March Writing Results
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Just over 20k words for March, keeping me in line with the year so far, but still low. And yet, I’m happy with the progress because a lot of my time was spent editing. I’m not drafting a whole lot, but I’m making progress in catching up on the polishing of stories I want to move forward on.
March accomplishments:
- Work on the 3rd Draft of the Troll World Quintet continues. Shrine, the second book, made it to the end of the make it pretty draft. I’m working on Book 3, Forest, now, still at kind of a slow pace, but getting about a quarter of the way through this draft before the end of March. The last few chapters of Shrine had already been cleaned up from the initial dictation errors so went a lot quicker, but it doesn’t look like I’ve done any of that before now on Forest. Maybe I’ll get through the whole thing in April, but not holding my breath with the current levels of actual free time and the other stuff that needs to get done.
- Two short fanfic novels and two novelettes (to repeat myself more than most people need unless you’re joining me here for the first time, these make up the second batch of shorter Star Trek fiction) moved from third draft to final. Good timing. I’ll be ready to start the next serial on schedule.
- One short first draft complete. But I think I still have two in progress. Weird. That’s exactly where I finished last month.
- One short piece indie published in March, which was the whole plan for the month (after I put the idea of the Citizen trilogy as a “boxed set” on hold until I can come up with some artwork I like). But, from here forward, I have two things slotted for every month but September, and that includes April but doesn’t include my Star Trek work.
- Blog posts: Marched matched February with only 6 posts. April will hopefully be better with the thirty day break I’m taking from personal social media (see yesterday’s post). I’ll emphasized that these are only the ones I’ve posted. Technically, I drafted a bunch to catch up on the 50 Year Old Freshman project, so I should count those, too. That would actually make 13 for the month.
Targets for April:
- Editing: I hope to get the 3rd Draft complete on Forest. If I actually manage that, and before the end of the month, I will start on Palace, which needs a title change because most of the story does not, in fact, take place anywhere near the palace
- Finish the basic outline for the Draugr Rising sequel, Kami Falling. I’m in the scene-level summaries now, and this will stay on the list every month until I actually get it done.
- Short Stories. One story per month is not going to get me to 2021’s goal.
- Blog posts. More. This post makes two for the month so far, and I’ve got four more sketched out, but there are too many things in my head.
- Publishing. One short and one novel planned for April: “The Colours of Lives Lived” is a 6k Urban Fantasy short and Ancient Runes is a full-length SF novel. Formatting done, covers to be finalized in the next few days, and I’ll shuffle dates as needed so they’re a couple of weeks apart.
Editing remains the focus for 2021, with Publishing a close second. I do intend to pick up the drafting pace eventually, but I’m not quite there yet. There are also some other things in the works, one of which will be due for an announcement/reveal in the next week or so.
Stay safe and be well, everyone.
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