Welcome to 2017 (Part II)

By Kelly Bridgewater

Wow! I can’t believe it is 2017. Where has the time gone? I graduated from high school in 2000, so I can’t believe it is the year of my sixteen year high school reunion. Not like I’m going because there were 1,000 kids in my graduating class, and the ones who I would want to see again, I still keep in contact with.

But as we look on the vast expanse of the New Year, what do you plan to do? It is a time of new beginnings. Time to start again. Even though, I believe you can do this anytime of the year, not just in January.

If you missed my post last week, where I shared how to start the year off on the right foot. Here is the link to that post. I hope you read it and then return to this entry.

doublemesh.com

As a writer, I set personal goals during each month. Right now, there in the back page of 2014’s planner, which need to be transferred to my new planner. My yearly planner is a 400 page planner that I customize with handmade calendars then two pages for each day. I am the most productive that way. Plus, it costs an arm and a leg to buy planners that are daily and monthly. I don’t like the weekly monthly ones. There is never enough time for me to write in. My husband keeps joking that there is an app for that on my Note 3, but something about writing it down every day. Must be the writer in me. J

Back to my writing goals.

During January, I have started another research marathon to prepare myself to work on the first book. I hope to finish all the research in January, but I think it will leak over in February too.

During February, I hope to start writing the first book and come up with the main idea for the second book. Now these aren’t full on sketches. I use the cork board method in Scrivener and write little ideas for each chapter. I love being able to drag and move the chapters around.

During March, with Seekerville, who offers prizes and advice to encourage writers, I plan to research my second book in the series.

April, I plan to start writing my second book.

May, I will finish my second book and start researching and planning my third book.

June. Complete research. Start writing the third book

July. Rest and relax. Catch up on reviews and blog posts. (I like to be at least three months ahead! Surprising. I know!)

August. Start editing book one.

September, Prepare one sheets and my pitch for the annual ACFW conference. This year, I don't plan to attend the ACFW Conference because it is a lot of money when you include an airplane ticket. Next year, it will be back in Nashville, TN, so I'll attend then. 

October. Work on editing second book. Hopefully, preparing my book to send to an agent or editor who I sparked their interest.

November. Revise book three or write another book for NaNoWriMo.

December. Spend time with family while finishing the book I started in November and plotting my next book.

A lot of writing goals for one year, but we’ll see how the year actually goes. Stayed tune for my next post next Friday on February 10 where I will share my reading goals. It won’t be month by month like my writing goals. It will be something more interesting. So come back. I need tons of feedback on both of these posts.

Do you set writing goals in the beginning of the year? How do you do it? If you don’t, should you?

I would love to hear your comments on what you do to set the year off in the right foot when it comes to writing.

Welcome to 2016 (Part III)

By Kelly Bridgewater

If you have been following my blog for the past two weeks, I started the New Year with setting my year off right with focusing on God. Then I followed up with my writing goals for the new year. Now today, I will be showing how I set up by reading goals for the New Year. I try to read 200 books during a year. For me, it doesn’t seem like a lot, but as an avid reader who can complete a 400 page book in a twenty-four hour period while watching my boys and getting dinner on the table, I think my list should be longer.

Maybe this year.

Let’s me share my secret. First, I read all the time. My Kindle is in my purse. I find an extra fifteen minutes waiting to pick up the boys from school. Sitting in the doctor’s office waiting to go back and then watching the clock tick by in the examination room. I pull out my Kindle while standing in the line at the grocery store. I read while my husband is driving down the road to the store.  My nose is always in a book. My favorite moments are when my youngest, Obadiah, hands me a book, and he cuddles in my lap while we devour the book together. He is really into Franklin and Lego Batman right now, so we read a lot of those.

In 2014 at the Indiana ACFW meeting in December, our speaker, Bob Hostetler, challenged us to be intentional with our reading. He suggested know ahead of time of at least fifty books you want to read in the New Year, and then read accordingly.

www.fanpop.com

In the past, I have been purely a reader who read a book because of I’m a devoted fan of an author who I buy everything of, or I read the synopsis on the back of the book, and I’m interested.  I have a lot of books around my house that need to be read, so I plan to be intentional with the books I NEED to finish by the end of 2016. Not that there won’t be more added as new books come out. There are a lot of books coming out in 2016 that I want to devour. I have been reading every suspense and romantic suspense, so I can study and improve my writing, so now I can venture out of my genre. Lately, I have been obsessed with World War II fiction.

We all know I will be reading the Bible every day, so that won’t be listed.

Let’s begin:

2 authors:

·         Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers (all four of the books in the series) andCamille (which I found at a yard sale this summer) 

·         C.S. Lewis who I have an entire bookshelf devoted to his writings and writings about him, but I haven’t gotten around to reading all of them.

6 contemporary romantic suspense books (Including Love Inspired Suspense)Let’s be honest, I’ll probably be reading a lot more of these:

·         Burning Proof by Janice Cantore

·         Thin Ice by Irene Hannon

·         Dressed for Death by Julianna Deering

·         Desperate Measures by Lynette Eason

·        A Fool and His Monet by Sandra Orchard

·         Silence in the Dark by Patricia Bradley

4 World War II or historical fiction books (absolute minimum):

·          Dawn at Emberwilde by Sarah E. Ladd

·          Anchors in the Storm by Sarah Sundin

·         The Bachelor's Guide to Murder by Rachel McMillian

·         The Ringmaster's Wife by Kristy Cambron

3 suspense/ thriller books:

·         Curse by Steven James

       Annabell Lee by Mike Nappa

       Cold Shot by Dani Pettrey

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4 favorite fiction authors:

·         You're the One that I Want by Susan May Warren

·         Steven James

·         Dani Pettrey

·         Sarah Sundin

2 new fiction authors: 

·         James Rubart

·         James Rollins

5 Young adult books:

·          The Beautiful Pretender, A Spy's Devotion, and The Little Mermaid story (untitled) by Melanie Dickerson 

4 writing craft books:

·         Writing with Emotion, Tension, and Conflict by Cheryl St. John

·         Stein on Writing by Sol Stein

·         The Fire in Fiction  and Writing the Breakout Novel  by Donald Maass

2-3 Christmas books:

·         Where Treetops Glisten by Tricia Goyer, Cara Putnam, and Sarah Sundin ( I read this book this past Christmas, and it became a classic that I will want to read every Christmas)

·         The Christmas Candle by Max Lucado

·         The Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (Never read the actual book! Shame, I know)

Non-fiction books: 

I have a couple on my bookshelf from C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien I need to read.

1 daily devotional:

·         A Year with C. S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works

This is just a summary of the type of books I plan to read this year. Plus, if anything new comes up, then this list has the right to change by adding or deleting a certain book. Some of these books aren’t even going to come out until the end of the summer, so I probably will have included some new books by then.

How do you decide what books to read for the New Year? Share. I have a journal next to my favorite chair where I list every book that I read during the month and under the heading of what I have actually read during the year. It helps me keep track of what I already have read. Plus, it is cool when someone asks what type of books I read. Like they couldn’t tell by looking at my overflowing bookshelves.

Let’s meet back here for a recap in December and talk about our books that we read during 2016.

Welcome to 2016 (Part II)

By Kelly Bridgewater

As a writer, I set personal goals during each month. Right now, there in the back page of 2015’s planner, which need to be transferred to my new planner. My yearly planner is a 400 page planner that I customize with handmade calendars then two pages for each day. I am the most productive that way. Plus, it costs an arm and a leg to buy planners that are daily and monthly. I don’t like the weekly monthly ones. There is never enough time for me to write in. My husband keeps joking that there is an app for that on my Note 3, but something about writing it down every day. Must be the writer in me. J

www.angisullins.com

Back to my writing goals. During the month of November 2015, I finally sat down and crunched out 71,000 words for my first novel in my World War II spy novel series. During December, I finished it, completing at 98,000 words. Also, during December, I worked on plotting the second book in the series. No title yet.

During January, I have started another writing marathon working on the second book. I hope to finish the whole book in January, but I think it will leak over in February too.

During February, I will finish the second book and plot out the third one. Now these aren’t full on sketches. I use the cork board method in Scrivener and write little ideas for each chapter. I love being able to drag and move the chapters around.

During March, with Seekerville, who offers prizes and advice to encourage writers, I plan to compose the third book in the series.

April, I plan to catch up on my reading and just relax (even though I have to read and submit reviews for books and work on my blog postings all year long) after completing 300,000 words over a span of five months.

May, I will start revising the first book.

June. Revise.

July. Revise.

August. Revise.

September, Prepare one sheets and my pitch for the annual ACFW conference. This year, I plan to actually pitch to editors and agents. I have never done that before. I have never thought my writing was good enough.

October. Read and relax. Hopefully, preparing my book to send to an agent or editor who I sparked their interest.

November. Write another book. I don’t know what yet.

December. Spend time with family while finishing the book I started in November and plotting my next book.

A lot of writing goals for one year, but we’ll see how the year actually goes. Stayed tune for my next post next Friday on January 16th where I will share my reading goals. It won’t be month by month like my writing goals. It will be something more interesting. So come back. I need tons of feedback on both of these posts.

Do you set writing goals in the beginning of the year? How do you do it? If you don’t, should you?

I would love to hear your comments on what you do to set the year off in the right foot when it comes to writing.

Welcome to 2016 (Part I)

By Kelly Bridgewater

2016! Wow!

Every year in January for the first twenty-days of the year, our church does a fast. Not for fame or to have everyone pitting you because you can’t eat certain food, but to place our priorities in the right place as we begin this New Year. Our church follows the Daniel Fast. No red meat. No candy. No coffee. No caffeine. No dairy products. Just lots of fruits and veggies, grains, and fish.

For the twenty-one days, we read our Bibles and spend a lot of time in prayer, asking God for what he wants to accomplish in the New Year. It is hard when your stomach is growling, but you drink some juice and open the Bible. The first year our family participated, which was five years ago, it was really hard. I wanted to eat, but as I learned how to do this, my stomach still growls, but I feed it by eating some fruit and flipping open the Bible for some inspiration.

www.7culturalmountains.org

I designate certain days to pray for each of my boys: Elijah, Isaiah, and Obadiah. I pray for Michael and his leadership in our family. I pray for my church. I pray for our country. I pray for mother, father, brother, sister, aunt, mother-in-law, father-in-law, our neighbors.

Finally, I pray for God to guide my steps during the year. To be a better mother who treasures the moments with her children. To be a better wife who loves her husband like God loves the church. To improve my writing. I pray to be a better daughter of God who seeks after him with my whole heart. To spend more time in worshipping him. Worship isn’t just for church. I pray for a job that will meet our financial needs and my spiritual desire to write and create for God.

I set Bible reading goals to keep searching and discovering something new in the Bible every day. I know, personally, how hard it is to keep reading the same book day after day and skimming over the parts that I have read and heard my entire life. I ask God to give me the eyes of someone who has never heard that part of the Bible before. I want to hang on to something new and fresh from the Bible every day.

What do you do to set your heart in the right place at the beginning of the New Year? Have you ever fasted and given the New Year over to God to see what he wants to accomplish during 2015?

Come back next week, when I will discuss my writing goals for 2016. On January 22^th, I will show you my reading plan for 2016. Return and you’ll see how I read around 200 books a year.

******This exact blog appeared in January 2015, but my prayer and reading the Bible goals really don't change year to year, so I decided to use it again.**************

Welcome to 2015! (Part II)

By Kelly Bridgewater

Wow! I can’t believe it is 2015. Where has the time gone? I graduated from high school in 2000, so I can’t believe it is the year of my fifteen year high school reunion. Not like I’m going because there were 1,000 kids in my graduating class, and the ones who I would want to see again, I still keep in contact with.

This is the year that Marty McFly went to the future. You know, in Back to the Future Part II. That one was always my favorite. Even though we have advanced a lot in technology since my days of high school, the creators behind the movie even had technology that we don’t have yet. No flying cars available for the masses. No pizzas that grew bigger in a matter of seconds. I don’t have a fingerprint scan to enter my house.

But as we look on the vast expanse of the New Year, what do you plan to do? It is a time of new beginnings. Time to start again. Even though, I believe you can do this anytime of the year, not just in January.

If you missed my post last week, where I shared how to start the year off on the right foot. Here is the link to that post. I hope you read it and then return to this entry.

As a writer, I set personal goals during each month. Right now, there in the back page of 2014’s planner, which need to be transferred to my new planner. My yearly planner is a 400 page planner that I customize with handmade calendars then two pages for each day. I am the most productive that way. Plus, it costs an arm and a leg to buy planners that are daily and monthly. I don’t like the weekly monthly ones. There is never enough time for me to write in. My husband keeps joking that there is an app for that on my Note 3, but something about writing it down every day. Must be the writer in me. J

Back to my writing goals. During the month of November 2014, I finally sat down and crunched out 71,000 words for my first novel in a series featuring Chloe Walker and Devin Sanders titled Face of Admiration. During December, I finished it, completing at 98,000 words. Also, during December, I worked on plotting the second book in the series. No title yet.

During January, I have started another writing marathon working on the second book. I hope to finish the whole book in January, but I think it will leak over in February too.

During February, I will finish the second book and plot out the third one. Now these aren’t full on sketches. I use the cork board method in Scrivener and write little ideas for each chapter. I love being able to drag and move the chapters around.

During March, with Seekerville, who offers prizes and advice to encourage writers, I plan to compose the third book in the series.

April, I plan to catch up on my reading and just relax (even though I have to read and submit reviews for books and work on my blog postings all year long) after completing 300,000 words over a span of five months.

May, I will start revising the first book.

June. Revise.

July. Revise.

August. Revise.

September, Prepare one sheets and my pitch for the annual ACFW conference. This year, I plan to actually pitch to editors and agents. I have never done that before. I have never thought my writing was good enough.

October. Read and relax. Hopefully, preparing my book to send to an agent or editor who I sparked their interest.

November. Write another book. I don’t know what yet.

December. Spend time with family while finishing the book I started in November and plotting my next book.

A lot of writing goals for one year, but we’ll see how the year actually goes. Stayed tune for my next post next Friday on January 16th where I will share my reading goals. It won’t be month by month like my writing goals. It will be something more interesting. So come back. I need tons of feedback on both of these posts.

Do you set writing goals in the beginning of the year? How do you do it? If you don’t, should you?

I would love to hear your comments on what you do to set the year off in the right foot when it comes to writing.