The Weekly R.A.P #13

Writing Goals Check-In for August 21, 2023

Reminder: The Weekly RAP is a gentle tool for staying accountable to your writing goals. If you set a goal with us in the comments of last week’s newsletter, check in about how it went by adding a comment! If you’re just joining us this week, ignore the first two questions of the RAP sheet and just set a goal for next week.

---

Two weeks to go in this 100 Days of Summer experiment. How are you doing with the goals you set for this summer? If you’re on track, fantastic! If you’re not on track, this can also be fantastic as long as you treat yourself with kindness and consider how you might revise your goals so that you’ll get to the end of these 100 days feeling good about what you did manage to do and ready to dive into your fall goals.

Photo by Ch_pski on Unsplash

That said, if feel like you’re crashing and burning at this the tail end of the summer, you’re in good company—mine!

Last week I had grand dreams of making epic progress by this week. I even booked three luxurious days of doggy day care to open my schedule wide up and focus on finishing a rough draft of the last two chapters, but a few hours into the first of those three days, I got a phone call—Shiloh was showing signs of kennel cough and she needed to be in quarantine. The vet agreed that Shiloh, in fact, did have kennel cough and gave me strict orders to quarantine my puppy and keep her quiet, marching orders that frankly made me wonder where my vet went to vet school because she clearly hasn’t spent much time around super young super social puppies who don’t understand why day care has stopped and dogs on the street are suddenly no longer friends but vectors to be avoided at all costs.

And then the basement of the condo building flooded. Again.

Needless to say with two weeks of this 100 days of summer left, I’m not as confident as I once was that I can get to the end of this book—particularly given it took me almost three weeks and six tries to get the second to last chapter (third to last if you count the epilogue) into a shape I’m willing to call done for this draft. Actual footage of this particular draft below:

Gif by Dax Norman, fractal animation artist

But that chapter is finally done now, I swear,¹ and here’s the transfer of the marker on my board to prove it:

Why, yes, I DO mark my progress in a novel about sleight of hand magicians with cards, but is that really any weirder than marking progress with check marks? If you have a problem with my cards you have a problem with joy. Using cards brings me joy every day I look at them, so the cards stay.

That said, just because I lost my confidence that I can get a rough draft finished by September 4 doesn’t mean I’ve lost my hope—with the pooch on the mend, anything’s possible (including getting up at stupid o’clock to put in uninterrupted time).

But enough about my week—how was your week?

THE WEEKLY R.A.P #13 — August 21, 2023

RECKONING—If you set a writing goal in the comment section of HIBOU’s August 13th post for The Weekly RAP #12,² did you achieve your goal? Yes? No? Partially?

ANALYSIS–What went well this week? What was a challenge? What insights did you learn about your writing this week? Looking ahead to next week, can you repeat what went well? If the coming week has similar challenges to last week, how might you adjust your writing schedule or your goal? Are there any new challenges to take into account this week? 

PLAN–What is your writing goal for the coming week (8/21 - 8/27)? What’s your plan to get it done? How will you reward yourself for the work you complete?  A friendly reminder that smart goals are (s)pecific, (m)easurable, (a)chievable, (r)ealistic, and (t)ime-bound.

Copy and paste the template above into the comments, replace the questions with your answers, then hit post and check out what other HIBOU subscribers are up to and cheer them on!

Remember to be kind to yourself if you didn’t make your goal!

Today is the start of a fresh, new week!

P.S. Results of last week’s poll for the fall are in, but the data were, quite frankly, mathematically meaningless—it was an epically low tie between continuing and going back to just essays—so I’m not sure what I’ll do about RAPs in the fall.

1. I’m publishing on Monday instead of Sunday just so I can state that!

2. Click the link if you need to refresh your memory!