May 2021 in Review
Health & Fitness
Staying the course: exercise about every other day, eating about the same.
Lut finished radiation in May, and has switched to taking pills at home -- Revlimid and Ninlaro -- as of Monday, instead of getting treatment at the clinic. But because Revlimid and Ninlaro are hard on the patient’s immune system, we’re going to the clinic for blood tests every Wednesday for the next eight weeks. This week is our only week off from the clinic in a long time.
Writing
I finished You Thought You Wanted to Be Level 99, But Really You Wanted to Be a Better Person in May, writing ~13,000 words.
I made a few more notes for A Game to You, but haven’t made a lot of progress on it. So much world-building to do. o_o
The Business of Writing
Instead of writing, I launched into editing Level 99, and managed to finish initial edits on it. It is now off to first readers! \o/
Fun fact: Level 99 takes place right now, like the end of one arc is June 3, 2021. Contemporary novels almost never reference specific dates, and from a marketing perspective this was a foolish move. But it’s sort of fun to tie the book so solidly to a particular moment in time. Especially a point in time that is nothing like the years that will come after it, or the years that came before.
I semi-organized the list of things I highlighted last month in my re-read of Demon’s Lure and Angel’s Sigil, but still no progress on actual edits for those books.
And Alinsa finished layout for the ebook of The Lord, His Monster, and Their Lady at the end of the month. I uploaded the books in May but they didn’t finish percolating to retail sites until June, so the launch was in June. Yay, new book in the wild!
I have also already updated my website with both the new release and the new WIP, for bonus business points.
Reading
I finished India After Gandhi! After just nine months! Wow, that was a long time. I started reading a novella, which is short so I’ll probably finish it in June.
Art
I worked on the cover for Level 99 on the last day of May, so I have something to show for art, yay.
Gaming
I thought that Terry and I tried a new game neither of us liked in May, but I don’t see anything new in BGA since Schrodinger’s Cats, so I guess not.
I tried a new strategy for editing, which is gaming-adjacent so I’ll describe it here. My normal editing strategy is “make a list of planned changes, rank how hard they are from 1-10, and then wander through the list doing those things.”
This time, I decided to add a ‘word count equivalent’ for each item, which ranged from 100 words for the easiest to 3800 for the hardest. And then I let myself count that many words as 'written' in 4thewords. I felt like I was, on the one hand, overestimating the difficulty in many cases and therefore giving myself too much credit. And on the other hand, I finished initial edits on the book in less than a month, so I feel like this was a Motivational Win. I will do it with my next editing pass, too, and see how it goes.
May Goal Scorecard
- Assist Lut: Done!
- Look at goal list occasionally: Done! Regularly, even.
- Finish first draft of Level 99: Done!
- Make editing list for Level 99: Done!
- Start revisions on Level 99: and done!
Stretch goals
- Work on notes/outlines A Game to You: technically I did this
- Exercise 20 times this month: This month’s total was 16.
- Consumption tracking: done
- Work on cover art for Level 99: Did this, in the “work on” sense, although it’s not complete.
- Post a few blog entries, apart from my usual month-in-review.: I did two non-review entries, so yes, although I think my target is 3-4 extra per month.
- Finish revisions on Level 99: Aw yisss done
- Start revisions on Demon’s Alliance : I did a little bit more work towards this, but no.
- Maintain bullet journal: done
- Finish reading a book I haven’t read before: I did this! Wooo!
Also, this is worth noting -- I’ve finished one of my 2021 goals goals already: completed drafts for two books. This should not be a surprise since I finished the draft for Angel’s Grace in January, and yet somehow it is.
June Goals
- Assist Lut
- Look at goal list occasionally
Stretch goals
- Work on notes/outlines A Game to You
- Start writing A Game to You
- Work on notes/outline for a different book
- Exercise 20 times this month
- Consumption tracking
- Make an art
- Work on cover art for Demon’s Alliance and/or Angel’s Grace and/or Level 99
- Practice art
- Post a few blog entries, apart from my usual month-in-review.
- Start revisions on Demon’s Alliance
- Start revisions on Angel’s Sigil
- Maintain bullet journal
- Learn a new game
- Finish reading a book I haven’t read before
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