March 2022 in Review

Health/Fitness

I exercised 17 times in March: not quite up to my stretch goal of 20, but better than my goal of 13 times.

Consumption tracking fell down at the end of the month when I left to visit my family, because I wasn't eating any of my normal foods and I couldn't be bothered with it.

I did "only eat when I'm hungry" for several days in March and it's weirdly hard. I keep wanting to have little snacks even though I'm not hungry. Might get back to that this month, since it seems like a sensible approach to food.

Writing

I am poking along with Alien Peacelords still. I don't feel like I'm writing slowly, until the point where I check my stats for my month-in-review and go "Huh. Is that all?"

Alien Peacelords is at 36,397, so I wrote about 17,500 words in March. Percentage complete is at 28%, up from 15%. Estimated length is exactly on track. (Seriously, my estimated word count through to this point is 36,402. FREAKISH.)

The Business of Writing

I finished initial edits on Angel's Grace and sent it to first readers. The first readers have all finished it now, so I could start final revisions now, too.

I started final revisions on Demon's Alliance and decided I should do a hard thing as part of revisions. And then went "hard thing is too hard, let's not work on this anymore."

In fairness, I didn't start final revisions until I left to visit my family, so it's not surprising I didn't get very far. I did add a few new scenes to Demon's Alliance at the same time that I finished initial edits on Angel's Grace, though, so that was productive.

Reading

I read Legends & Lattes, like everyone else I know, it seems. It takes place in a D&D-esque setting, about an orc woman who retires from adventuring to open a coffeeshop. It's more slice-of-life than action-adventure, although it does have an action-centered climax. I enjoyed it.

Art

I worked some more on the cover for Demon's Alliance. I guess this is actually going to be the cover! Who knew. Front cover and spine is done but I still need to finish the back. Like the Surface 3 before it, my Surface GO 3 also does not have the computing oomph to do a print-resolution wrap cover in a single pass. So I split it the back cover off pretty early on in the process.

Social

I traveled! I saw my parents, both brothers, one sister-in-law, plus Sophrani, Kagetsume, and Boingdragon. Much social!

I did a lot of adulting on this trip, too, My parents are in their 80s. They're still living independently and managing day-to-day things pretty well, but they need more help with various other stuff. My siblings and I have been pitching in and we did a chunk of administrivia during the course of the trip.

Gaming

Using Soul Scribes more, and more consciously, was a success. I didn't write tons last month, but I didn't have to set a specific writing quota, either. And I liked being able to think "I did the Soul Scribes dailies, that's enough" instead of needing to check my word count or percentage complete. Gonna keep this goal around

March Score Card

• Finish Angel’s Grace initial edits & send to first readers: Done!
• Log into Soul Scribes to fish and/or do the dailies on 20+ days: Done!
• Exercise 13 times: Done!
• Look at goal list occasionally: Done!
• Make entries in bullet journal for at least 20 days: Done!

Thank goodness for easy goals. >_>

Stretch Goals:

• Start final edits on Demon’s Alliance: Technically!
• Work on cover art for Demon’s Alliance: Front cover done!
• Maintain bullet journal for entire month: Done!
• Finish reading a book I haven’t read before: Done!

April Goals

• Do taxes by 4/15/2022
• Make final editing list for Demon's Alliance
• Log into Soul Scribes to fish and/or do the dailies on 16+ days (lowering target for April because I didn't use the site while I was on vacation)
• Exercise 13 times
• Look at goal list occasionally
• Make entries in bullet journal for at least 20 days.

Stretch Goals:

• Read through A Game to You.
• Make an editing list for A Game to You. (Someday I will have a thing that's difficult enough to do that working on A Game to You will seem easy in comparison, and that is when this will happen.)
• Work on notes/outline for a different book
• Get Alien Peacelords to 50% complete
• Complete final edits on Demon’s Alliance
• Get some use out of Color and Light by James Gurney
• Consumption tracking
• Finish back cover art for Demon’s Alliance
• Work on cover art for Angel’s Grace
• Create final editing list for Angel's Grace
• Practice art (bonus stretch goal: total of 15 hours of practice)
• Post four blog entries, apart from my usual month-in-review.
• Maintain bullet journal for entire month
• Learn a new game
• Finish reading a book I haven’t read before