Weekly Goals

It has been a busy weekend and an even busier morning, making me even more late with my update than usual. But here they are, updates on my weekly goals.

Core Goals

Write, edit, or outline every day (including the weekend): Check. I was back on track after messing up this goal last week.

Get exercise: I kept up my weekly gym day, went for a 8K run, and had two training sessions at home. On top of that, I managed to stay fairly active in the in-between days, so I'm pretty happy with this goal.

Eat healthier: Well, I failed this goal straight away. Monday was just "one of those days", and I ended up calming my nerves with Ben and Jerrys. That said, I'm actually fairly happy with how I managed my sugar cravings throughout the week, including the weekend.

Read with intention: This has always been a pretty vague goal, but I am really feeling like keeping it in mind is helping be aware of when my attention is slipping.

Focus while writing: This is very similar to the reading goal above. I don't know if it is making a tangible difference, but I do feel like I'm getting more focused when writing.

Do a WYRM review: Check. It's too early to say if I'm in a rhythm, but at least I got another review sent off this week.


Stretch Goals

Do vocal exercises: Check. I got this goal done halfway through the week and kept doing the exercises.

Do blog post: A week late, but I did it. I posted my short story recommendations for February.

Do writing exercises : Once again, I got this done early in the week. I repeated the character exercise from last week, which was still great and really helped me focus on some of the mechanics behind a character's actions.

Read short stories:
- I listened to a story in Podcastle. It had a novel fantasy element and some of that strangeness I love (a magical street vendor showing up out of nowhere selling weird artifacts). However, the MC reacted a lot to strange elements, but never really did anything about them (not being the kind of MC I like in these sort of stories and not really being a real person either, falling somewhere in between). Also, the conflict was very easily resolved, and it was clear from the start that, that would be the case, making the story somewhat dull.
- I read two stories over at Every Day Fiction. Neither of them really wowed me. They both seemed more like vignettes than fully developed stories, and I had trouble figuring out what they wanted to say. To me, that means they failed at some of the very basic of storytelling (clarity, especially).
- I read a story over at Flash Fiction Online. It was okay. It had an interesting speculative element, but in the end, it didn't really go anywhere. Some horror was creeping in over the city, and the story ended with that horror arriving in front of the MC. Meh.

Read “new” magazines: Those two EDF stories mentioned above qualifies for this goal.

Read/listen to non-fiction:
- I listened to an episode of the Myth and Legends podcast about the Devilkin from Slavic folklore and the Jack-in-Irons from Northern England and another episode about Oisín in Tir na nÓg from Irish folklore. Neither episode sparked any immediate story ideas, but the magical Devilkin advisor to a royal pretender could definitely prove to be a source of future story ideas and the godlike, semi-shapeshifting legendary heroes from Irish folklore might too.
- I listened to an hour-long BBC documentary about the revolution and re-emergence of dictatorship in the Philippines.
- I watched/listened to several videos and podcasts by military analysts talking about the war in Ukraine, wars of attrition, and war econmics.

Submit short stories: Well, I didn't have any stories rejected to resubmit, but it turned out I had messed up two of my submissions last week (probably forgetting to attach the actual stories ). So, yeah, I got those stories submitted properly. That aside, though, I also managed to complete edits on a story I otherwise thought would be ready for the dump, get it into a shape I was happy with, and send it off, and I followed up on a editorial email.

Do Fantasticon work: I had various tasks I needed to do to as part of the planning for Fantasticon come summer. I managed to get one of them done; I booked a hotel for on of the Guests of Honor. And I got started on the translation of the GoH story for the con booklet.