Kimberly Gardner

Happy New Year!

Trying to get started off on the right foot here, so I’m beginning this year of blogging with a few of my goals for 2011.

First, I will blog more regularly. No, really! Lol! I’m going to blog at least once a week and start a few new features that, hopefully will breathe some new life into this tired old blog.

One of the things I have planned is a feature borrowed from the Page 99 web site where the blog features page 99 from whatever book is being spotlighted. My plan is to showcase page 99 from some of my own books and to invite other authors to do the same. I think it’ll be fun and doubtless will add to my already mountainous tbr list.

As for the writing in 2011, I have at least two novels contracted and possibly even three along with at least one novella that will release in April. I’ll be sharing more specifics about the stories in my future posts, so come back for sneak peek excerpts and other fun stuff.

Specifically, I plan to write at least 1000 words every day. I know that doesn’t sound like much, but a girl’s got to start somewhere, right? Lol! I also want to post some freebee stories here on the blog and in my yahoo group.

So that’s the plan for 2011.

I hope everyone had fun last night ringing in the new year. I know I did.

A lot happened this week, though whether or not I met my goals is sort of debatable. *g*

I received and finished the line edits on my novella that’s releasing later this month. That’s a huge thumbs-up since I not only hate line edits, but I’m totally pumped about this book. It will be my first publication with Loose-ID and I’m really excited about that. I also got a cover draft for that book which I will share just as soon as I get the go ahead. Promise.

Let’s see, what else?

I’ve been working on the revision of DWD and it’s coming along, just a lot slower than I’d like. I’ve spent most of the week on chapters nine and ten and don’t know yet if they’re right, but I suspect I’ll leave them for now. Oh, and I had to cut a sex scene. *cries* But it simply wasn’t working with the revisions I’ve made. Of course cutting it has complicated things since I lost a big chunk of conflict that was driving subsequent scenes, so I need to rework some stuff in chapters ten and eleven.

I haven’t forgotten that I promised an update on the other projects I’ve got in the works, but that will have to wait maybe a few more days. I need to do some long-range planning then I can talk more about those future projects.

So until next time …

Not a horrible week, but not a stellar one either. Witness how late I am with this progress report. Yeah.

Anyway, I did get some writing done. I revised chapter seven of DWD and I wrote another lesson for the novella writing workshop.The workshop starts on the 8th and I have three more lessons to go, so guess what’s on this week’s list? *g*

I was also really busy with the Rainbow Romance Writers contest, the rainbow awards of excellence. We have been swamped with entries over the past week. So much so that it’s been rough for Sara and I to keep up. Hard to believe that I was worried that we wouldn’t get many entries. At last count we were pushing a hundred entries and may well have surpassed that number by now. *happy dance*

But I drift off point.

Goals for this week:

1 Revise chapter eight and rework chapters nine and ten of DWD.

2 Finish the lessons for the novella workshop. As I said, there are three left to do.

That should keep me busy, don’t you think?

Next time, along with my weekly report, I’ll give an update on where I am with the work I have contracted for the near future as well as a glimpse into what I have planned for next year’s writing schedule.

Wow, last week was a hideously unproductive week.

I met none of my goals. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada. I did manage to get one lesson written for the novella writing workshop and I discovered a major plot problem in DWD, but as for wordage … I got nothin’. *sigh*

In fact I’ve been so distracted and disorganized that I didn’t even get this lack of progress report filed on Sunday as I’ve been trying to do.

But that was last week.

So here we go. Goals for this week:

1 Finish three lessons for the novella workshop.

2 Revise/rewrite chapters 9 and 10 of DWD.

If I can get that much accomplished, I will be a happy camper. Until next time.

A friend from RRW does a thing on her blog that she calls her Sunday report card where she reports on how she did on her writing goals for that week. She also sets goals for the upcoming week. She says that declaring her goals publicly makes them more real and acts as the stick (as in carrot and stick) that encourages her to get them done.

I can see a lot of value in this, so beginning today I will be doing my Sunday Progress Report.

I had two goals this past week, and didn’t accomplish either of them. But I did get a few other things done. So here are my goals for this week:

1 Finish two lessons for the workshop I’ll be teaching in September.

2 Write 3k on the story I’m working on about the art forger.

3 Revise chapters 8, 9 and 10 of DWD, my current WIP for MLR which I’d hoped to have turned in by now.

So there they are, my goals for the week. Next Sunday we’ll see how I did. Wish me luck.