{"id":1734,"date":"2018-08-01T10:34:25","date_gmt":"2018-08-01T15:34:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/?p=1734"},"modified":"2018-08-01T10:34:25","modified_gmt":"2018-08-01T15:34:25","slug":"july-2018-updates-goals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/2018\/08\/july-2018-updates-goals\/","title":{"rendered":"July 2018 Updates, Goals"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This past Saturday, my city shut down a loop of streets to traffic<\/a> and opened them up to walkers, runners, and bikers. I happen to live near that loop, so it was easy to head out and join the fun. What a turnout! I\u2019ve never seen so many cyclists in one place before. It was a lot of fun walking directly on<\/em> some of the major thoroughfares in our city :) Why didn\u2019t I join the cyclists? I\u2019ve told this tale of woe before, but I don\u2019t ride bikes anymore ever since my bike was stolen out of my garage. I take it as a bad omen!<\/p>\n

Writing Updates<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

As mentioned last month, I\u2019m \u201ctaking it from the top\u201d and reworking the draft of Book 3 from the first chapter onward. More needs to be rewritten from scratch than anticipated\u2014this always happens, LOL\u2014but it\u2019s been going pretty quick so far. My insane stretch goal was to complete one scene every day. That\u2019s occasionally feasible when I only have a few tweaks to make to a scene; it\u2019s totally infeasible when writing the whole thing over. One chapter a week is a more realistic target, but even then, that\u2019s only true of short chapters. It looks like, at my most productive, I\u2019m able to polish off around 3,000 words of material. That\u2019s about as long as my shortest chapters; longer chapters can climb into the 6-8,000 word range.<\/p>\n

At any rate, 4 chapters are now done, and the fifth is mostly there. At this rate, I may be able to finish the draft by mid-November. However, I anticipate a lot more from-scratch rewriting than I\u2019d once hoped, so that will likely push things back.<\/p>\n

Current Goals<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Well-rounded Latin practice.<\/strong> Studying vocabulary flashcards daily, textbook work and conjugation\/declension practice most days, listening to a podcast episode and writing a response to it once a week. I still don\u2019t understand everything in the podcast, but I\u2019m surprised at how much I do understand. Maybe I’ll be good enough for that full-immersion retreat next year after all (if I\u2019m brave enough to apply)!<\/p>\n

Listening to German.<\/strong> A couple times a week, I\u2019ll do an audio lesson, review the vocab, and read transcripts out loud. Happily, I\u2019m at the point with German where I can read something out loud and<\/em> understand what I\u2019m reading\/saying at the same time. Back in grade\/high school, I could be asked to read something aloud to the class, and when the teacher asked me what it was about afterward, I\u2019d be like, \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d ;)<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure yet what else I might work on \u2026! :) My brain\u2019s been steeping in a lot of creative stews lately; I haven\u2019t had much chance to think about IRL stuff.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s all for now! Hope you\u2019re also having a good summer so far!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This past Saturday, my city shut down a loop of streets to traffic and opened them up to walkers, runners, and bikers. I happen to live near that loop, so it was easy to head out and join the fun. What a turnout! I\u2019ve never seen so many cyclists in one place before. It was a lot of fun walking directly on some of the major thoroughfares in our city :) Why didn\u2019t I join the cyclists? I\u2019ve told this…<\/p>\n

Read More Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[23,7,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-ellis","category-sword-and-starship","category-bigleap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1734"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1737,"href":"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1734\/revisions\/1737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}