Happy New Year, all.
I have plans and goals and so many projects for the new year--far more than can fit in a year, but that's normal--and I needed a way to keep track of them. Well, of some of them. Anyway, I looked at Christie Yant's fantastic Google Docs Tools for Writers, and thought this is awesome, but I really want to be able to track XYZ...
So, I built my own. It doesn't have Christie's Career Bingo, nor her page for tracking stories. Instead, it has:
Update: Now also includes the ability to track your work towards a specific WIP goal, with a little progress bar up the top!
It's built in MS Excel 2003, because the other options (google docs, pre-2003 excel, open office and its ilk) cannot handle the complex conditional formatting going on. (Well, some of them possibly could, but I didn't have the time to find out).
Sadly, it has a lot less than the full spec I wanted to create. I started working out how I could put a complete version together, and realised what I was designing was a small application, not a spreadsheet, and trying to build it in Excel would be like trying to build the Golden Gate Bridge out of toothpicks and sand. But as that project dovetails nicely into a larger project I'm working on (yes, too many projects) I hope to have a complete-and-non-Excel version for 2016. (Feature requests welcome in the comments).
Feel free to share, attribution appreciated.
Write comment (5 Comments)No updates for a few days--not because I forgot, but because I was too sick to get out of bed, let alone write blog posts about how sick I was. Safe to say no drafts, though weirdly my fantasy-series is niggling at me again. I think it was to be a novella-super-series. Intriguing idea.
Given I'm not actually better yet, just well enough to not be able to justify lying in bed, my schedule for the last four days of November is a mad scramble to catch the essentials of the week I just lost, jettisoning (for the sake of my sanity and recovery) anything that does not actually have to be done before November 30th. So I have serious doubts there will be more drafts. I am 100% okay with this; the challenge was always just a bit of fun in the hope I'd get a good number of drafts out of it, and given November was already my most stressful, commitment-filled month of the year (okay, maybe it ties with a few months ago when I downsized and moved house) any drafts at all is 'a good number'.
To be honest, I am rather looking forward to some return to sanity, away from huge big life events, where my most exciting thing that week can be a new story idea.
Write comment (0 Comments)No update yesterday. No writing, either. After work I helped some friends move house, and when I came back evidently my immune system had been saving up a special flu bug. The minute I no longer had any obligations to other people for the rest of the month, WHAM. Accelerated all-the-symptoms-at-once flu. So I went to bed.
Honestly given the last weekend, and the stress levels of the weeks before, I am not at all surprised.
This morning I did manage two microfictions for the Museum of Words contest. Free entry, $20,000 prize, open topic, runs for another two days. I'm going to count those as drafts, seeing as they are complete stories, even if they're much shorter than usual. My first two drafts were way over the word count that I normally write anyway, so it pretty much evens out. That takes me to four of my goal of ten.
I really, really doubt I can write six stories in nine days, but you never know. Today I'm mostly moping on my couch wishing I could have thirty seconds without coughing or some joints that weren't filled with formic acid.
Write comment (0 Comments)Almost forgot this post (and completely forgot yesterday's, whoops. Erm. Nothing to report that day, I was pretty much still a zombie.). Still in post-people recovery, frankly. Finally getting my sleep back under control, and catching up on billable work. No words today. Bad writer, no cookie, but hey. It's been a hectic few days.
Write comment (0 Comments)No writing yesterday. The wedding on Sunday went beautifully; a lovely ceremony where the more typical readings and celebrant speeches were replaced pretty much entirely with letters from the bride and groom to their parents and stories of the two both growing up and their relationship from the point of view of family and friends (which is not only frankly a far more interesting and engaging ceremony than I've seen before, but also meant that, when it came time for the dreaded speeches at the reception, the speeches didn't have to include any more funny stories of the bride or groom, and could be just variations on a theme of thanking the people involved, and be over and done with in under five minutes. Best idea ever).
It was, however, an unbelievably long day for the wedding party. Up at 5am for hair and makeup and photos, continuing through until the wedding finally wound down well after midnight. I spent fifteen hours solid in five-inch heels and my feet are still informing me of this fact. Add to that an unfortunately necessary early start on Monday morning, as my boyfriend had to be in a town on the other side of the state by 11am, and Monday was pretty much a blur of recovery and napping.
Write comment (0 Comments)No NaNo post.
Today is my beloved brother's wedding, and I just want to wish him and his new wife the most heartfelt congratulations, and welcome my new sister to the family. Love you guys, may you find happiness and love with each other always.
Write comment (0 Comments)Halfway through NaNoWriMo. I spent today doing various writing-things in somewhat recovery from extreme over-peopling, wishing my neighbours would stop reminding me they existed with infuriating things like talking and laughter. I did also start to transcribe the draft I just finished, but after completing a couple of pages, realised that I had drastically underestimated the number of written words to a page, and the story is well over the limit for the anthology it was intended for.
Which is not a huge problem--I still have one story I can submit--I'll just put the transcription and editing of that one aside for a while. If anything, it's a relief, being one less thing I have to worry about this month, especially given an end as messy as that one probably means I need to spend a good amount of time thinking about what went wrong.
So, halfway through, two for ten. However, by my new (more accurate) words-per-page count, I've written just over 15,000 words in the past 15 days, which isn't bad at all, given more than half my usual writing days have been lost to social things.
Write comment (0 Comments)Almost halfway! No update today from me (and a post written in advance) as today, I will be taking my future sister-in-law on her epic hen's night (well, lunch-afternoon-night) to end all hen's nights. Lunch, bowling, spa, dinner, movie, all over the CBD and Camberwell (because you'd be amazed how hard it is to find a decent hen's night movie in the evening at the moment) it's a whole thing, it's all happening, here we go.
Tomorrow, though: words. Words will happen. They may not be new words, as I desperately need to revise a piece to submit it, and transcribe the piece I finished yesterday, but words will happen!
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