than not doing anything. In the meantime I’m on my way back out to Fort Mac, where it’s dry as a bone 90% of the time, so yay for getting back to running! The audial zombies have been waiting for me, I’m sure.

Editing Goal
As previously mentioned, I’ve been trying to get rid of my short supernatural romance before moving back to my zombie novel. It’s much quicker going – I’m already halfway through chapter 3 of 10 – so I don’t expect it to take too long. Though I much, much prefer to work within Scrivener, I’ve exported my files and taken them out West with me on my tablet so I can continue to pluck away. Hopefully I won’t screw up my formatting…that stuff drives me looney.

1,000,000 Word Goal
I did a silly thing this week. Namely, I forgot to keep track of my writing. Mostly I only did blog posts, and I can tell you that those accounted for 4329 words, but there’s some more in there somewhere from reworded romance scenes that I neglected to record. I can figure it out…but not without my laptop. So for now we’ll go with the 4329. I’ll add the rest at a later date and report my grand total instead.

And now, my friends, it’s time for another plane ride. Thank puppies I have a good book to read.

Accountability Tuesdays – Week 23

Would you look at that? Spring actually exists in Nova Scotia! I was really starting to wonder, but Mother Nature has proven my suspicions wrong again, and in one day she managed to sunburn me. You’re a horrible witch, Mother Nature. That’s why I hide inside like a vampire.

Okay, enough foolishness, let’s get down to it:

Health and Body Image Goal

As per tradition, I’ve been eating pretty poorly while I’ve been home, thought it’s been less because of the abundance of awesome food and more because I’ve been extremely busy. Cleaning and cooking are one thing, but having our niece over for a night…those 36 hours may have taken a year off my life. o.O

That said, I’m not feeling too shabby. I gave myself almost a full week off to let my legs heal (running in cheap, Walmart sneakers is not advisable…I ended up with major shin splints and a very achy knee), and then I went out running with my new Saucony sneakers. I know nothing about running shoes, but I thought I’d give these a shot since they were rated well and happened to be on sale, and I’m pretty happy. They give me a little bounce and definitely cushion the impact of hitting the ground. I think I will do well with these.

As an additional note, I hopped on the scale yesterday to see if maybe I was lucky enough to finally drop a pound or two, and found that I’d dropped almost five! Huzzah! A specific amount of weight loss is not my primary goal, but I definitely have some to lose, so it’s good that it’s going. Sometime soon I’ll track down a measuring tape and see what my measurements are looking like as well. I’d like to lose some belly fat, as I’m constantly reading about the dangers of it.

Editing Goal

This is a bit of an odd week that I’m not sure how to report. You see, I technically have been doing some editing…just not on what I’m supposed to be working on. It’s going to take me a while to finish editing Nowhere to Hide, and it occurred to me that the less I have to think about, the easier it will be to find the time and energy to work on it. So I’ve set it aside (for a very short time, I swear) in order to instead edit a short supernatural romance I’ve had done for a while. I know I can whip through this one pretty quickly (I’m already finished two of the ten chapters), and when it’s done I can submit it to the publishers I have in mind and then not worry about it for a while. So, I guess you can say I’ve made progress in that sense, right? 🙂

1,000,000 Word Goal

While focusing on everything else, the actual writing tends to slow down, but I’m happy to report that I managed to squeak out 6867 words over the past week, amongst a number of different things. Currently my yearly total sits at about 125k, which is nowhere where I wanted it to be, but still very good for me. In the coming weeks (particularly if I get laid off soon, which is very likely) I plan to delve into a few books on writing that I hope will help my productivity, amongst other areas. In particular I think I’d like to try out The Artist’s Way. I’m a bit put off by the word “spiritual” in the sub-title, because that word always makes me think of religion, but fellow blogger thelivingnotebook has been talking about the book lately and he makes it sound very interesting, so I’ll give it a shot. 🙂

Now, unfortunately, I have to pull myself out of my cave so I can walk my daughter to playgroup. And you can be damn sure I’ll be covered in sunscreen this time.

Accountability Tuesdays – Week 20

You know what I hate? Like, really, full-on, have-to-hold-myself-back-from-flying-into-a-rage hate? People at airports hocking credit cards. It’s not just the fact that I don’t like having crap hocked at me, or that I find it incredibly annoying when I’m rushing toward my gate and someone starts shouting interest rates at me, although those things are part of it. No, what I really hate is the insufferable persistence. Even if its not me they’re talking to, I loathe hearing a credit card salesperson continue spewing their spiel when the poor patron they’re annoying has already said “no thanks” half a dozen times. I know it’s their job, but it doesn’t stop me from thinking of them as the rudest pieces of crap in existence.

That’s why, today, when I noticed one of these people being particularly persistent and annoying with everyone who walked past, I happily walked close enough to be hailed and then proceeded to pretend I was deaf. Let me tell you, there is nothing quite so amusing as the look on a rude arsehole’s face when he realizes he can’t communicate with you. Made my travel day right there. Ha!

Anyway, I suppose I’ve got some accountability stuff to get out of the way? Okay, let’s do it.

Health and Body Image Goal
Okay, it’s a new week. I tend to eat a lot of salads while I’m out West and it looks like the weather is going to be great for jogging, so we’re on the right track for the follow days. What about last week, you ask? Don ask about last week. Last week was…decadent. Or maybe slovenly is a better word. Gimmi a break, I was busy with heavy trash pickup and Spring cleaning!

Editing Goal
I haven’t figured out a better method yet, but for the time being I’ve got a few dozen more pages printed out to work on. I glanced over them on one of the planes out here, so I’ve got an idea of where I’m headed. Again, if anyone has any ideas about how I can make editing a little easier than constantly dragging piles of printouts back and forth across the country with me, please share!

1,000,000 Word Goal
It wasn’t a great week due to the aforementioned heavy trash and Spring cleaning, but I did manage to squeak out 2287 words worth of blog entries. My plan for the coming weeks is I temporarily set aside my work-in-progress (on which I’ve been having a butt-load of writer’s block) and spend a little time concentrating on something easier and more fun: my Final Fantasy III/VI novelization, which I’ve been posting bits of during Fiction Fragment Fridays. So look forward to more of that!

And now, if you don’t mind, I have one 2-hour bus ride left before I land in camp and I plan to spend it reclined and listening to some classic rock (i.e. “ZZZzzzzzz…..”)

Accountability Tuesdays – Week 19

~Raindrops keep falling on my head…~
Literally and figuratively! It’s raining out again (I love you, Spring weather [/sarcasm]) and I had the pleasure of watching the Toronto Maple Leafs completely blow a 4-1 lead in game 7 of the first round playoffs. ARG.

With that depressing thought in mind, I don’t have much to report this week.

Health and Body Image Goal
My intention when I got home was to continue on with the Zombies! Run! program and try to get my energy up enough to maybe do something a little more intense. The days and days of rain put the kibosh on that. We’ve only had two half-days of decent weather so far since I’ve been home, and I spent those outside playing with the baby and tossing some junk to the curb for heavy trash pick-up. Why didn’t I just run in the rain, you ask? Because screw that, that’s why. *grumble grumble, excuses excuses*

Editing Goal
I haven’t done any actual editing, but I’ve been working on figuring out a better method. So far I’ve been printing out so many pages of my manuscript at a time and scribbling all over it in red ink. While this method is somehow strangely satisfying, it’s slow and messy and requires me to lug a bunch of printed sheets back and forth across the country with me. It would be a lot simpler if I could just use Scrivener, but since I take my tablet out West with me instead of my laptop and the internet out there isn’t reliable enough for any kind of remote access setup, that’s not really an option. I’ve recently downloaded an app called Kingsoft, which might be a better word processor than the one that comes with the tablet, so we’ll see…but in the meantime, if anyone has any better suggestions to make editing quicker and easier, please share!

1,000,000 Word Goal
I might have to hide my head in shame on this one. After doing a quick count of a couple of pages I wrote for my Final Fantasy fanfiction recently, I found that this week I wrote a grand total of 749 words. That’s 749 words that I may not have written, but still. For shame. I’m getting ever closer to having a week during which I write 0 words, and that is all kinds of not good. It’s almost as though other things keep coming up to keep me away from writing…huh. Well, anyway, if you’ll excuse me I have to go cuddle up and watch My Little Pony with my daughter now. 😛

Accountability Tuesdays – Week 14

It’s the best time of the month. I’m boarding the bus to go to my last day of work for the shift, and that shift is only six hours long. What could be better?

Well, a lot of things, I’m sure, but still, I’m in a pretty damn good mood. And I’m not going to let Accountability Tuesday ruin it for me! Dammit! 😛

Health and Body Image Goal
I’ve been having a very difficult time on the exercise front, which I hope will be at least partly reduced once the Albertan sun starts coming up earlier. I’ve just been so tired and it really doesn’t seem as though there are enough hours in the day! That said, I have been doing fairly well with food intake over the past few days. Making salads, eating egg whites, all that kind of thing. Mind you all of that is likely to go to hell when my flight lands in Nova Scotia, but at least this week was good. 😛

Editing Goal
There’s not a great deal to report, although I’ve finally actually gotten going. It’s a slow process because I haven’t done any in such a while that I’m still more or less trying to remember what’s happening and what I want to fix. But baby steps are still steps, right? Right.

1,000,000 Word Goal
I had planned to go nuts this week, and that didn’t really happen as I’d hoped because work got ridiculously busy, but it was still a decent week. Between a combination of my work in progress, blogging, and a little love story that became as the result of a writing exercise, I wrote 9174 words past week. Adding to the couple of extra days that weren’t part of last week that means I’m up to 10877 words for Camp NaNoWriMo so far! Not too shabby if I do say so myself!

Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got some good old fashioned happiness to get to. Be home in less than 24 hours before I’m home, baby girl!

Accountability Tuesdays – Week 13

Technology is a wonderful thing, you know? Here I am, on a bus on the way back to camp from a long day at work, and I’m listening to music on my iPhone while typing up an accountability post on my tablet with my bluetooth keyboard. My coworkers are getting a good laugh out of it, but to hell with them. I’m multitasking!

Okay, I may be feeling a bit looney this evening, so let’s get to the important parts so I can get this post scheduled for the morning and enjoy my evening trying to make up for several nights in a row of poor sleep.

Health and Body Image Goal

As has become a tradition, I have to admit that I’ve been a very bad girl this week. Since I arrived at camp for this shift I’ve polished off a fair number of sweets and no fewer than two (large) bags of chips (with cream soda to accompany). I haven’t even been bothering to put together half-decent lunches for myself…I’ve been snagging the pre-portioned containers of spaghetti and ham-and-cheese sandwiches. I’ve been bypassing the salad bar and healthier stir-fry meals daily because, let’s face it, I’m lazy and I have no willpower. Neither have I been getting any kind of exercise because of the aforementioned laziness and because if I want to also get a decent amount of writing in I would have to give up sleep. If you were reading the beginning of this post you know that I’m not sleeping well anyway. Why is that, I wonder? Am I stressed? I might be stressed.

Anyway, I made a decent effort today and ate better at least. I stil had the spaghetti, but I had yogurt and an orange for breakfast and somehow refrained from indulging in the nanaimo squares that I (for some goddamn reason) took to work with me today. Are you proud? You probably shouldn’t be. I don’t deserve pride, dammit! When I can report self-discipline for at least 7 days in a row, then you can be proud. Stow your pride for later.

Editing Goal

It’s not much, but I finally have something to report. That is, I’ve been looking over my previously edited pages, refamiliarizing myself with my manuscript. It’s not editing in the strictest sense, but I’m pretty much caught up, so any day now we should see some real progress, I promise.

1,000,000 Word Goal

As mentioned in my special post on Sunday, I’ve begun participating in Camp NaNoWriMo as of this morning. I’ve set myself a word count goal of 30,000 which, while not as ambitious as I would like to be, will bring me up to 100,000 words so far this year (if I’m successful). For my first day I’ve manged to write a little more than 1000 words so far, which is right on track. Wish me luck, and if you’d like to join me at NaNo Camp (it’s never too late!), take a swing by the website. My username for all NaNo events is Toreshi.

As for my weekly wordcount, I actually had a pretty damn good week, if I do say so myself. Not my best, but much better than the last three weeks (in fact, almost as much as the last three weeks combined). I wrote a total of 7435 words, which came from a combination of scenes for Parallels, a bit of blogging, and a few writing exercises and prompts that I tried out over the last two days. As a matter of fact, one of those prompts may very well turn into a full blown work in progress because it’s been pretty fun to write so far. As much as I would like to plow on and finish Parallels, I’ve been having a major blockage as to where to go next, so I’m thinking I might use Camp NaNo as an excuse to try a few new things, get the juices flowing as it were. Maybe I’ll even share some of what I end up with on Fiction Fragment Fridays. Look forward to it! 🙂

Accountability Tuesdays – Week 12

Why hello there, Toronto. Haven’t we met before?

Yes, I’m on my way out West again, waiting for my traditional chicken quesadilla at Casey’s Bar and Grill while I await my connection. Subsequently, that must mean that it’s time again for another accountability post. Unfortunately I don’t have a great deal to report, but for the sake of continuity, let’s get this out of the way, shall we?

First off, before I dive into everything that I didn’t do this past week, I’d like to mention that this past Sunday my blog reached 5000 visits. When compared to some of the other blogs I read that number seems almost laughable for a full year’s worth of blogging, but still, I can’t help but feel a little proud. Over 200 of those visits came last week when a flood of Facebook friends and family stopped by to read my tribute to my late grandfather, and I wanted to say thanks for that. I wrote that post mostly because writing about my feelings is easier for me than expressing them out loud, but I was overwhelmed by the number of people who dropped by to read it and commented either on the blog, on Facebook, or in person at my grandfather’s wake. Thank you so much everyone. Hearing how much you thought of my post really put a smile on my face. Love you all!

And on to the…*ahem*…confessions:

Health and Body Image Goal

I did absolutely nothing toward this goal this past week. There, I admit it. Under the circumstances, however, I’m surprised I didn’t pig out even worse. We ate a lot of fast food while attending to family affairs, and when we were in our own house neither my husband or I felt a great deal like cooking. We did have a few decent meals, but for the most part my time home this turnaround has been filled with some major junk. I also did absolutely no exercise at all, aside from chasing my daughter around and scrubbing the floor whenever she had an accident (ah…potty training…). I feel bad, but I also feel like I kinda deserved the time off. I’m heading back out West now, so the diet and exercise will return, I swear.

Editing Goal

You all know how this one goes. No I haven’t done anything toward this one (and holy crap, that’s a record at three whole months of absolutely nothing) but as I mentioned last week, I have a plan for moving forward. Look forward to actually seeing something in this column next week!

1,000,000 Word Goal

A very weak week at 1934 words, all of them for blog posts. Again, I was hard pressed to get anything done this week, but moving forward I have a plan. I think I’ve worked out a decent schedule for getting as much done as possible while I’m out West. When I get home again…well we’ll just have to see at that point. Until then, wish me luck and thanks again for all the visits!

Accountability Tuesdays – Week 9

Have you ever had a week during which you got a ton done, accomplished a lot, but ultimately felt as though you’d failed somehow? That’s how I feel about this week. I actually had quite a good week overall, but somehow I not only don’t feel good about the week, but actually feel bad about it.

Though that may be sugar withdrawal talking.

Let’s press on, shall we?

Health and Body Image Goal
Aside from one Cardio day during which I was so tired from lack of sleep that I could barely lift my legs, I managed to closely follow my Body Revolution videos. Jillian Michaels is a harsh trainer sometimes, but she’s also very motivating so I’m enjoying the program. That said, I just recently began the third week of the program, which brings new videos, and I’m not adapting well. In fact, today I’m so sore that I can pretty much guarantee that I’ll be skipping another cardio day. My legs are positively throbbing.
On the diet side of this goal, things are going well. I’ve been eating a lot of veggies and lean protein (if that’s what you can call the chicken at camp, which we are very, very suspicious of). Last week I was very cranky and suffering lots of cravings, but this week this far has been a lot better. I’m catching on to the difference between actually being hungry and just wanting to eat because. I am, however, still getting sugar cravings, as mentioned above. Ain’t no one gonna convince me that sugar isn’t highly addictive. God damn delicious stuff.

Editing Goal
DON’T JUDGE ME.

1,000,000 Word Goal
I had an excellent week for writing, thanks to my new Bluetooth keyboard. I wont break it down this week because I unfortunately don’t have that kind of time right now, but my total for the week was 12824 words. Go me! The downside of this is that I was only able to achieve this word count through the use of my new keyboard…and recently all mobile devices were banned from the building I work in. In other words, for 12 hours of the day I’m back to being stuck with a pen and a notebook. C’est la vie. Back to a meager word count…I’m totally never going to hit 1,000,000 words. 😛

And that’s what I have to say for today. Booyackasha.