Progress Report: October 7-13, 2018

It's been another disrupted week, but things have still gotten done. Road-tripping aside, it's still school holidays, here, although they end soon, and things will settle back into a more normal routine. This week I've had three days where I've managed less than 5 hours of work; the rest have consisted of long hours at the desk, and I'm now feeling the warning signs of another RSI flare-up.

I may be getting too old for this kind of thing... and, I just need to find the the limits of the new limits - which I don't think I've done, yet. Working on it - hence the outrageous goals set for this month. When it comes to testing how far I can push it, they were it - and according to past experience, they should have been achievable.

Without more ado - here's what was achieved.... followed by what was not:

Progress: October 7-13, 2018

• New words produced: 23,989
• Outlines and Notes: 6,000
• Words compiled: 0
• Works completed: 0
• Works edited: 2 (for submission)
• Covers created: 0
• Works formatted: 2 (for submission)
• Works published: 0
• Works released: 0
• Works submitted: 2
• Competitions Entered: 0
• Bloggery: 3,247
• Hours at Desk—October 7-13: 47 hours 40 minutes
• Hours at Desk—October 1-6: 47 hours 51 minutes
• September Hours at Desk (not all recorded): 180 hours, 36 minutes
• August Hours at Desk: 263 hours, 29 minutes
• July Hours at Desk: 264 hours, 18 minutes
• June Hours at Desk: 230 hours, 5 minutes
• May Hours at Desk: 302 hours, 6 minutes
• April Hours at Desk: 167 hours, 41 minutes
• March Hours at Desk: 201 hours, 43 minutes
• February Hours at Desk: 183 hours, 50 minutes
• January Hours at Desk: 180 hours, 3 minutes

October Goals Progress

During this week of October, I achieved none of goals set for the month—and succeeded in missing a day on the blog-post goal, meaning I won’t manage to get a blog post out each day for the time period set.

I also made the following progress towards the remainder of the goals:

• Completed blog posts for October 7, 9-12; and 17, 24, 31, although I officially ‘fail’ at this goal for missing a post on the 13th
• Added 23,989 words to the first novel – but am experiencing warning symptoms that continuing to work at the pace required is likely to cause a recurrence of the RSI injury I had in August, so I’m calling the end of the October goals as they stand. I cannot complete them without risking a repeat of thatinjury, and will have to back off on the word output until the most recent flare-up dies down.

End October Goals. Goals recalibration now in process. Damn.

Goals for the Year Progress

Some of you will remember that I set some goals at the beginning of the year. The RSI injury in August has put paid to most of them as I can no longer maintain the level of production required to meet them. I’m healing, but it won’t be in time to regain the ground I’ve lost. Because of that, I’m ending those challenges and goals. They will not be achieved - okay, one will be achieved - as long as I edit and publish November's story, and then write and publish December's short story, on time.

This gives me a (mostly) clean slate to start, again, but leaves me feeling quite discouraged.

I’ll post the new options in a few days, when I’ve had time to assess what I can achieve. Apparently I can’t do things at the rate or intensity I used to. This is an unpleasant surprise.

So, I am going to have to work out what the new rate of production is going to be, and go from there.

The one goal I've almost achieved? Well, it looks a bit like this:

Next week, I hope to post these covers again - but with the new cover for November's story - and, at the end of October I hope to post them as part of this goal for the last time, with the news that December's story is complete and up for pre-order. Wish me luck; something tells me I just might need it.