Accountability Wednesdays: Week 8

As I type this I am just over one week in to my shift, and you can’t even fathom how much I long for this particular one to be over. I don’t know if it’s the cold (Alberta, seriously, get some normal weather) or the air (my nose has been bleeding every single morning), or if I’m just straight up exhausted, but whatever the reason I am definitely ready to head back to Nova Scotia.

And with that cranky-arse attitude out of the way, let’s deal with this whole accountability deal.

Goal #1: Lose at least ten pounds and become healthier overall.

I’m going to go ahead and really invoke the spirit of accountability here, and just admit that it has been a truly horrible week for this particular goal. I started off my shift pretty good, snacking on vegetables, avoiding any beverages aside from water and my David’s Teas, but then something snapped inside of me and I just started gnashing on sweets and cream soda like a ravenous, sweet-toothed wolf. I would like to blame a certain monthly phenomenom for this lack of willpower, but for the most part, yeah…it was just a complete and utter lack of willpower.

I have been taking my multi-vitamins every day. Does that give me any points?

The exercise side of things was just as sad. Last Wednesday my work partner and I got a job that required us to climb a crap ton of ladders and stairs. All total I estimated that we climbed approximately 300 vertical feet. And it nearly killed me. I had to grab my inhaler halfway through, and there were at least three or four instances when I had to stop because I was certain that I was as close to a heart attack as I had ever been before. That day I realized how truly out of shape I really am, and resolved to start really working to change that. The following night I did a workout video in my camp room and promptly spent the next three days hobbling around like a ninty-year-old woman.

I think I’m going to have to take some baby steps. Anyone know a good exercise program for toddlers? 😛

Goal #2: Be more active on social media and work hard on my “author platform”.

I wouldn’t say that I’ve ascended to the title of social media master just yet, but this was actually quite an excellent week for me. I spent some time chatting up fellow writers on Twitter, participated similarly in the blogging community, and even spent a bit of extra time on Facebook, promoting blog posts. Between the post promotion and mentioning my video game novelizations on Twitter, my blog saw a nice little influx of views and comments over the past few days. My numbers are still nothing to really write home about, but they’re definitely growing, and any kind of growth is good in my books.

Goal #3: COMPLETE my zombie apocalypse novel, Nowhere to Hide.

As mentioned last week, there’s not a lot I’ve been able to do at the moment while I’m on shift, but rest assured that I’ve got plans made. I’ve got the key points made by my beta-reader scrutinized thoroughly, and I have a list of ideas to fix up the manuscript based on her input. I really do think that these changes are going to make my novel a heck of a lot better in the long run. 🙂

Goal #4: Write 500,000 words.

I can’t say that it was a great week, but I’m pleasantly amused with what I did manage to get done, considering that pretty much all of my writing while out on shift is done freehand in a notebook. By working on planning out some blog posts (including one that will be a guest post for another blog, which is quite exciting), I managed to put 4485 words to paper this week, which is nothing to sneeze at. I’m hoping to do a little better this following week because I’ve got a bit of a side project that I’m working on. Recently I discovered the website for something called the A to Z Blog Challenge and immediately signed up. Expect to hear more about it in the future, but for now it’s time to get back to work! Ciao!

Accountability Wednesdays: Week 7

Another Wednesday, another bout of accountability. It’s actually been a bit of an interesting week, so let’s just get right to it, shall we?

Goal #1: Lose at least ten pounds and become healthier overall.

This was always going to be the most difficult goal for me, simply because I love food and hate exercise. But while I can’t report a weight loss (I forgot to weigh myself before I came out West for this shift) I can report a couple of small victories.

One is that in the day and a half I’ve been out here for this shift I’ve already been more active and been eating better than I managed last shift. One big thing is that I’m avoiding the cans of pop like the plague, which is really difficult for me because I love pop and it’s free, dammit. But I digress… I’ve been drinking a lot of water and herbal tea. Also, I forced myself to have breakfast this morning. Also, also, I got up early to exercise. Unfortunately the exercise was cut off early because my trademark evil gut started playing with me, but tomorrow morning is another day.

The other small victory that I thought worth mentioning is that I’ve actually gotten several comments lately asking me if I’m losing weight. I don’t believe that I’ve actually lost any as far as the number on the scale, but it is possible that I’ve replaced some fat with muscle, so it’s nice to get the comments. Hopefully those who have brought it up are actually right and not just delusional.

Goal #2: Be more active on social media and work hard on my “author platform”.

It hasn’t been a particularly good week for this goal, mostly because I’ve been busy with other things and haven’t focused on it. Somedays I find it strangely difficult to think of a single thing to tweet, and I don’t like to overextend myself on Facebook because I already have my blog auto-post to there and I don’t want to annoy people. That said, I have been fairly active amongst the blogger community, and I resolve to do better in other areas this coming week.

Goal #3: COMPLETE my zombie apocalypse novel, Nowhere to Hide.

Honestly, I didn’t expect to have anything to report for this one for quite a while. As I explained last week, I’d finally finished the first round of edits and was ready to ship my manuscript off to my beta reader, so I fully expected to have this goal out of my head for at least a few weeks. Amazingly, however, my beta reader turned out to be a super-woman who ate my manuscript up like a pint of double-fudge ice cream…all in one night! Yesterday morning I recieved the emails with her comments, complaints, and suggestions, and I was absolutely flabbergasted. Not only did she manage to read the entire novel in one night, but she also brought up some very excellent points that I never would have noticed myself. So now, much sooner than anticipated, I find myself preparing for the second round of edits. These ones (I freakin’ hope) will go much faster than the last ones because they’re mostly cosmetic changes and slight revisions. I won’t be able to start this round until I get home again, but in the meantime I’m going to definitely spend some time working out a game plan. Exciting!

Goal #4: Write 500,000 words.

This week wasn’t nearly as good as last week, but it was still excellent as far as how many words I should be getting in a week. I ended up with 9212 words, mostly through the virtue of planning a bunch of blog posts in advance. I’m both pleased and concerned with this result, because I can’t see me getting anywhere near that number again this week. It’s always so difficult to get much writing in while I’m out West…but that’s just my fatigue talking. Maybe this week I’ll finally break into that “642 Things to Write About” book that has been sitting in my luggage. Wish me luck!

Accountability Wednesdays: Week 5

Okay, let’s start up the day by apologizing for there being no blog posts the past two days with no explanation. Don’t worry, it wasn’t another family emergency or anything. Apparently I’d just forgotten how difficult it is to find time to bang these things out during the last few days of my shift when I’m trying to get my laundry done and pack and deal with a bunch of different buses to take me to the right places to eventually get on my plane and fly home in the middle of the night. So…yeah. Sorry about that. I’ll try to plan ahead next time. ._.

Goal #1: Lose at least ten pounds and become healthier overall.

Okay, confession time. Since returning out West and landing myself at a camp that has a huge fridge filled with cans of every flavor of pop out there, things have not been good. I like pop. I like it a lot. I also hate plain water, and mostly avoid the milk out West (because, sorry, it doesn’t taste right, I don’t know why) and the juice out West (because it’s fountain crap that is watered down and tastes awful). So, yeah…I’ve been drinking a lot of pop. Like…a lot of pop. Also, the dinners there are delicious, so I’ve been gorging at night, and alternatively the lunches are kinda pathetic, so I’ve been compensating with cookies and other treats.

Long story short, the eating habits have jackknifed into a bad place. I also didn’t really get any exercise for the two weeks out West because I forgot to take a pair of “indoor shoes” and therefore couldn’t use the gym, and also it turns out that my crew actually has trucks now that we can use to drive to the job instead of walking all over hell’s creation. That last bit is actually a good thing, overall, but it does dramatically cut back on the amount of exercise I get on a daily basis.

All in all, it’s been a poor couple of weeks. Remember last week when I said that I probably actually gained weight? Yeah, I was right. Luckily I had a buffer zone from the few pounds I lost that week I mysteriously couldn’t eat anything, so I’m not in the red or anything…but yeah. Pretty much starting from scratch.

Goal #2: Be more active on social media and work hard on my “author platform”.

This is always so difficult to report, but I think I did pretty good this week, considering the missed blog posts. I spent quite a bit of time on Twitter, and made spent more time than usual reading, liking, and commenting on blog posts. There’s not much to say other than that. But look! I’m participating! 😀

Goal #3: COMPLETE my zombie apocalypse novel, Nowhere to Hide.

Okay, I just got home yesterday, so you can’t hold this one against me yet. Remember I said I was thinking about it? Really thinking about it? Well now I’m home, so I have two weeks to use those thoughts. I hope to start tonight, but I’m not making any promises, because my daughter has a fort in the living room and she keeps wanting me to come in with her and watch Teen Titans Go! through the doorway. I have to have priorities, man, geez.

Goal #4: Write 500,000 words.

And to top off a week of pretty poor accountability reporting, I have to say that I can’t tell you what my word count was for last week. The reason is not because I’m embarrassed about the skimpy word count (although, now that you mention it…); it’s because I’m having difficulty getting my word count spreadsheet to play nice between my tablet and my computer. I created it on my computer and had to move heaven and Earth to get it to both open and allow me to make changes on my tablet, and now apparently I’ve screwed up the file so that it will no longer open on my computer. So, when I get a chance, I guess I’m going to have to open it on my computer and physically re-input all the numbers into the version on my computer. Why not just use the tablet all the time? Just take my word on this…the program that I’ve had to use in order to get the spreadsheet to work on my tablet is outrageously frustrating to deal with. I may have to just track my words on paper while I’m out West from now on…that’s how terrible the tablet program is.

All that said, though I can’t give you the exact number right now, I can tell you that my word count for last week sucked tremendously. I fully plan on making up for that this week by pre-planning blog posts, finishing up the editing mentioned earlier, and hopefully banging out another chapter or two for Returning Hope, but again, I must bring your attention to the fort in my living room.

Ciao!

Accountability Wednesdays: Week 3

If you are one of the lovely people who read my post yesterday, you’ll understand that my accountability post for this week is going to be a little weak. Due to some seriously unforeseen circumstances, I spent most of my time over the past seven days either running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off, or sitting around, tapping my foot, waiting for things to happen. And both of those extremes were a lot more stressful than I’m making them sound. So please, cut me just a little bit of slack this week, okay? Okay.

Goal #1: Lose at least ten pounds and become healthier overall.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t know where I stand this week since it was such a weird week. Thursday and Friday were filled with extremely poor food choices but also a hell of a lot of walking (my Fitbit was so proud). Saturday and Sunday were much more sedentary but also incorporated more decent food. Monday was special; I spent the entire day sitting down (plane, bus, bed) and ate a TON, but everything I ate was extremely healthy (don’t ever say that Canadian North doesn’t care about your nutritional choices). All in all I expect that the week pretty much averaged out in the end. I can’t tell you if I lost any weight or not because there is currently no scale in the vicinity. Let’s just say…I feel pretty good overall. We’ll just go with that for now.

Goal #2: Be more active on social media and work hard on my “author platform”.

Again, if you read my post from yesterday you know that this just didn’t happen this week. I’m not the kind of person who spends time on Twitter or Facebook while sitting in a hospital, waiting to hear news about a sick loved one. Similarly, blogging and being a part of the blogging community in general obviously took a back seat this past week. Sometimes you just have to step back from the internet and deal with reality.

Goal #3: COMPLETE my zombie apocalypse novel, Nowhere to Hide.

You might see a pattern arising. Yeah, this didn’t happen this week. I worked on it a little earlier in the week, but then this was put on a previously-unnoticed BACK back burner. I won’t be working on this at all for two weeks now because, as I mentioned last week, it’s pretty much impossible for me to deal with this project while out West with just my tablet. That said, I am getting very close to the end and am confident that I’ll be able to ship the finished product off to my beta-reader on my off-days before I come out for the next shift.

Goal #4: Write 500,000 words.

I’m annoyed with myself for doing this so early in the year, but I won’t be reporting my word count this week. Despite everything I do actually have some words to report, but I wasn’t keeping track of them while I was doing the aforementioned running-around-like-a-beheaded-chicken, and what with starting back to work today I don’t have the time at the moment to go through all my files and blog posts and figure out exactly how many words I wrote this week. I promise I’ll have all that straightened away next week, and I will make a dual report then.

On a related note, however, before I flew out West I picked up a neat little book that I found entitled, “642 Things to Write About”. I haven’t actually used it for its intended purpose yet, but I’m already going to have to recommend this book for pretty much any writer. It’s exactly what it sounds like…642 wildly varying writing prompts. I’m thinking that once I get all settled in to work and have a schedule worked out for myself, I might do a prompt a night whenever I’m out here. And I’m definitely thinking that I’ll share some of what I end up writing for some Fiction Fragment Fridays. Look forward to it!

And with that, my friends, we come to the end of what has been a very long day for me, so…toodles!