February Check In

Tabatha

March 1

Good Morning, everyone, and happy MARCH!

I don't know much about March in the way of exciting facts. I DO know at least 2 of my coolest family members have a birthday in March. March has the zodiac signs of Pisces and Aries, which seems like an interesting combo to slam into one birth month. But you don't come to this blog for weird random facts (or even chaotic zodiac information). You come here for a glimpse into the life of a writer and an avid book lover. In that vein, February was rough and we can only hope March will be better! Don't take my word for it, let's look at the data in my beautiful 2024 progress journal.

Section 1: Individual Projects

Currently I am tracking 5 projects in the first section of my new journal. After a rather productive January ⅘ of those are fully drafted (3 of them were fully drafted before 2024 began but it makes January sound really cool if I word it like that). Anyway, that tells me I REALLY need to put some time into editing in 2024. So, in February, I decided to keep up the momentum on the short story collection and dive right into first round edits on that collection.

Here's how that progress page looked when February started.

A picture from my progress journal showing a lot of information. Basically, you'll see the titles of each of 10 short stories with boxes each representing the word count colored blue as I drafted them. Then you see a box marked "Edit, Round 1" showing 10 squares, 2 of which are already colored blue.

You'll notice I had already edited 2 of the 10 short stories. Obviously, as you can see from the page on the right, these stories are not equal in length. But, in February, I wanted to focus on editing more of the stories.

Here's the progress page as it sits today.

Exact same image except 5 of the 10 boxes under "Edit, round 1" are colored.

Let's dive into the details.

Section 2: Monthly Progress

My monthly progress pages are designed to help give me focus in a given month. In February, I started with the same goal as I did in January (to write every day). I decided to keep it the same because I didn't make the goal in January. So, I set up February's page to look a lot like January's did. Here was the starting point.

Left hand page from top to bottom: Project Focus (blank), Total Words Written (blank), Average Words per Day (blank), February 2024, Monthly Goals Write Every Day. Right Hand Page: Did I write everyday with 29 uncolored hearts. Spots for recording total words labeled Idea Journal, Book Review, and Blog Post.

Here's how it looks today.

Same graphic but filled in. Project Focus: Short Story Anthology. 411 words added 18 chapters edited. Total word written: 6894 Average words per day 237.7 Write every day 14/29. 14 of the blank hearts are now filled in. Idea Journal total 2404 words, also broken down by which two writing sessions that was book review total 3018 words blog post total 1061 words

At first glance, this looks bad. I only wrote new words on half the days, I didn't even hit 10000 words written, and I failed at that monthly goal.

But, if you remember, my goal wasn't writing new words. It was editing them. I edited 18 "chapters" (sections would probably be a better term in this case) in February. Also not great. I would've preferred to hit 1 section per day. But you can't really see that on this document. I let myself down but not in the way I thought.

Looking back on the setup, I let myself down with this design. I was clearly tracking total word written, which is scary low, but that wasn't my goal. I copied January's setup but changed the goal posts. If this isn't proof that one thing doesn't work for every writer, every day, every moment … I don't know what is.

Anyway, I failed at the goal I wrote in because it wasn't the goal in my brain. I was focused on something else and seeing those "failures" in the form of missing boxes on my page honestly made me move further away from my target.

I learned something IMPORTANT about myself in February. Something I probably should've already known. I have to set up this journal to MATCH the quiet goals in my brain. Otherwise, it's just another thing I can't complete and then I stop trying.

Irrational perfectionist at work, friends.

So, for March, I'm going to design the page to match the goals. It seems so obvious. I'm glad I realized it 4 or 5 years into using a progress journal. (Insert facepalm)

Section 3: Reading

February was not a complete failure, however. You may have noticed I logged about 3000 words on book reviews. Sometimes I escape into books when things aren't going the way I expected them to. Here's February's progress page(s).

10 total books (about 128 pages per day), everything I intended to read, some bonus stuff, and one that I was gifted a ridiculously long time ago and finally got to. Are you a cover person? Good, you'll love this next pic.

Covers and star ratings for the 10 books read in February They Both Die at the End 3 stars In Search of Channel Void 4 stars The Maid 3 stars Drowning 4 stars Raven Hill 3 stars 'Salem's Lot 4 stars Break the Moon 3 stars The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo 4 stars Hidden Pictures 2 stars Kill Someone 4 stars

This month was full of a lot of reads that are REALLY worth your time. I highly suggest checking out In Search of Channel Void if you're a fan of science fiction or the Twilight Zone, Kill Someone if you're a fan of darker books that really make you think about what you would do in a situation, and Drowning if you're someone who likes action-packed and dangerous books.