Read this on galpod.com.
May has been an exciting month. I kept a journal for the whole month. I completed the Ninja Writers Challenge, which was fantastic. I wrote and read every single day. I put up a new website and started blogging daily. I have seven subscribers on my blog (THANK YOU!) and 12 followers on Medium (THANK YOU!). It’s a decent start. 🙂
I wrote a total of 9,558 words, not including this post. I’m still figuring out my tracking and my goals, but that’s a whole lot of words. I read 772 pages of books—that’s not including the essays and articles I read. On the other hand, I planned to finish an academic paper I’ve been working on, and that didn’t happen. It’s possible my goals were a tiny bit aggressive.
Here are some of my thoughts about my work in May:
Keeping a reading log
I wrote about why I like the reading log here. Generally, it gives a sense of accomplishment and helps me keep track of my thoughts and ideas during reading. I’m now debating whether I need a separate notebook for my reading log. I tend towards no because I like to have one notebook to write everything. On the other hand, now my reading notes are intertwined with meal planning and to do lists which makes it a bit of a challenge to find them.
Daily blogging
The daily blogging has been beneficial so far. I approached my previous blog from a “teaching” stance and posting there was a lot of work and included much angst and research. I approach this blog from a “learning” stance, which allows me to write random stuff. The stakes are a little bit lower when you write as a learner, or at least that’s how it feels. I hope you enjoyed coming along on this journey with me, and that you’ll continue reading (and maybe share with a friend you think would like to join us? 🙂)
Setting my own goals
The main ninja challenge was to write 10 minutes every single day. I did, but I found that if I set a goal of time, I tend to stop writing once the time is up. Also, the challenge specified writing 10 minutes on a single work. Because of where I am right now with my Work-In-Progress (WIP), that didn’t work well for me. And then I felt like crap because I couldn’t even do this tiny thing that I set as a goal. Over the last week or so I set myself word goals, but I counted blog posts and every sort of fiction writing in this word count. It increased my productivity significantly.
I thought I’d also share my goals for June with you. Here they are:
Write 1500 words every workday (Monday-Friday).
Blog every day.
Read every day and keep a reading log.
Finish the academic paper I’m working on.
Begin editing my first novel (Working title: Labour Pains; more details to follow at some point).
Here's to a happy, sunny, productive June!
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