Wrap-ups

2019 Writing and Reading Recap

~ Cheyenne Raphael ~ Leave a comment

Hello, people of the Blogosphere! I very obviously did not stick to my 2019 goal of blogging regularly or even at all, and i am not making that a goal for 2020 because college and adulting ate my life, and when I’m not doing either of those things, I usually want to be writing books instead of blog posts. however, I have returned to the internet after almost a year of silence for my annual recap of writing goals and favorite books of the year. I do genuinely hope to post more in 2020 because exciting writerly things may be happening in the upcoming year, but no promises!

Let’s start with a recap of my 2019 writing goals…

◦Finish editing Scarred Flawless: I’m calling this one a partial win! I said in my last recap post that Scarred Flawless had a lot of major developmental problems pertaining to world building because the geography of fictional worlds is one of life’s great mysteries, and maps are hard. Well, the developmental edits are DONE as of a few hours ago!!!! I think the whole thing is logical and coherent now, or at least it will be once I finish the line edits and eradicate all the strange sentences I created at 3 AM.

◦Start drafting Fractured Faith: This did not happen. I don’t even have Fractured Faith fully outlined, but it’s fine. Fractured Faith is the sequel to Scarred Flawless, and Scarred Flawless was my priority for 2019, so I am perfectly happy with what I did accomplish in regards to that series.

◦Start outlining Scarred Flawless Book 3: This sort of happened? I have a few index cards for it at least. Again, this is fine though because at least I mostly met my goal for the first book in the series.

◦Finish outlining Unmarked: That didn’t happen either because I started working on a new book, (Indie Blue), instead of Unmarked. I am quite happy with this arrangement though because i feel like I could sit down and draft Indie Blue right now whereas Unmarked still needs a lot of outlining and research before it’s ready to be drafted.

2020 Writing Goals:

I am only giving myself two major writing goals for 2020 because I am taking Creative Writing I in school this semester, and I’m not sure how much or what kind of writing that is going to require. My two goals are:

◦Finish line edits for Scarred Flawless and get it in the hands of beta readers

◦Finish the zero draft of Indie Blue

2019 Reading Recap:

I read 60 new books in 2019 and failed to review all of them because book review formatting is hard and adulting/school/Scarred Flawless took priority over that. So… here is a list of my top ten favorite books of 2019 with links to Goodreads instead of my own reviews!

1. Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo. The people weren’t kidding when they said this one was graphic and intense, but man was it good! Yet another work of literary genius from Leigh bardugo!

2. Call Down the Hawk by Maggie stiefvater. This one was my 20th birthday present to myself. It was well worth the audible credit. I don’t have anything more to say about it other than Maggie Stiefvater created another literary masterpiece, and I want to reread it now.

  1. The Dragon Republic by R.F. Kuang. This is an absolutely fantastic sequel to The Poppy War.

  2. Sadie by Courtney Summers. This is not my usual genre, but I absolutely loved this book! It is dark, and suspenseful, and it has a very unique writing style.

  3. Wicked Saints by Emily A. Duncan. This one has people who can talk to gods, and creepy mages, and it is amazing.

  4. How to Make Friends with the Dark by Kathleen Glasgow. This is the only book that made me cry in 2019. Kathleen Glasgow is really good at making me cry, but her writing is fabulous, and I will read everything she writes.

  5. The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi. To be quite honest, I really don’t remember much about this book because I read it whilst curled up in bed with a sinus infection trying to drown out my roommates with the audio book, but I gave it 5 stars, so it must have been fabulous!

  6. Two Can Keep a Secret by Karen M. McManus. I will read everything Karen McManus writes because her first two books have both been 5 star reads for me.

  7. The Queen of Nothing by Holly Black. This was a stunning conclusion to Holly Black’s “Folk of the Air” trilogy.

  8. King of Fools by Amanda Foody. This was an excellent sequel to Ace of Shades. Amanda Foody did not disappoint.

2020 Reading Goals

My only reading goal for 2020 is to finish 75 new books. I’m not starting any other kind of reading challenges because I definitely will not stick to them. Feel free to leave some of your 2019 favorites or 2020 books you’re anticipating in the comments though, and I’ll add them to my terrifyingly long TBR! Also, if you’re a writer, let me know what you accomplished this year and what you hope to accomplish in 2020.

2018 Writing Recap | 2019 Writing Goals

~ Cheyenne Raphael ~ Leave a comment

Hello, people of the Blogosphere! I disappeared from the internet for a very long while! To those of you who messaged me to ask if I was still alive: thank you! Y’all rock! To those of you who didn’t notice my absence: it’s fine! I’m not bitter at all…

Why did I disappear, you ask? Well, to cut a very long story very short, life happened. I started college in August, and let’s just say that being blind as a bat and having a variety of other strange medical disorders made transitioning to college… interesting… for lack of a nicer word. Because of that, I didn’t have the time or energy to dedicate to blogging or really anything other than classes and just enough writing to maintain what was left of my sanity. Next semester should be a lot smoother though, so to kick off 2019, I am going to attempt to return to the Blogosphere and the Twitterverse because I miss writing for an audience rather than just filling pages upon pages of composition books with words that will probably never see the light of day. I seriously doubt that I will be able to maintain a regular posting schedule like I used to, but I’d like to try to post at least twice a month. We’ll just see what happens…

Anyway, (life updates aside), it's New Years Eve, which means it's time for me to tell the world whether or not I accomplished my 2018 writing goals and outline some writerly goals for the coming year! Spoiler alert: I sort of achieved my 2018 goals, and my 2019 goals are probably a bit too ambitious, but I'm a Slytherclaw, so it's fine!

Cheyenne’s 2018 Writing Recap

I had three writerly goals for 2018. They were:
◦Finish the beta reader process for Scarred Flawless
◦Outline Fractured Faith, (Scarred Flawless Book 2)
◦Outline Nevermore Forever

Yeah… okay… obviously the first goal didn’t happen! The fact that I thought that was doable is beyond laughable! Scarred Flawless really needs an update post of its own, but I’ll try to condense it for now. Basically, fictional geography is one of life’s great mysteries, and fixing the disaster that was my first attempt at creating a fictional world is proving to be WAY more difficult than anticipated. I had to resort to making maps, and maps made by the blind girl are more entertaining than useful! I have world building woes, okay! I don’t know when Scarred Flawless is going to be ready for the eyes of other humans, but thank you to all the people on Twitter who have inquired about it! It makes me very happy to know that other people want to read my book based on a couple of quotes from it. In all seriousness, I do hope to have Scarred Flawless ready for betas by the end of 2019. I am currently in the process of finishing what I hope is my final read-through before I start making the final revisions.

My second goal was a bit more of a success. I don’t quite have a scene by scene outline for Fractured Faith, but it is detailed enough that I could start drafting if I so desired, so I’m calling that one a success!

My third goal is a bit more complicated. I did not outline Nevermore Forever, but I did start outlining Unmarked instead! The original idea for Nevermore Forever is still sitting in a Scrivener file somewhere because I do want to come back to it some day, but I care about Unmarked more right now. Unmarked is a young adult thriller, which is not something I ever expected to write, but I kind of love it! The fast-paced vibe is very refreshing after the deep darkness of Scarred Flawless. The outline for Unmarked is nowhere near done, but I have the big picture and a few drafted scenes, so I’m calling this goal a partial success.

Onward to Writerly Plans for 2019!

I only have four writerly goals for 2019. They are:
◦Finish editing Scarred Flawless
◦Start drafting Fractured Faith
◦Start outlining Scarred Flawless Book 3
◦Finish outlining Unmarked
Honestly, I will be more than happy is I only achieve the first goal. Scarred Flawless is my priority right now, and I am ready to be able to hand it over to other people. Outlining and drafting will be my reward for the many hours spent resolving my world building woes.

Share Your Plans

Did you accomplish your goals for 2018? Do you have any writerly plans for the coming year? I want to know in the comments! Also, please let me know if you want to see any specific kinds of posts from me in the near future. I need quick and easy stuff that I can write and schedule, because school is starting again soon.

2016 Wrap Up/2017 Goals

~ Cheyenne Raphael ~ 6 Comments

To continue with the theme of scatter-brained posts, I had goals for 2016 to wrap up, but I don’t have them anymore. They were on my MacBook which had to be wiped because of a malware invasion, and apparently the file wasn’t in Dropbox… The fact that I don’t remember most of them is probably a good indication that I failed at most of them, but here’s what I do remember!

  1. I did NOT win my Goodreads challenge, and Goodreads feels the need to remind me of that fact every time I open the app…
  2. I won NaNoWriMo for the second year running!
  3. I finished the first draft of my first novel! insert terrified emoji here It’s a total complete mess, but I finished the thing!
  4. I learned lots of programming stuff that I am not going to get into here because you most likely don’t care, and I don’t wanna explain it… Ok so really that wasn’t an official goal for 2016 until two weeks ago, but I made it my goal over Christmas break, and I accomplished it, so I’m counting it!
  5. Added together, all the writing projects I’ve completed in 2016 total up to 111911 words! I’m pretty sure my goal was 100000, so I’m proud of that!

Goals for 2017:

  1. By June 1st, I hope to have my novel ready for beta readers. If it could be by March 1st, that would be fantastic, but school is probably going to crush that dream.
  2. I’m setting my Goodreads challenge for 30 books because I’m 90% sure I can meet that!
  3. I am going to attempt the A to Z reading challenge, which means I have to read a book starting with each letter of the alphabet. If you know of books starting with R, Q, X, Y, or Z, please leave them in the comments! Those are the only ones I haven’t found yet…
  4. For NaNoWriMo this year, I’m planning to write the second book in this series I have started. We’ll see if that actually happens because I may still be trying to sort out this mess of a thing I’m calling a novel if the unthinkable happens and I epically fail at my first goal.
  5. This is the thing that I really need to do, but don’t wanna do. I’m in the middle of learning Swift and Python, (which are both programming languages), and I have a ton of notes for both all over my phone, iPad, laptop, and two notebooks, and they’re gonna have to be combined and organized before I get much further into this. I was planning to do this over Christmas break, but I just added to the mess instead because I’m a nerd like that!

I feel like I should list my upcoming posts here, but I still have all those that got caught in drafts, and honestly the next couple posts are gonna be embarrassingly late stories for Short Story Society. How did you do on your 2016 goals, (writing or otherwise?) Got anything cool planned for this year? Are you planning to join The HP Writing Cup? Let’s chat in comments!