Ailing Body, Nourished Soul: A Progress Update

Well, it's that time again (a couple days past that time, actually, but that's beside the point). This past Saturday was the first of November, and that is when I look over my goals for the past month, assess how well I did, and set some new one for the next month.

I suppose I'll start with the good news. I definitely made more progress toward achieving my book goals this past month than I did the month before. In fact, two of my goals were met completely. For your information, here are the goals I had.

1. I will compose the first draft of a chapter about God's preparation of our family through my husband's planning for a career change a year before he got sick.
2. I will complete the first draft of a chapter on my and Marc's salvation testimonies, based on my previously written "In Old Testament Black and White"
3. I will complete a relatively exhausted list of chapter topics for "Ailing Body, Nourished Soul."

I now have a list of more than a dozen topics/chapters for "Ailing Body, Nourished Soul" - several of which will likely end up being more than one chapter. These range from God's presence during Marc's brain surgeries to how God orchestrated the two of us meeting to the encouragement we continue to receive daily.

I also completed the first draft of our salvation testimonies chapter. So that's two down, right?

Of coure, then there was that first goal above. You know, the chapter about Marc's career change planning....Well, I DID start it. I had good intention, really! I got a (whopping) 307 words written, and then it stalled. BIG time. So I whined about it, complained about it to a dear friend and writing accountability partner. I grumbled. And then I SET it aside, and started a different chapter, on the preparation for Marc's first brain surgery (not even sure when this one will end). I've written 1400+ word so far (so, can I call those two combined a chapter?? LOL).

So that's how I did. The next question, of course, is what are my new goals? Well, I'll tell you.

I've decided to change the format, if you will, of my goals, starting this month. You see, quite a few of my friends are participating in National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo. The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel in one month--the month of November. And while I am NOT going to try this (for this November anyway), I've been fascinated by the site's word count tickers that let folks know how many words they've written for the month (I'm sure you've seen them posted on various websites, blogs, message boards, etc.). SO, I found one of those tickers (not specific to NaNoWriMo), and am planning to use it to track my progress.

I have set my goal for the month at 7,500 words, which averages to 250 words a day. This is a bit more than I have been doing over the past couple months (whimpy, huh?), but what's the point of a goal if it's easy to reach? I have it posted already on my blog sidebar, and plan (note PLAN) to update it nightly. I know I'm already a bit behind (I didn't make this decision until Sunday, so my Saturday words were pitifully lacking LOL), but I've got PLENTY of time, right?

Thanks for your encouragement, folks. Now, I press on!