Friday, August 3, 2012

End of a Blogfest and Goals

Woo Hoo! Happy Friday, everyone!

It's the last day of the Buccaneer Blogfest marathon hosted by Sharon Bayliss and Courtney Young.

Today's post is about reflecting on this month-long experience and talk about where I go from here. So, this is the perfect opportunity to talk about my goals - from July, and for August.

First, reflection time.

A month-long blogfest is always tough - I've done a couple and it requires a lot of time and committment. Not much else gets done, really. But the benefits! I've met tons of cool people - writers like me - in all different phases of their careers; beginners, contracted but not yet published, and published authors.

I could have done better at visiting, of course, but it's an all-day event to get to everybody. I think I visited everyone - hard to tell because I skipped around a lot.

What I learned most about is social media. We're all doing it with our blogs, of course, but interacting on FaceBook is quicker and more informal. I had a few author friends on Facebook before the start of this blogfest, but now I have dozens. And I'm loving it so much. It's a fun and informal way to get to know everyone. And lots of notifications of awesome deals. I'm talking notices of FREE books and other FREE swag. It's so cool!

Not so cool is my understanding of Twitter, which I just started for this blogfest. I do all right with clicking the button and sharing a tweet and I managed to get it linked to my FaceBook page. Ah well, I'll get there.


Now for July results!
Goal or No Goal?
  • Write a synopsis of a novela idea I had during BuNo which involves some different sort of characters in a different sort of world. Intrigued? Good! Hmmm, does copying and pasting a section from my BuNo writing efforts count? No? Okay - No Goal.
  • Complete 150 pages of final (hopefully) edits on Givin' Up The Ghost. Yes - and No. I did complete 150 pages of edits, but I'm thinking I need to go back again....No Goal?
  • Paste together A Guilty Ghost Surprised. This is what I wrote during BuNoWriMo, but I zipped through the outline and ended up writing a bunch of separate scenes that now need to be added. Not a small job, as I have to now figure out where the buggers go! Yes I did this, but have yet to go through and make sure they are actually in the right order. But I'm calling this a GOAL!
  • Read three books. Why yes, yes I did do this - definitively and without any qualifiers: Urchin King by Katharina Gerlach, On a Hot August Afternoon by Bridget Straub, and End of Days by Roland Yeomans. GOAL
  • Platform build for my new blog. And yes, I did this as well, all month long. GOAL!
  • Contact 50 followers from my old blog and invite them to re-follow me on my new blog. Um, sort of, hehe. I went through 50 names on my Follower list and retrieved email addresses - if there was one. I think I ended up with about 15 in the end. I emailed each one separately and invited them to follow me on my new blog. Didn't hear from any of them. Is that a No Goal?
  • Visit 25 awesome blogs per week. Since I participated in a month-long blogfest, of course I reached this GOAL!
So I've had some hits and misses *sigh*.

And now to setting August goals:

  • Work on final final edits of Givin' Up The Ghost
  • Work on scheduling blog tour for GUTG self-publish release
  • Work on marketing plan for GUTG
  • Work on posts for the blog tour
  • Work on synopsis (for real this time) for BuNoWriMo idea, keeping in mind that 19th century ghostly madam's have no place in an MG novel:)
  • Read 3 books
  • Visit 20 awesome blogs per week
  • In my spare time *winks* work on 2nd draft of A Guilty Ghost Surprised
And I hope to be able to announce a partner in crime on my book release blog tour very soon!

How was your July? What are your goals for August?

16 comments:

  1. If you didn't get a response from those fifteen, I wouldn't worry about it. Stephen Tremp had to abandon his old blog due to formatting issues and start anew. He might know some other ploys to try!

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    1. Alex, I heard someone else say recently they had to start a new blog as well, because of technical difficulties. I'll check in with Stephen:)

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  2. You got a lot going on. SOunds like me. I can barely keep up this summer. But congrats on deciding to self-pun!! That's super exciting! Never a better time to be a writer. :)

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    1. Pk, I agree, these are exciting times for writers!

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  3. Wow, some awesome and detailed goals you've got going on. I am impressed. You are hard on yourself, though. Some of those "no goals" seemed like GOAL! to me. Good luck with August :)

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    1. Shell, thank you. I am hard on myself, I know. But could I have tried harder? Yes, I could have. *sigh*

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  4. Good luck on all of your new goals! I'm going to have to sit down and figure out mine... Goal #1 Find the time to do that. :)
    It was great getting to know you during the tour.

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    1. Scotzig, thanks. And time is the biggest factor, isn't it? And it was great getting to know you, too. I'll be by soon for a visit.

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  5. I love meeting new bloggers during a blogfest. I saw this blogfest around, but I signed up for others and I'm hosting some authors.

    You did plenty in July. Good luck on your August goals.

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    1. Medeia, blogfests is where I've gotten most of my followers. And it's awesome to meet other writers, I love it!

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  6. Whenever I make goals - not often - I have one or two at most. I'm impressed with your list.

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    1. Annalisa, it's a pretty ponderous list, and even though I don't get it all done, I at least get half of it done, so I'm moving forward:)

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  7. Yep. Facebook is easier to handle. I need to be careful when logging on there as games are a downfall of mine. Twitter is next on my list of electronic doodads to master. I need to get one of those fancier phones or a tablet or something qwerty first as my niece says I do okay texting with my two thumbs while her eyes say she's being kind. No other goals right off hand other than getting my short stories ready for self publishing.

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    1. Millie, I bypass all the FB games, but I do have sort of a Pogo addiction:) Also, I'd love to host/interview/review/cover reveal or whatever you need when you're ready to publish.

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  8. Sounds like great goals to me! I'm back to teaching this month while going through my last edits on 18 THINGS, so I'm gonna concentrate on not bashing my head against the hall, lol. gOOd luCK and K.I.T:~)

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    1. Jamie, I'm seeing that a lot of people are back to school and busier than ever. Good luck to YOU!

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