Accountability Tuesdays – Week 21

Okay people, in all seriousness…how is it Tuesday already? I was just thinking that it feels as though this shift has been dragging on terribly long, but here it is half over. What happened? It must be all the (wait for it…) writing and exercising I’ve been doing. 😀

Health and Body Image Goal
I have been doing awesome this week, all modesty aside. First of all, I’ve been eating quite well. There have been some things that I probably could have done without – like raisin bread and M&Ms – but for the most part I’ve been excellent. I’ve been making salads with spinach and skinless chicken, using lemon juice instead of dressing; I’ve been melting controlled portions of cheese over broccoli for snacks; I’ve even forced myself to have salmon a few times (and it wasn’t half bad, which leads me to believe that the camp cooks are serving us “salmon”). I’ve been so good that when my usual “cheat night” came up I looked at the bag of chips and bottle of pop and said, “You know what? No. I honestly do not want this.”
In addition to the healthy eating habits, I’ve also been running diligently with the help of the Zombies! Run! app. I’ve only skipped one day so far and that was only because I woke up in the middle of the night with a leg cramp that nearly had me crippled for the rest of the day. But I was right back at it the following day! Look at me go!

Editing Goal
I can’t honestly say that there’s anything to report for this week because there definitely isn’t. But the good news is that I have recieved a pleasant kick in the ass from a friend and fellow writer who has suggested a novel swap beta-reading. In other news, I now have major motivation because I can’t possibly let anyone read my manuscript in its current state! Edits away!

1,000,000 Word Goal
It’s been a pretty good week, I have to say. Writing fan fiction definitely allows me to write a little faster, and as such I’ve managed to pluck out 9041 words this past week. That’s more than 1000 a day, so I’m pretty happy. But the real news is that I checked my yearly total and I’ve surpassed a hundred grand! I’m settled right now at 108,481! It’s only a little over 10% of my original total goal, which brings home the idea that I am totally not going to hit 1,000,000 words, but still…a hundred grand! That’s more words than I could have imagined writing in 5 months before I made this goal! And to me that is definitely success. 🙂

Accountability Tuesdays – Week 17

Another week has come and gone, and while work has been slow and sleep has been scarce, this one actually seemed to go by a little faster than usual. I’ve been often told that I shouldn’t wish my life away, but in these moments I’m going to go ahead and ignore that little anecdote because dammit, I’d rather be home. 🙂

In all seriousness though, it’s been a pretty decent week. Not as productive as I would have hoped, but still better than I may have expected. So let’s get on with it, shall we?

Health and Body Image Goal

I won’t say I’ve been a saint over the past week because you’d see right the hell through that, but I will raise my head proudly and say that I’ve done pretty good. I skipped only one exercise day, due to a particularly rough two nights that resulted in some extraordinarily frightening black circles under my eyes, but I actually made up for that day later in the week. I am now into my third straight week of Jillian Michaels’ Body Revolution, and have been diligently eating salads, egg whites, oatmeal, and whatever other nonsense the program suggests. I’ve had a couple of small candies, and during the Saturday Night Hockey game I allowed myself some chips and pop, but other than that I’ve eaten really well and continued to exercise diligently. I’ve also lost 2 lbs, which doesn’t feel like a lot for the amount of effort I’ve been putting in, but I suspect that when I get home from this shift and take my measurements again I’ll found that at least some of me has shrunk a little. Looking forward to it!

Editing Goal

This…this right here is the bane of my existence. I got a little bit of speed up there for a week or two, but now it’s gone again. I have to go ahead and admit that I haven’t even glanced at my manuscript. There is just so much else to concentrate on, and I feel that I only have enough time for one: edit or write. Invariably I end up choosing to write because editing sucks. You know it, I know it, everyone knows it. No, it’s not an excuse. Yes, I’m using it as one.

1,000,000 Word Goal

The week did not go as I planned, but I really can’t complain too much about the result. Because of the little exercise I explained in yesterday’s post I got a good bit of word count built up. Unfortunately I also discovered something disappointing. It turns out that my tablet really really sucks at cutting and pasting. What does this matter, you ask? Well here’s the thing…since the beginning of the year some time I’ve been using my tablet to type out blog posts. Since the WordPress app doesn’t show your post word count at the bottom of the screen like the website does, I’ve then been copy-and-pasting my posts into a word counter app. Well I only just recently noticed, by complete fluke, that the copying and pasting hasn’t been working properly. I have no idea why it doesn’t work properly, and I have no idea how to fix it, but when I highlight a large chunk of text and copy it, apparently only part of it copies. Thus, I may have been losing significant numbers of words toward my goal since the beginning of the year. Even more unfortunately, the only way I could possibly fix the error is to go back and recount every single thing I’ve written since January 1st. I don’t know about you people, but Tracey don’t have time for that. Therefore, to help balance out what may be a significant chunk of lost words, I’ve started adding any technical writing I do for work to my word count. It’s not much, but it should help offset the balance a little. And with that large wall of text expressed, my word count for the week was 5777 words.

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! 🙂