2018 Goals

This week has been crazy, so I'm running a little behind. I think it's a good time to review my goals in 2017 and make some for this year before January gets away from me.

2017

Memorize 36 Bible verses

Hehe ... if you count individual verses I memorized instead of passages, I may have reached 36. That wasn't quite what I set out to do, though. I memorized Psalm 19 and some individual

Read 50 books

I didn't make this one this year; I only read 40 books. I made it to 50 in 2016, but only by binge reading a few children's books. ;)

Make a 2017 playlist

I did this, but I ... didn't keep up with it throughout the whole year :P I love the idea of a song a week, though to look back on.

Write 2 entire drafts

I updated Andora's Folly twice in 2017 (once for publication and once for the paperback release) so that gets me to my goal right there. ;) I also drafted about 40,000 words on the sequel to Martin Hospitality, but it's on hold for more planning. I was supposed to finish the first all of the Behind the Act before the year was over but ended up taking a break for my wrist. I'm guessing I'm around 50,000 words on that one. So two revision draft and two half-written first drafts is my total :P

Use my journals

I journaled my trip to Washington and Oregon this summer. I almost always try to journal my trips, but I'm so horrible at summing things up, that I rarely finish it out. This time I did finish! And I took notes from the OCW conference. In the same journal, I used a different section to journal dreams. That's turned into keeping a brief running list on my phone because again ... it takes me a long time, I'm longwinded, and my wrist is sensitive right now. Other than that, I don't think I started any new journals. I did collect a few more that need a purpose though :P

Attend a writer's conference

Check! I attended the Oregon Christian Writers summer conference in Portland. It was extremely good, so I encourage you to look into it, even if you have to travel like I did. (They have an under 23 discount!) The keynotes of 2017 were Frank Peretti and Tessa Afshar, both of whom were phenomenal. I'm unlikely to attend again in 2018, but I'm keeping it on my radar.

Publish 2 items

I actually did this ... but it feels like so long ago! Martin Hospitality was released February 4. Andora's Folly had a July 29 Kindle release date and a December 9 paperback release. So that's almost three publications since I went through the process that many times. ;)

Now for the 2018 goals!

2018

Poems, passages ... I want to continue to spend more time on memorization. A handful of new things to recite at the end of the year would be a big accomplishment for me!

 I'm not sure what I'll have ready this year. A sequel to something, or maybe Behind the Act. Either way, it will be self-published. Publishing is a lot of work, but since I've got drafts in progress, it should be possible? We'll see. :)

2016 // 50 books ... with cheating :P

2017 // 40 books

2018 // 40 books

This year I want to focus on books I own and have never read. I don't want to have to read children's books to make my goal! Hopefully scaling it back a little, I can fit in some more serious books.

I didn't pay enough attention, but I want to make sure I rate and review everything I read this year on Goodreads and Amazon (at least if it's someone with few reviews or someone I know). I know I didn't use Amazon hardly at all this past year. Now I have my own account to review through, but I'll have to see if I can actually get it to let me. You can keep up with what I'm reading and my reviews here.

Okay. This is huge. xD I don't know how many books I've bought over the last two years. It will be good for my budget and my TBR if I don't buy any more for now. So one of my goals is to buy no more than five books this year. No. more. We'll see if I have the resolve to stick to that. Another thing to help me limit myself is that the books I do buy have to be on sale, bought with a gift card, etc. Even Kindle books count toward the five. Pray for my strength of will. This means I should make some good progress on the books I've bought and not read!

I haven't really researched writers conferences for this year or made any solid plans. But I'd like to go somewhere and do something again this year! I don't know if it will be for writing, though. I might take a road trip with the family or do something like that. We shall see!

I really want to play around with my writing some more. Try different POVs and tenses, new locations, and find some things that really work for me. I'm reading DIY MFA right now, and it has a good system for tracking iteration. Wish me luck with that. ;)

I have three sets of Great Courses on writing topics. They're video college lectures, more or less, and I've learned a lot from the one I've nearly finished. I'd like to keep up with them this year with some notetaking so that I can progress and keep up my education. Since I'm not having to do college or anything, I figure it's the least I can do.

Overall, 2017 was a very different year for me, but not a bad one. I'm looking forward to seeing what all 2018 holds. Thus far I'm guessing it will continue to surprise me. Thank goodness it's all in God's hands! What is one of your goals for 2018?

So I Talked to an Agent (and what that means)

I talked to an agent!!! While at OCW, Ivy and I decided that we should pitch. Just do it. It'd be good practice, and we would expect nothing. So that's what we did. (Crazy best friend pressure. XP) The question is, how did it go and how did it change my writing life?

I really, really did not want to talk to an agent. I was stuck in Portland with limited internet, no pictures, no handouts. I had nothing that they recommended having in order to pitch to an agent. Not even a manuscript I'd begun. Why? Because I'd decided I was happy working on the Martin Series and didn't want to begin anything else. (HA!)

Then Bill Jensen of Willam K. Jensen Literary Agency said there were a lot of openings for agent appointments, and we should sign up even if all we had were ideas. Well then. That shot down every reason I had for not pitching.

After a little bit of research and are-we-really-doing-this?! nerves, Ivy convinced me to snag the last spot with Jensen. After all, he fit my overall genre the best. And she was right: I'd regret it if I didn't just go for it.

He was several minutes late to the appointment, which at first made me so nervous. I could have dashed out the door before he ever showed up and scratched my name off the list. But I didn't. So when he did show up, it put me at ease, because is there any other proof that someone prestigious is human, than them being late?? Not really.

Having never done this before, I really have no idea how the appointment went. He kept me from rambling and reassured me that he had taken on young authors (Rachel Coker!) before, and he had signed people from just an idea. I didn't say everything I think I should have said, but the ending to the conversation kind of stunned me.

Mr. Jensen asked to see the first three chapters once I was ready, and then he'd let me know.

For all I know, they could say that to everyone. I don't know what I was expecting. But I was not expecting that. 

So that brings me to the obvious change that now must take place in my writing. Since I have an agent expecting three chapters of a manuscript that at the time wasn't even fully plotted ... I can't keep plugging away at Martin Crossroads at the speed of a turtle.

I feel so awful setting the sequel aside and leaving all of my wonderful, expectant readers hanging!! But I have never been so excited about shaking up my writing life. :D So now that little story, Matinee Regulars, that I shared with you in this post, is being brought to life. Although several things in the description I gave you have already changed :P

I had brainstormed a little with my sister a few weeks before the conference, and that's the only reason I was able to pitch the story. Then Ivy and I brainstormed for several hours at her house, and the pieces just started falling into place. Let me tell you, that has not happened since writing Martin Hospitality last year. 

And that made me realize something. Writing Martin Crossroads next was my idea. Not God's. Did it make the most logical sense? Yes. But I have spent months on it and gotten literally nowhere. And now this little Pinterest-board-of-a-story idea flies out of my mouth in front of an agent, and guess what I'm writing?

I haven't enjoyed writing this much in over a year. So it feels so amazing to finally be writing a story that is working with me, not against me. And my only explanation for that is because God is working with me and my story as well.

So it's a little bit of good news and bad news. Despite how things continue to go with Mr. Jensen, I've taken the first step to becoming a hybrid author. The sequel to Martin Hospitality will be delayed. But the story you all demanded several weeks ago is under construction!

Now is that a crazy God thing or what?!

The Epic Journey // What I Learned + Photo Dump

In case you missed it, I went on vacation!! By myself. For my birthday. It included attending the Oregon Christian Writers conference and meeting Ivy Rose and Emily McConnell. In short it. was. amazing.

I'll begin with some takeaways from the OCW conference, but then prepare yourselves for an photo dump :P The only other conference I've attended to compare to was a teeny tiny Texas one from last year (post here). But I think I can still confidently say that the OCW conference was one of the best ever.

Conference Lessons

1 // Age makes no difference. Just like the other teency conference I went to, there was basically no one else my age! (Except for the awesome 3 girls that I went with this time.) There were only a handful of people under 40, and most were over 50. Which is actually really cool if you think about it. Lots of them are just as new to writing as I am. How neat is that? Your age doesn't make any difference. It's never too late to start.

2 // Even famous people are people. Yep. They still get excited to hear you've read their books. They still need coffee to survive a four day conference. And they still get nervous and make mistakes. They're human! Which I find super comforting. Were famous people like Jill Williamson and Frank Peretti really cool in person?? Of course! BUT they don't live on a pedestal; we put them there.

3 // Writers are never alone. We may do most of our work alone, and even prefer being alone sometimes (most of us are introverts, okay?). But we really aren't alone. There were so many people that I brushed shoulders with at the conference who were genuinely interested in what I was doing. Quite a few of them were even doing something similar. Don't underestimate the power of community.

4 // Christian is more than a label. I admit that I wasn't sure I wanted to go to a "Christian" conference. What does that even mean, anyway? No one will be selling erotica? That's a bonus, but let's just say, I wanted to go to the best. And if the best wasn't exclusively Christian, then I was okay with that. BUT NO. This conference was so much more than Christian. It was godly. It was like church where you learn about writing. I'm not kidding. It was more than the Sunday School rhetoric, because everyone there was pursuing God and representing Him in their writing. Can there really be a greater calling?

5 // Writing starts with us. You're thinking "duh." Hear me out on this one. Something that really came home to me when taking Tessa Afshar's class called "Weaving Spiritual Themes into Your Book," was that I can't write what I know until I know something. If our goal as Christian writers is to connect people with truth and show them a glimpse of God, then shouldn't we be able to perceive that in ourselves first? The emotional connection people make to stories is often because it identifies something inside of them that they can't identify. Until I get to know the way I work, I won't be able to lay a finger on how anyone else works.

6 // God has to be for it. Something else I realized while at the conference was that if I'm writing for God, I'd better be including Him in the process. And I mean really including Him. I think the reason Martin Hospitality has been as successful as it has been is because God was behind it. That's why I was able to finish it and somehow get the messages I wanted to share (and even some I had nothing to do with) into that book. That is not happening with it's sequel. At all. The only thing I can conclude after several months of plodding along and literally getting nowhere is that God is not for it right now. He will be eventually, I hope. But for now, I'm going to set Martin Crossroads aside.

Obviously, my head is still swimming with everything I learned at the conference. It was an overall phenomenal experience, and I am definitely interested in attending again, even if it is in Portland.

Famous People

I met some famous people at the conference!!

Frank Peretti

Tessa Afshar

James Rubart + Jill Williamson

Not pictured: Jeff Gerke, Traci Hilton, + April McGowan. 

All these people were so awesome and fun to talk to!! Like I said, they were surprisingly normal and easy to talk to ... not to mention eager to make new friends! So fun ^.^

Travel Photos

Nothing about the conference or all the traveling it took me to get there would have been half as fun without the young ladies I went with! Forget about going back to Washington and Oregon for the conference! I'm going back just to see them again!! :D

((all photos with people in them were taken by Ivy))

Mountains on the way to Spokane

Driving to Portland -- our most energetic morning for sure

Mountains. Mountains everywhere :D

One of the first things we did? Skip out on the agents' panel

Taking notes in Tessa's coaching class

Ivy joined my morning class ;)

The hotel had really good coffee!!

Lunch at IKEA

Gotta love the trees headed west

Lincoln City Beach with Emily

Literally the only seaweed on the entire beach

So windy and SO COLD

Starbucks for the drive home of course

Happy birthday to Megan!

No trip is complete without a bookstore

Name inspiration at a cemetery with Ivy!

Unpictured Adventures

• eating mango on the back of a car
• eating waaay too much candy
• trying Chicharrones and Mountain Dew
• watching the eclipse with Ivy's family
• watching the 2008 BBC Sense and Sensibility with Ivy
• staying up late in the Bakers' alcove
• cooler weather!!!!
• successfully surviving airports by myself
• having mothers matchmake -_-
• TALKING TO AN AGENT
• mentor session with April McGowan
• brainstorming with Ivy
• praying together every morning as we got in the car
• and every moment in between :)

Does that not look like an amazing trip?! What writer conferences have you enjoyed? Have you met any of your writing friends or famous authors?

A Vlog + Blog Launch

Hey, everyone! Today I have the next installment of the Very Awesome Vlog Challenge. But the big news is I'm also launching a review blog, Loop + Paschall. The neatest part about it is, the blog belongs to my brother and one of his friends. I'm really excited to share all of this with you guys!!

Blog Launch

So Loop + Paschall. The online names of two teenage guys I've grown up with who enjoy watching movies. Sometimes to rave over, sometimes just to laugh at. Since their after-church conversations for the past few years have largely consisted of swapping opinions and critiquing different things, I had the brilliant idea to suggest a joint review blog. They both shrugged it off and went on talking about their differing opinions on the movie version of John Carter.

Well, now they have caved. What's more, I think they're actually excited about doing the blog thing! Last Saturday marked their first review: Spider-Man: Homecoming. The post for today is Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, one they went to see in theaters together. Without me.

Without any further ado, here's a screen shot of their header (which I designed and already featured :P) AND the link you've all been waiting for.

Leave them some comments. Subscribe. Go crazy! We all know how rare the male blogger breed is. ;)

VAVC #6 Vlog

And now for the vlog ;) Life has been super duper crazy of late, but I squeezed this video in when babysitting a sleeping child. Besides, Ivy got her video posted, so I had to do mine ;) As the video says, I hope to film one with her next month!! So much excitement.^.^

As always, you should join the link-up! Right here.

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Are you as excited about Loop + Paschall as I am?! Are you going to the OCW Summer Conference, too? (Please say yes + yes!!!!)

The Andora's Folly blog tour is coming your way next Saturday! If you signed up, be sure you got the mega e-mail with all the information! Until then, Andora's Folly can be pre-ordered here.

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