Zoe Carmina's Blog: Zoe Jane Carmina, page 19

What is a Zero Draft?

Hello Lovelies, and welcome to the blog.

Today I wanted to talk about a thing I discovered in the writing community only a few years ago, and that is the concept of a Zero Draft.

What is a Zero Draft? A Zero Draft is your first attempt to assemble thoughts related to your research topic or question. It is more or less an unstructured piece of writing that flows quickly from your own mind as you reflect upon your topic, your questions, and your reading. A Zero Draft is focused freewriting, or the...

Why Do Initial Drafts Always Suck?

I hear it all the time. Let your first draft suck. It’s okay to suck at it the first time. It’s supposed to be sucky, just embrace it.

Hello Lovelies, and welcome back to the blog. 

This year, I want to mainly talk about drafting, and specifically about tips and tricks for getting to a finished first draft. If you already have a finished first draft, the content for this year can still be useful to you in getting a second draft written, so please stay tuned.

Hitting again upon the opening paragr...

Starting is the Hardest Part (I Promise)

Hello Lovelies.

As I write this blog post I am thinking today about how hard it is to face a Blank Page. Whether I’m writing a new blog post, a new chapter, a new scene, or even starting the year with a blank planner, somehow, that blank page is so difficult to look at.

Starting is hard. Starting is one of the hardest things you can do, no matter if you are starting a new habit, a new project, or even a new email message. There is almost nothing worse than starting a new blog series, a new produ...

Set Up Your Digital Space to Inspire

Hello Lovelies, and welcome back to the blog.

At the end of every year, I get organize-crazy. Do I have all my paperwork sorted so I can get my taxes done? How long has it been since I’ve updated my passwords and uploaded all the stuff on my phone and desktop to the cloud? Oh, shoot. I’ve been meaning to get around to finding a spot for that new thing I got in the office and never got around to it. All year. Since last holiday season when I bought it.

There is no shortage of organizing tips for ...

2021 Focus Word

Hello Lovelies, and welcome back to the blog. Today I am letting you in on my focus word for 2021.

If you’ve been here a while, you know I’m big on goal setting. For the past few years, I’ve been choosing a single word to represent the type of things I want to hone in on and cultivate in my own life. Essentially, you choose one word, phrase, or song, and use that to focus your intentions throughout the entire year. I call this my focus word, and it has helped shape and define my path.

Why do thi...

2021 Quarter 1 Goals

Hello Lovelies, welcome back to the blog.

Coming off of a relatively productive 2020, it’s time again to set some new goals.

Here we are back at the Kanban-style Trello Board. If you’ve been here a while, you’ll already be familiar with this, but for those that aren’t, I use Trello as a digital sort of Kanban board. I still have categories for my tasks, but I don’t use the “to do, doing, done” modifiers. They all just stay on their lists and I modify the cards within them with checklist tasks t...

2021 Goals

Hello Lovelies, and welcome back to the blog. I am doing my planning for 2021 and I have set my own goals for the year so I wanted to share those with you.

First, I wanted to talk a little bit about how I plan for yearly goals and it starts with a book called The ONE Thing by Gary Keller. In a nutshell, The ONE Thing revolves around the idea that as humans, we can only really effectively focus on one thing at a time. Whenever we try to multitask, our brain rebels. Quite literally, it takes our b...

2020 Year-End Recap

Hello Lovelies, and welcome back to the blog. Today I want to spend some time reflecting on my year. While I always feel like I’m working really hard on a fairly regular basis, I don’t always get to the end of the year knowing what I even accomplished.

I tried to do better tracking this year, to track more than just my word counts, but what I actually achieved. I think I mostly accomplished this, but I also thing I need to make sure I’m writing which projects I’m working on, including when I sta...

2020 Q4 Goals Recap

Hi lovelies, and welcome back to the blog.

We’re ending out another quarter, so it’s time for another goals recap post. It isn’t quite the end of the quarter yet, so some of these goals may still be completed in the few days before we end out the year.

If you remember from last time, I set some goals at the beginning of Q4. As a refresher, they looked like this.

Now, my Trello board looks like this.

Not bad, right? A decent amount of completed tasks, plus some extras added in...

Social Media Tracker for 2021

Hello Lovelies, and welcome back to the blog. I have a freebie for you today that is all about tracking your social media following of all sizes.

Several years ago, I wanted to get more serious and intentional about my blogging and social media tracking. But that quickly spiraled out of control, and it overwhelmed me to keep up with all the different social media outlets.

I like to have hard data for lots of things and I have shared spreadsheets in the past Ive created to keep track of things...