PeteHollmer.com

Normally this would be the Q2 progress report, but I missed the Q1 one, so …here we are. Despite my lack of keeping up with you, I’ve been making some progress, so here’s where things stand on my three goals for this year.

Read 20 books in 2018: So far, with 50% of the year down, I’m in the middle of Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey, and I’m reading Wandmaker’s Apprentice by Ed Masessa with my daughter. Those two would put me at seven books, but I’m not done with either of them, so I only have five under my belt so far. 50% of the year gone with only 25% progress. I’m going to go out on a limb here and wager I won’t hit this goal this year, but you never know. I may wind up kidnapped in a remote camp later with nothing but two hundred books of pulp fiction to keep me occupied for months, so…maybe it’s possible.

Write 7 posts in 2018: You would think I could knock this one out of the park, but no, even with a goal so low, I managed to waffle it. This is my third post for the year. Utterly shameful. I really have no excuse. Well, I mean, I have excuses, but they’re bullshit excuses, and I respect you too much to waste your time with them, so there.

Get back on schedule for Togahan #4: This is hard to gauge, because my scope is a bit skewed. According to my current metrics, I have 110,019 words logged so far, putting the project at 33.5% complete. Now, that doesn’t mean I have another 200k words to write (ugh), but rather with what I have left to write, then edit, etc. I’m about 33.5% through my tasks. Thing is, that’s based on a speculative 25 chapters plus prologue and epilogue, but it was written assuming 20-25 pages per chapter (or if I MATH it = ~570 pages). But I decided to write smaller chapters (10-15 pages instead), so I’m at ~300 pages right now. I don’t think I have another 270 pages to go, but maybe another 100? It’s hard to say, for plot reasons.

What does all this mean? I’ll be honest with you, my loyal, patient reader (and I say loyal and patient because if you reached this far in my post, you’ve proven beyond all doubt that you give a shit), the outlook is grim. You might have a new book in your hands by Thanksgiving….2020. (whistling….).  As bleak as that is, on the upside, I have been consistently 90 days behind schedule for a couple of months now. So I’m moving along, I’m just not catching up. I’m hoping with some vacation time, and some extra writing time shoehorned in here and there, I’ll catch up at some point.

So that’s where I’m at. Thanks for sticking with me so far. Hopefully when #4 is in your hands, you’ll agree it was worth the wait. Or you won’t and you’ll huck your e-reader into the ocean. But at my rate, there’s a good chance that e-readers will be waterproof at that point, so it’s not a total loss.

A bit more timely than usual, here’s my progress on goals for last year and projection for 2018 goals.

Read 20 books in 2017: According to Goodreads where I track this, I completed 16 books in 2017. 80%. I barely squeaked by with a B for this goal. I was going strong for a while, then tried tackling a few larger books including Joe Abercrombie’s The Last Argument of Kings, which I’m loving, but it’s a long read, and a bulky hardcopy one, so I had few opportunities to get through it. Ah, who am I kidding. I had plenty of time to get through this when I was off work the last couple weeks, but I chose to do other stuff. I still plan to finish it though – I’m enjoying the story, I just got lazy with my reading.

Goal for 2018: Read 20 books.

Write 24 posts in 2017: I wrote 6 posts in 2017. 25%. A solid F. Ok, let’s not lower the bar, let’s remove it all together. We’re going bumper bowling, kids.

Goal for 2018: Write more posts than 2017 (so, 7).

Start Work on Togahan #4 (title TBD): According to the mega schedule, my rough draft word count is at 74,000, putting me at 23.7% done, albeit at 56 days behind schedule on my milestones. I made progress, which is good, but not as fast as I’d like. I blame video games, and my lack of impulse control.

Goal for 2018: Get back on schedule for Togahan #4.

I think those are achievable this year. Of them all, progress on the book is key. I’d like to publish a few more before I retire from my day job. We’ll see.

-Pete

At this point, I’ve blown so far past the Q2 deadline that this is more of a Q3 progress report, so please forgive the tardiness (or celebrate the earliness!). This summer has been a roller coaster of interruptions and obligations, but regardless, I will try to be more diligent in the updates. So, where am I, this far in the year?

Read 20 books in 2017: I’m currently enjoying the post-apocalyptic Wool Omnibus by Hugh Howey, who is basically the poster child for successful Kindle publishing. Wool incorporates subtly animated gifs intended to enhance the reading experience, and my opinion is kind of mixed. While the artwork is decent, the experience is not as dynamic as a full-on graphic novel. In some instances, the images enhance the scene; in others I found it a little distracting. Overall, I think I could take them or leave them. Regardless, I’m enjoying the story. Wool is my 12^th book for the year, putting this goal at 60% complete with about 60% of the calendar gone by. I’ve lost most of my lead at this one, so hopefully my progress doesn’t slip any more. (I could count the Nancy Drew books that I’ve been reading my daughters at bed time, but that feels like cheating. Maybe I’ll count those as one big book at the end of the year…)

Write 24 posts in 2016: >sigh< This post is my 5^th for the year, putting me at 20% complete at 60% of the year gone. This is not likely to improve much.

Start Work on Togahan #4 (title TBD):  I’ve been making steady but sluggish progress on this. Word count is in the neighborhood of 44,000 with 15.2% complete on the master schedule. Just this past week “life” has interrupted more than usual, so I think I’m 7-10 days behind schedule. I can recoup that, if only I can find the time somewhere… Right now I’m nearing a collision scene where several plot threads intersect, and I get a little anxious when I do those—there’s a lot of moving parts. Despite all that, it remains fun. And that’s the point, right?

How’s your summer going?

It’s April, and that means I pull my head up out of [the sand] and take stock of my progress on various goals this year. If nothing else, it allows me to tick off one more post on my “post stuff” goal. So let’s see where I am…

Read 20 books in 2017: I just finished The Last Days of Jack Sparks by Jason Arnopp. It’s an interesting take on the horror genre, of which I’m not an avid fan, but this was a compelling read. It was another “don’t read it before bed” kind of book though – I had weird, unsettling dreams as a result. Before that I read Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon,, which is one of the best reads I’ve had in over a year or more. Well crafted, long but gripping, I really enjoyed it. It’s one of the few (long) books I may reread in the future. My buddy Jason’s read it three or four times already, finding new things each time through. I’ve now moved on to Michael Witwer’s Empire of Imagination: Gary Gygax and the Birth of Dungeons and Dragons, which has proven to be an interesting read so far. So, I’m working on my 8^th book of the year, putting this goal at 35% complete with only 26% of the year done. I’m ahead of schedule. Yay!

Write 24 posts in 2016: Wow, I keep lowering the bar on this, and still am not posting as much as I “should” be. Let’s see (counts posts…carry the 2….) this post is my 3^rd for the year, making the goal 12.5% complete at 26% of the year done. Behind schedule, surprise, surprise. I have a couple ideas for stuff you might find interesting. I just need to carve out the time. It’s all about making the time, right?

Start Work on Togahan #4 (title TBD) – This is the one that matters, because without the book, this blog is just farting into a whirlwind. I hammered out a rough story map (this time it was a Post It chart, but had the same effect). As usual with my story maps, I got about two thirds of the way through it, got stumped, but I had enough to get started. So I got started. Word count is at 18,151 and the mega schedule puts me at 8.0% of this project completed (100% is when the book gets published). Right now I’m going along at a slow but steady clip of ~2000 words per week.  I’m shooting for a 120k word rough draft, and hope to trim that down to 100k by publishing time.

Number 4 is a different challenge for me. The first three books completed the first arc of Dante’s story, and this next one launches a three book arc about Dante’s burden and other loose ends at the close of A Togahan’s Chance. Number 4 won’t resolve all of those threads necessarily, but it will resolve some, while presenting Dante and the rest with new challenges and choices to make. On the one hand, I’m uneasy not knowing everything as I go into this next phase. On the other, it’s kind of exciting, because a lot of the fun in writing is when you make those connections you hadn’t imagined before. I’m looking forward to that and I hope the result is something you’ll enjoy.

Success! This year’s end of year report is not as late as last year’s end of year report! One of these years, this will actually be timely. Regardless, let’s take a look at the goals and progress from 2016, then set some goals for 2017.

Read 20 books in 2016: According to my goodreads account, I “shelved” 18 books, but I go by the completion dates, and according to those, I completed only 16 books in 2016, giving me an overall grade of 80%, or a B-. Eh, it’s passing. I was trying to finish Journey to the Ants but didn’t quite make it at the end. The good news there is that I’m starting 2017 with that book finished on January 2. With a 2017 goal of 20 books again, I’m already 5% toward that goal with only 0.5% of the year gone by! Woohoo! Maybe I’ll actually meet that goal this year. In a future post, I plan to break down what I’ve ready in 2015 and 2016, just to see where my tastes are.

Write 36 posts in 2016: Yeah, I shit the bed on this one. I wrote 12 posts in 2016, or 33%, for a grade of F. I struggled with this one, for all the writer-block reasons. Honestly, it was a problem I threw on the backburner because I just wanted to get the next novel done. I’ll give this some thought this year. Maybe I can restructure my time differently, but I don’t want to just write shit for volume. You deserve better. New goal for 2016: Let’s shoot for 24 posts this year, and see if I can actually make it.

Release A Togahan’s Chance: 100% complete! A+ with a gold star! Yaaaaay! ATC released on October 23, 2016, more or less “on schedule”, given that the schedule shifted back and forth a bit. Of the three goals, this was the most important, and the most fulfilling. After all, the reading and blogging are there to support the end product – the novels.  Completing my third novel feels good. Initial reviews have been good. I’m happy with this one. New goal for 2017: Start work on AT4, the current nickname for the next project. A Togahan’s Chance left the characters with some unfinished business, and AT4 gets down to business! I have a rough sense of where the story is going, but I need to do some research and plotting to get all the bits in where they need to go. I’m shooting to get this out in less than three years (about what I did for ATC), so the 2017 goal is to get 33% done with the new super-streamlined mega-schedule.

I’m hopeful to be productive in 2017. We’ll see in a couple of months where that’s at. I hope your 2017 is as productive as you want it to be.

-Pete