May Update: Patterns and Progress

I'm only four months into this year at this point, but I'm keeping up a pretty good routine. My overall goal for this year has been to try to write around 15k words a month and spend at least a little bit of time editing each month. I spent most of January editing, but the last three months, I've been trying to find a balance. With varying degrees of success.

I've noticed some patterns the last few months of tracking my word count and progress. The first half of the months, even if I write every day, I don't seem to make much progress. The writing comes slowly and laboriously. I don't get lost in the world as much. But by the second half of the month, I seem to hit my stride. In April, I had more than one day where I wrote 2k words or more. Six days like that, to be exact. And while the previous two months there wasn't a substantial difference in word count from first half to second half of the month, in April, I wrote 3k words total in the first two weeks, and 16k in the second two weeks.

I don't have a good explanation for this. It could be coincidence. It could be that I expect myself to change gears right at the change of month, and it takes a week or two for my inspiration to catch up. It could be a deadline thing, where I procrastinate the first half of the month, then work to catch up the second half. Which would make sense if the level of energy for writing wasn't so drastically different. Maybe it's a new moon verses full moon thing. The day after the new moon last month, my progress skyrocketed. That's my best explanation so far, since going back and tracking progress over the last year, it seems to correspond with the moon phases. Saying that out loud sounds a bit crazy, so maybe that is all in my head. Who knows.

Regardless, it's nice to see patterns in the month. It's comforting to know that my slumps won't last forever, and that I go through them every month.

At any rate, my goals last month were to finish up SP 2.1 and edit Druid Wars to incorporate beta reader feedback.

The start to the month, like the month before, was slow. Despite sitting down to write every day that first week, I made minimal progress. But the second half of the month, things kicked into gear, and I not only managed to surpass my word count goal for the month, I actually even did manage to finish the adventure, which, until the last couple of days, I wasn't sure I could pull off. I even threw some words on the next adventure, which was fun and ridiculous, but I'm so glad I did it. It'll make Camp in July easier to get into, since I have a start. And easier to finish, since my average word count goal is 15k, and I already have 1.5k words written.

I still haven't worked on Druid Wars, though. I spent about two hours poking at it one day, and I talked to one of my writing friends about some of the edits I had concerns about, but I've not done anything substantial.

I can't put it off any longer, though. The Twitter pitch contest SFFpit takes place on June 28. I want to have this thing ready by then, so that means dev edits this month and line edits next month. My goal is to do dev edits pretty early this month and get them done, so I have at least a couple of weeks between one pass and the next. The only downside of that is I have to shift gears to go right into edits this month. I'm still bathing in the glow of the recently full moon, so it may be hard to choke off the desire to write and shift into the more analytical editing mode. Although I do need to write a scene or two, so perhaps I can focus on that.

The trouble is, I'm still not all that interested in the Druid Wars world. Last month, I attributed my hesitance to fear of having another book ready to query. After a good hard look at the book and the edits I need to make, I realized that a lot of my problem is excitement. I just don't have any for that world right now. So I'll have to make a choice. Continue with my timeline, which means I'm going to have to suck it up and do it anyway, or fall back on my new emerging idea of working on what I want to work on now while I can, since I don't have contractual obligations at this time.

Still, the editing portion of the month wasn't a total loss. I spent a day working on finishing edits to another SP adventure in the first season, so that's something. I just spent so much time working and reworking the outline for the adventure I was doing for Camp that that part of my brain was fried. Plus the aforementioned trouble with interest in what I was supposed to be editing.

The biggest thing I did last month that I didn't really plan for was short story submission. It started as kind of a procrastination technique, but it was also a nice changing of gears. Plus, I've dealt with so much rejection in the last year, I was hoping to get a short story accepted so I would have some success to speak of. Sadly, at this point, that's all been rejections, as well. Although one rejection was kind enough to invite me to submit something else during their submission period because they liked my writing, just not the story I submitted. That was very validating. I even poked at another short story to submit to them for a few days. Although the progress on that was so negligible, I didn't even record the word count on my spreadsheet. I'm sad to have missed that opportunity, but I decided, in the long run, my energies were better spent elsewhere. I just didn't have anything else for them.

Overall, I wrote 19k words in April and spent six hours editing various things. Mostly SP stories.

In May, I really have to do dev edits for Druid Wars. I'll give it a few days to see if I can get myself interested, maybe poke at other projects, but then I'll have to buckle down and force myself to do it. That's my main goal this month.

My other goal is to get back to work on MystWatch book three. Which is good. I'm feeling the pull of that story, the stirrings of inspiration to work on it. If I can throw another 15k words at it this month, I should be able to wrap it up with another 15k next month. If all goes well. If it doesn't, I can finish it up in July. But come August, I have got to put this world behind me and move on to the next big thing.

I've been feeling a bit unsettled the last month, since the two main projects I've actually worked on are projects that I will have to self-publish if I want to see them in print. Which isn't to say it's not good practice writing and editing or that someday I won't be glad to have these things. But I'm getting more and more impatient with myself. I turn 40 in less than three years, now. I can't help but feel like I'm running out of time.

Which is silly. It's not like I'm going to stop trying when I hit 40. I have an impressive body of work. I'm not limited to mainstream publishing, and everything is fodder down the line. I know I just have to keep at it. And I will. I just have to be okay with adjusting my expectations from time to time. That's why this blog is so necessary. I have to check in with myself every month, see how I'm doing and incorporate new information to my ever-evolving goals.

I'm right where I should be, doing the things I should be doing. It's all going to work out.