Life List Club Milestone Party

The Life List Club Party has started! 

To celebrate the LLC Birthday I...

Got some balloons... (notice the grammar error above?)

Grabbed some party hats...

Found a low calorie cake (you'll find out why below)

And thought we could do a little dancing!

Thanks so much for coming to MfC to celebrate my second Milestone Party with me!  I hope you enjoy the shortened version of Funny Photo Friday.  I'll give you a quick run down on how the last three months has gone with meeting my goals.

My Life List

Photo courtesy of Wookiepedia

"No. Try not. Do or do not... There is no try." Yoda

Daily Goals

Daily goals were tossed out the window from April 22nd until May 30th. I met them as much as I could, but I needed to get Finding Meara revised by the end of May. It was a hard deadline, and so I shuffled everything to meet it.  If you're interested in how that went, read my post here.

Play with my boys half-an-hour every day.   The one daily goal I tried hardest to meet over the last three months was to play with my boys.  They haven't always wanted me!  How sad it is when they grow up and become more independent... 

Write at least 15 min. every day.  New writing hasn't really gotten started, but I have been writing with blog posts and editing, if that counts (and when I wrote the goal, I figured it better count). I have a short story I want to write while I'm plotting The Age of Stars. I need to just do it!

Exercise 20 min. five days of the week 100 min. a week.  It's been hard to get back on the exercise wagon, but have been doing better the last couple of weeks. I gained some weight while I was focused on editing, and really am not feeling very motivated to reverse my eating habits. I really, really like candy.

Writing (revised 3/23/12, revisions in blue)
Complete revisions of Finding Meara by the end of March May  completed May 30th

Create pitch, query letter, synopsis, etc... for Finding Meara by end of April June  Pitch is done, query letter is almost done, a three paragraph synopsis has been written.  Don't ask me how good they are. All I can say is I'm trying my best!  If you want to read my entry into the Query Corral Blog Hop, go here!  Leave me some feedback, if you want.

Blog twice a week (Mondays and Fridays)  Yay! I'm doing it!

Write first draft of second novel by end of December.  I'm working on lots of pre-writing (using Cathy Yardley's Rock Your Plot.  I can say it's worth a lot more than the $2.99 I paid for it!) so I don't have to think so hard while writing the first draft.  Hopefully it won't take as long as the first draft of Finding Meara.  I'm very excited about the storyline of The Age of Stars.  The blog post on physics and death came from some research I was doing for the novel.

Social Media (all completed by 3/23/12, revisions in blue)
Grow Twitter followers to over 500 1,000 followers. I'm up to a little over 800 followers.  I started in August 2011, so I actually feel like Twitter has been a relatively successful media for me.  Shocking, considering how scared I was of it!  Thanks again, Nina Badzin, for the twitter help and support!

Grow blog membership to over 100 300 followers. Ah, yes. The blog membership. I so appreciate all of you who signed up to keep track of my blog over the last six months. You have made my year. January to March was absolutely amazing, and then it just kind of stopped. I have no idea how to grow blog membership. Over the last month, I had a mind shift, though. I have decided I can't really control this one much, and I'll just do what I do and we'll see where it turns out in December.

Participate in six bog hops (including the A-Z Challenge) completed 3/23/12 Except I didn't do the A-Z Challenge. I did do six blog hops.

Guest post on three other blogs - completed 3/23/12, going for another three by end of year  So far the new guest posts were at Karen S. Elliott's blog (two of them - one about my mom!), and Colin Falconer's.  I can't link to Colin's anymore because I asked him to take the post down for safety reasons.  I hope you saw it when it was up!  I've got a couple more guest posts lined up in the next couple months, so I will meet my new goal.

New Goal: Complete MNINB Platform Building Challenge for April  This was an unexpected good time! I joined the challenge because I didn't sign up for the A-Z Challenge.  It was a wonderful opportunity and I got to meet all kinds of new, talented writers and poets.  When Robert Lee Brewer hosts another challenge, I'd recommend participating in it.  The daily challenges were quite easy to meet and really did make a difference in how I view platform building.

All right! That's it for me!  I hope you'll make the time to run over to the Life List Club Blog and answer the question " What goal on your Life List has held the most surprise or invoked the most unforseen benefits/changes?" in the comments section for a chance to be included in the big LLC Milestone Party Giveaway. 


You must comment between 6 AM (EST) June 29th and midnight (EST) July 5th to be included in the drawing. And to show you how tricky I am, I'm not going to tell you what the big giveaway is. You'll just have to go over there yourselves and find out!

Even more good news is that each Life Lister is having their own parties and giveaways on their own blogs, so I highly recommend you increase your chances to be a winner and hop around and see what we all have going on!  Here's a place for you to start.

Marcia Richards

Jess Witkins

Sonia G. Medeiros

Gary Gauthier

Sherry Isaac

Winners for the giveaways on all the blogs will be announced July 6th.

Also, if you think the Life List is a group full of the supportive, kind, action oriented people you would like to hang out with (and have your own Milestone Parties!), you can contact either Marcia Richards or Jess Witkins and discuss joining.  The hazing is pretty painless, and the benefits and support are wonderful!

To have a chance to win my giveaway of a $15.00 giftcard of your choice, please leave a comment below.  You can either tell us all how your goals are coming along, or even just pick a favorite out of the pictures above.  

Mine, I think, is the turtle.  I never see them doing anything but sitting there. It's nice to know they actually do move and eat!

Life List Club Friday - Milestone Party

Photo by m_bartosch at FreeDigitalPhotos

It has been three months since I first joined the Life List Club, and now I (and should you wish, all of you!) get to participate in my first Milestone Party.  If you are wondering what the Life List Club is, click on the tab above, and you will get a full description of the club, and how to join, if you are interested.  Also on the page is my personal life list, which is my goals for the year.


Below is a list of the prizes we are giving away to celebrate our successes, with links to the respective member's blog.  Please hop around, because there are some fabulous prizes.  


I am working my own giveaway as I did for my 100 follower celebration. If you leave a comment, you will receive one entry into a random drawing for a $25.00 gift card (of your choice).  If you are not already a follower, and decide to join up, that will get you another entry into the drawing.  I'll post the winner of the drawing on Saturday, March 24th.  The other LLC members giveaways are:

Photo courtesy Simon Howden at FreeDigital Photos.net

Marcia Richards Guest post swap and Amazon gift card

Jess Witkins Guest post swap and an iTunes gift card

Sonia Medeiros A guest post from Sonia or the winner's work featured on Sonia's blog

Jenny Hansen A Margie Lawson lecture packet and a $10 Starbuck's gift card

David Walker A free download of his "Web Wisdom: Inspiration from the Inbox"

Gary Gauthier A choice of 3 eBooks 


The Life List Club has some exciting news, too!  Thanks to Marcia Richards' hard work, we now have our very own blog site!  While I am sad that I won't have the opportunity to welcome so many great guest posters over here, the Life List Club blog is beautiful, and will allow us to offer inspirational and motivational posts twice a week (Wednesdays and Fridays) instead of blog hopping every two weeks.  


Our kick-off post is by our newest member, Sherry Isaac, on April 4th.  Sherry believes in romance, identity and the depth of the human soul and, personally, I can't wait to read her first post!  Please visit the Life List Club blog, take a look around and learn more about all the authors on our author pages.


I think all that's left to do is review my life list, and fess up to how things are going.  

My Life List Review

Photo courtesy of Wookiepedia

"No.  Try not. Do or do not... There is no try." Yoda

Do's

Play with my boys every day for half-an-hour:  Check!  There are times where it might be a shorter amount of time, but the important thing to me is that I have carved out time to spend with my children, focusing only on them, every day.

Write for 15 minutes every day:  Check! - as long as we count blogging and editing as writing.  The thing I wanted out of this goal was to devote time every day to the writing process, and I feel I have done that.

Blog twice a week (Mondays and Fridays):  Check!

Grow Twitter followers to over 500 and blog followers to over 100 followers: Check! (thank you all so much)

Participate in six bog hops (including the A-Z Challenge):  This one takes a little explanation, but Check!  I have participated in six blog hops (Nightgale Blog Challenge, I'll Tumble 4-Ya blog hop, It's Getting Hot In Here, Fourth Campaigner Challenge, Got Green Blog Hop, and the Great Star Wars Blogathon)  I decided that there was no way to participate in the A-Z Challenge this year, and so registered for the Fourth Campaigner Challenge, instead.  So, although I had to make a substitution, I still feel like I met this goal.  I anticipate participating in more blog hops and challenges as the year goes on, but right now I need to return my focus back to getting a novel completed, so I'm not a writer wanna-be.


Guest post on three other blogs:  Check!  Thanks to the Life List Club, I have guest posted on five other blogs.  I know some of the prizes above are to guest post on LLC member's blogs, and I recommend making the jump over to the related blogs to register for the opportunity.  All members of the Life List Club have been extremely professional and their followers have been so kind and welcoming.  Every guest post was a thoroughly enjoyable experience!


Do Not's


Exercise 20 minutes five days of the week: I have been exercising, and usually multiple times a week, but dang!  Life kept getting in the way.  So, mid-February I changed the focus to 100 minutes a week, and I seemed to be able to meet that goal a little better.  Still, I have taken two of the last four weeks off, so I definitely need to work a little harder on this one!



The next three do not's are:

• Complete revisions of Finding Meara by the end of March
• Create pitch, query letter, synopsis, etc... for Finding Meara by end of April
• Write first draft of second novel by end of December 

When I wrote these goals, I had no idea how long it might take to do revisions, and so I set a date based on the fact I'm attending the Pikes Peak Writer's Conference in April, and hoped to be able to sign up for a pitch session.  Not Happening!  So, I am going to rewrite this goal so that I'm shooting for revisions and editing to be completed by May 31st.  That might even be overly optimistic, but I would really like to start querying Finding Meara and writing the next novel over the summer.  I currently am on page 64 of about 250 pages.

There it is, my goal review!  I'm wondering, how did your last three months go?  Do you have more Do's than Do Not's?  Are you needing some support, or some tough love?