March felt like a long month. I spent a week in the office with my entire team, some of whom I haven’t seen in person in years, and couple of whom I was meeting in person for the first time. We’ve had a busy month with the boys, not for any reason in particular other than the fact that an eighteen-month-old and a four-year-old will occupy a lot of your time and energy.

It was a halfway decent month for my goals, as well, until I got sick and was thrown off my rhythm for over a week.

Last Month’s Goals

1. Revisions for Uprooted, The Herb Witch Tales #1.
2. Read three books. Pretty straightforward. I also want to continue making good progress on A Memory of Light. I’m at the point where some narrative chips are starting to fall, and it is both dreadful and exciting.
3. Exercise at least three times a week. The app is making me do three workouts per week, at minimum. So that’s baseline. I also want to start adding in other forms of training, so I’m mentally aiming for 4-5 workouts per week, and I’ll see how my routine develops from there.

Revisions for Uprooted?

I did not complete my revisions, but I’ve made some good progress in the last week. One thing I can say for certain is that I have a really good story on my hands. That is not something I would have been confident in saying before this revision phase. There are a couple minor plot threads I had forgotten about in the long hiatus since my last revision phase (as I was drafting New Earth), that highlight the struggle for survival in interesting ways. Not just describing the characters as tired and hungry again and again, but demonstrating how conflict can smolder from that basic tension.

So, I just need to be more diligent in revising. I still want to finish my current read-through to look at overall plot and identify areas that need more work, and then read through again to reverse engineer my outline and ensure the scene and chapter structure makes sense for the plot and pacing.

After that, I’m not sure. Maybe a third read-through to look for smaller details I want to fix, before deciding whether I have a solid manuscript to send to an editor, or even beta readers.

Read three books?

Yes! And my reviews have been fairly active on Goodreads and here. I might have read four, actually… I lost track a bit, because I updated a few of my reviews on Goodreads, which changes the where they appear in my “read” list.

I didn’t read much in A Memory of Light, but I’m about halfway through. I’m still very much interested. I’m just at a point in the story where some chips are starting to fall, and I’m dreading losing characters I love.

Exercise three times per week?

I started off strong, and then this very minor but very nagging cold I got in the middle of the month threw my off.

I had been using Asana Rebel to find yoga-type workout videos, but I’m not thrilled with the app. After the introductory program, there’s not really much guidance. There are just a bunch of videos from various trainers. I can watch yoga videos for free on YouTube, so I’m not quite seeing the value in the app at this point.

I’m also starting to consider different types of workouts. I just don’t know how and where I want to exercise. I haven’t belonged to a gym since COVID lockdown, and it’s difficult to see an opening in my day-to-day schedule for that at the moment — getting changed, going to the gym, stretching, working out, getting home, changing again. I need a solid hour or hour-and-a-half, and that time is difficult to find as it is. My office has a small workout room that I might start using, just for the convenience. We’ll see how that goes.

Goals for April

1. Finish two revision cycles for Uprooted, the Herb Witch Tales #1. I definitely want to finish to two read-throughs I mentioned above. If I make real progress doing so, I can aim for a third.
2. Read three books. I’ve been able to stick to this one so far, this year.
3. Exercise three times per week. Still in flux what my real workout routine looks like, but I’ve been doing alright for now.

Steve D