Your Update Link: Signs of Life – Part 5

Trying something different today with updating flash fiction first, then grabbing dinner, and writing FMT afterwards. I’ll let you know tomorrow how it works. I know I have to update the Recent Updates page. It’s on the list 🙂

The ending might be a bit wonky. My dad LITERALLY called me as I was writing the final kiss and broke my concentration, then I was out of time and can’t fix anything, so I didn’t reread it yet, LOL.

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Your Update Link: A King’s Command – Part 8

I warned you guys, LOL, that this was going to be the most insane week.

I basically start my entire class over once a month, and my first time coincided with getting the flu shot, not sleeping, and SGOs being due (administrative bullshit). Oh, and also, there’s this election happening, and one of my students was exposed and put into quarantine but I didn’t find out until Thursday, so you know, that’s how it’s going. BUT, the last time I saw this student was three weeks ago and I’m fine and she hasn’t tested positive yet, so I’m just not going to think about it. I wear a mask and rarely leave the house unless I have to.

Also, I got the lump sum of unemployment funds from my state this morning (which I did not know was happening) and I’m so relieved. I paid my property taxes on time and I can fix my car a month earlier than I thought I could. The check engine line has been on and I have a decent commute to work, so I’ve been nervous. It’s getting fixed tomorrow, so that’s a huge weight off my mind.

All of that anxiety explains that Tuesday’s Flash Fiction was the only writing I did all week. I’m mostly okay with that. I made a lot of progress last weekend, and I knew this last week was going to be insane so I just let go of the idea I was going to work on FMT at all. I do think next week will be better because I’ve already written most of the content I’m teaching, and now I’m just refining the delivery to the students. That’s so much easier than what I’ve been doing this last month. Thanks so much for your patience and understanding. I love my new job, but it’s a huge task to walk into a course that doesn’t even have a textbook or a program set in place for resources. I’ve had to create it completely from scratch (which I say all the time, I know, LOL).

Hopefully next week I’ll be able to write an hour or so each night, particularly Tues-Thursday. I’ll keep you guys in the loop!

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Your Update Link: Not Knowing When – Part 7

Hey! Sorry about the postponing yesterday. Things got away from me a bit and this is kind of a crazy week. I think I mentioned that I teach in 15 day cycles, and this is the first time I’m turning over and getting a brand new class. This means I have to create new Google Classrooms, invite all the students, and wrap up the old class. Plus, I misread my calendar and thought I had another week so I wasn’t quite ready with everything I’d need for tomorrow.  I also had to get a TB test for my employment and ended up being talked into a flu shot — it was just an ugh of a day. I could have managed 20 minutes, but I honestly wanted to spend more time on it than that.

I am excited to start over my 15 day cycle because I have a much better handle on what I’m teaching — I’m doing a 15 day crash course of French speaking countries around the world — so the kids are learning about the history and people in Canada, Haiti, Algeria, Madagascar, Tahiti, Cambodia — just like everywhere I could find that has French speakers. It’s kind of crazy, lol, because I’ve been creating an interactive digital textbook at the same time, and I have grades 6-8.  I’m about halfway through the amount of content I need to create to really say the course is “done” but after this week, I’ll be so much more relaxed.

This is your last update until Friday, so I’ll see you guys then!

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Your Update Link: A Shot in the Dark – Part 7

Hey! This will be shorter than usual because my schedule got crunched today and I honestly don’t want to miss another week for this story. There are definitely going to be days when I can manage 20 minute sprints, so I’ll do the hour as often as possible, but I think I’d rather just update whenever I can. So 20 minutes it is!

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Your Update Link: Signs of Life – Part 4

I got most of my babble out in yesterday’s update, so we’ll just get right to the update and news. I crossed the 20k mark in Fool Me Twice and wrote Chapter 4 today. Make sure to check out my Twitter feed with the hashtag #CGFoolMeTwice. I try to update every time I write and lately I’ve been sharing lines from new scenes. I’ll be back tomorrow with Shot in the Dark on its new day.

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Your Update Link: A King’s Command – Part 7

Happy Friday! I, for one, am relieved it’s the weekend. This was a very long week, LOL, even though I had off on Monday and was remote teaching today. I had my nieces with me today because my sister is out of town, and I am so glad I didn’t have to juggle teaching and homeschooling these last six months. I was in meetings and in classes, and they kept trying to kill each other. They’re with my parents for the rest of the weekend, and I am LOCKING my door for the next two days.

Sorry for completely disappearing this week, both on the site and on Twitter. I really just kind of needed to clear my mind and concentrate on other things, particularly my job and my course content. I’m still writing the course content and creating the digital content which is fun and mentally exhausting. I really want to do the best job I can so that if there’s a place for me next year, they’ll keep me. Right now, it’s a one year contract, but it’d be great to be back.

I was writing all week — I made time on Tuesday and Wednesday to write, and finished Chapter Three of Fool Me Twice. I’m definitely staying on track there — I’m at about 17k, and the Pacemaker Word Count plan suggests I be at 8900k this week — so I’ve nearly doubled my pace. This makes it easier for me to skip a day here or there when things get tough because I don’t lose any morale. I think I’ve said this before — but using the “start small and build to a finish” has been great for me. I don’t feel like a complete failure when I can’t write every day because when I do write, I typically go over the suggested word count.  I’m planning to dedicate large portions of this weekend to FMT actually, and hope to be at Chapter Five by the end of the weekend.

I’m finishing up my first cycle with my students on Tuesday and kicking off the next cycle of new kids which means I’m getting closer to having the bulk of the course written and I won’t have to exert so much mental energy on research. Not only that, but the cycle after this is my turn to do coverage which means I’ll be a sub in the building for 15 days. This is even better — I’ll time to refine the course after having taught it twice, plus I’ll have some break from running my own classes since I’ll be somewhere different and won’t have the usual work to take home.

I appreciate your patience as I got through this first month 🙂 The Flash Fiction schedule is going to change again when we get to November, which I want to talk about more when we get there. I don’t know yet how much until I get some more information about days that we’re off, the exact date of the next cycle, and whether our remote teaching days are in building or at home. I’ll see you guys tomorrow with Signs of Life.

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Hey! I had my entire weekend planned down to the minute, but it feels like it’s been off track since I started, LOL. I spent my entire morning off working on digital content for my remote kids only to realize once I had worked for 3 hours that it was the completely wrong way to deliver this to the kids at home, and then had an anxiety attack about wasting all of that time and needing to start over. I forced myself to take a break and relax. Once I did that, I came up with a much better solution for my remote kids AND the kids in class and it actually ultimately makes my life easier in the long run. Plus, I have some great ideas for building on the changes to make the rest of the week easy.

But it’s 3:30 and my brain is beyond exhausted. I’m not even sure I’m up to writing Fool Me Twice today even for 25 minutes much less Flash Fiction. I’m trying hard not to be too mad at myself and I’m not going to apologize (much). I honestly did shoot myself in the foot a bit when I took on four hour long flash fiction sessions a week, LOL, but I am sure that once I get things sorted, it won’t be a big deal. It’s just harder than I thought it would be to not only create all my content from complete scratch (I don’t even have a textbook or digital resources). I spent all week putting together this Prezi so if you want to see why my brain is dead, you’re welcome to look: https://prezi.com/view/fXYyr2L2NwOzP2inWyUJ/ (Only Canada, U.S., Mexico, Caribbean, Middle East, Pacific Islands, and Southeast Asia are done)

I also have the added challenge of my kids being split into groups. I have one set on Mon/Tues, and another on Wed/Thurs, then all on Fri for remote Zooms. It’s smaller class sizes, but I have to create digital doubles of all my lessons because when Group A is in the classroom, I have to have lessons for Group B at home, and it turns out it’s just more time intensive than I thought it would be to do both. Like I said — I do think this method I developed this afternoon is going to save me so much time in the future. There’s just not enough hours in the day to do all the things I want — even when I have the day off.

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Weeks ago, before I got the new job, my brother asked me to babysit from like 3-5. I was, like, sure, no problem! And then I got the job. And then suddenly it was 3-7 which was…a lot more time out of my day. Then I got the idea to grab my sister’s kids because the last time I brought them, they played together and I got some work done. That was the plan and then I figured I’d do Flash Fic when I got home around 8 or 9, late by on time.

Instead, today, they decided to try to kill each other. All day. The oldest is 9, almost ten, and she thinks she’s 15. Then it’s an eight-year-old and two six-year-olds, and a four-year-old. They fought over toys, over bikes, over slime, over movies, over food, over who got the purple plate and the blue plate, and then where to put the chairs, and then over who hit who in the face with the plastic tub, and then whether or not Shut up is a bad word. And my night still isn’t over.

My brain as officially given up. I’m sort of working on the Beta Draft for Book 4 because I’m still doing chapter breakdowns which doesn’t require a lot of energy but I mostly want to go go home and  get drunk.

I don’t have kids, and today is a good day for remembering why. I’ll double up if I can tomorrow, or catch up another day this week.

ETA: I also fixed a massive error in Chapter Seventy-Five where the Jason/Luke/Sonny scene was doubled up for some strange reason. I swear, I don’t know how that happened.

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Your Update – A King’s Command, Part 6

Hope everyone had a good week! I’m so excited everyone who finished Book 3 enjoyed it. I found a strange typo in Chapter Sixty-Nine near the end of the chapter where half of the line was deleted. It’s fixed now 🙂

Letting you guys know that starting next week, there’s a slight adjustment to the Flash Fiction schedule. I’m found myself scrambling to get things done on Wednesday. It’s kind of a mid-week craziness, I think, LOL. So I’m moving Shot in the Dark to Sundays, starting — NEXT week. So this week’s entry is done. And you’ll get your next one on October 19. I’ll update four days straight – Friday-Monday, then have three days off in the middle of the week to get things done, relax, etc. I think this will be a lot better.

I did some sidebar work — I added an Instagram feed for the CG instagram account which is basically just a Sasha fan account, LOL. She always manages to sit right in front of my computer when I need to work or write. I also added a link to follow me on Spotify and embedded FMT’s soundtrack.

I’m working on my Site & Status post and video which is going to be for October & November. That should be up Sunday. And finally – I updated the Production Schedule. I rewrote the page, splitting it into two sections. The first is just a simple list of dates and releases. The second is a more streamlined writing schedule.

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Your Update Link: A Shot in the Dark – Part 6

When I made the decision to release my books all at once going forward, I think I maybe overestimated just how attached I am to the chapter by chapter gratification I get, lol. You guys are reading this like an actual book — which means I’m getting reviews like a book–at the end. Heh. I think it’s a better way to release books. I picked Tuesday as a release date because it’s release date for real books, but I was thinking maybe I should do later in the week going forward?

This next part is a long-winded explanation, so you can skip to the TL;DR (too long; didn’t read) note at the bottom and then come back if you want to know more. 

The other thing I wanted to bring up is when to expect Book 4. When I initially split the draft in August, I had this idea that I would release Three in October and Four in December. When I sat down to start really thinking about Book 4, I realized I wanted to make some big story changes. The plan had been to focus on Book 4’s beta draft in October while getting Fool Me Twice going slowly, then switching focus in November when 4’s beta draft would be done.

Then I got a full time job that started immediately. I no longer have the mornings or even afternoons for writing. It’s mostly between 5-8, and I have to be careful about those hours because I also have to eat dinner and make sure I’m not just writing allll the time.

I wanted to let my schedule sit for a week to get an idea of how much time I can devote to writing, what my energy level would be at night, etc.  A week into my job, I have a better idea of how much time I need to for grading and lesson prep, and the fact is that I can’t really focus on Fool Me Twice, Flash Fiction, and Book 4 all at the same time. I need to decide what book is going to be released in February, and I’m afraid if I push all three, I’ll get burnt out and I won’t have anything. It’s what happened last year when FMT wasn’t working and Broken Girl wasn’t working — I missed February last year because I didn’t manage my schedule or my own creativity very well.

Basically this means that in order to make sure I have a novel to release in February, I have to make some difficult choices — and the difficult choice is that Book 4 is probably not coming out in December, and that I don’t currently have a release date in mind. I’m not willing to push FMT down the road again when it’s already a year later than I had wanted it to be, and I’m enjoying writing it so far.

What happens to Book 4 now is largely dependent on how Fool Me Twice goes. The last two books I’ve written needed extensive revisions, but I honestly think FMT is in the best position it could be. I’m sure I might need a scene or there, but I’ve done a really thorough job plotting, breaking down, and getting it organized. I haven’t really had a moment in writing it where I feel stuck.  If FMT’s beta period doesn’t take as long as Mad World’s, and if I finish the alpha draft on time, I can work in more time for Book 4 and have it out in March or April. I’m just not sure. I could also push Broken Girl 2 and Damaged down the road, too. There’s a lot of options in front of me.

I’m also contemplating a change to my writing process — I’ve always said I’d love to leave a first draft alone for a full month so I can look at it with fresh eyes. I could finish FMT’s first draft, leave it for a month, work on Book 4 in December, edit FMT in January, and not really miss my deadline. It’s something I’m playing and I’ll have more information for you on Friday when I hack away at my 2021 Production Schedule.

ANYWAY. TL;DR – Mad World Book 4 does not have a release date, and I can’t promise a new one unless I push another project off the schedule. I’m going to try to take a look at the process and see what I can do to improve things. Will have an updated 2020 – 2021 Production Schedule on Friday. 

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