December Update: A Long Rest

So, my unintentional break ended up being more of an extended rest. The last few months have been difficult as far as my creativity goes. I've wanted to want to write, but in all honesty...it's been a relief not to. I go through this phase every now and then, where it's nice to pretend this isn't something I have to do.

Although more than that, I just haven't wanted to write. None of my stories felt interesting. I hated all of my characters. The physical act of writing sounded absolutely wretched. I couldn't even bring myself to read anything I'd written before. That's sometimes how I entice myself back to writing after a long break. Go back and read stuff I've written. It reminds me that I am a good writer and I do enjoy it. That I have lots of ideas and I do love my characters and worlds.

Finally, earlier this month, I was able to do that. I read some stuff I'd written and smiled. I am interested in my characters and my worlds again. But I'm still not ready to actually write, yet. I think I'm getting closer, but I'm still just worn so thin as far as writing inspiration. It won't take much to fray and give out, again.

So, I've decided to take the rest of this month to continue my long rest, as it were. No pressure. I've been doing some crafting and water color to meet my artistic needs, and that seems like enough, for now. I've also been reading a bunch. And even talking to my friends about writing, a bit.

The long and short of it is, even though I'm not writing now, I'm open to writing again sometime. I do hope it's sooner rather than later, but I can wait. I still have stories to tell. Books to finish. Ideas to play around with. Edits to make. To what end, I'm still not sure. Lisa seems convinced that I will publish, eventually. I'm not sure if I will or not. I'm not even sure I'm writing for anyone other than myself, at this point. Which is part of why it's hard to get motivated. And if I do the whole "maybe I will publish for just my small group of friends and family" to get motivated, it doesn't take long for that to blow up into "but maybe I will go ahead and publish on this publishing schedule and make all this money and write all these things."

It's such a delicate line to walk. And I fall off, a lot. Which is why I keep ending up here, after what looked like it was going to be such a productive year of getting things done, and instead, I stagnate halfway through.

Still, it's important to look back at what I have accomplished.

• I wrote 32k on Chain Letter Choice this year. That should have wrapped it up. It didn't. But I'm getting so much closer to the end, now.
• I spent a month on Mystwatch book 2, editing and making a plan for future edits. That included writing and scrapping a whole chapter.
• I finished SP 2.4, writing 20k words on it.
• I also edited three books for Lisa and a novella for Rachel.
• I brainstormed a lot of ideas and wrote some fanfic notes. Even started a couple of short stories.

So, despite not reaching all of my goals, I made really good progress. I don't want to lose sight of that.

My goal for next year is to check in with my writing each month and see how I feel. If I feel like writing, I will poke at projects. 

Projects with priority are

• Finish CLC
• Write a SP adventure
• Work on Mystwatch 2 edit
• Outline my next book (whether it's Druid Wars 2 or the first Shane novella or something else entirely new).

Mostly, finish up the things I didn't get to this year. Bonus things would be to finish two SP adventures instead of just one, actually finish the Mystwatch 2 edit, and actually start on my next book. But I'm going to aim small in hopes that I come out ahead, rather than aiming high and falling short, yet again.

I think I might take NaNo off my list of goals entirely. I love the idea of writing with abandon for a whole month to end up with 50k of a novel, but in reality, I'd rather go into it with a solid outline and take two or three months to write a solid 50k, not a rambling 50k. I do miss the idea of an exploration draft. But I just don't think I'm that kind of writer anymore. I can't go into something without a plan. Not the things I want to write, whether those are sequels or second-world fantasy stories. I think that, even though it's not done, I've shown with CLC that I can write off a detailed outline. And that I can spend two solid months writing the same book. I could probably do three, if I needed to, and that should be enough, if I'm fully immersed in a project, to write 45-60k.

Ugh. Why am I so slow?

Ugh. Why does it matter? This race is only with myself, and it's not even a race. It's...I don't know. I guess that's the problem. The goals keep changing, and what writing means to me keeps changing.

At any rate. I have lots of reflecting to do the next year. To answer those questions. To see if I can figure out what this is and when I need it and when I'm pushing too far or too hard. So. This blog isn't done. I still have lots of contemplation about writing to do and process. But this is my end-of-year post. This is it for this year.

I'll check back at the end of January to update on how things are going. Maybe they will be the same. Maybe January will be more thinking and flirting with writing and resting and crafting and painting.

But maybe, just maybe, I'll throw some words at a blank page or wrangle some existing ones that are mine and not someone else's.

We'll see.

Until then, farewell, 2022. Thank you for a year with more productivity than I probably deserved. And welcome 2023. May you be filled with creativity and joy.

August Update: A needed (if not wanted) break

This will be a short update. I did not write in August.

There. That's the update.

Although me being me, obviously I have more to say about it than that. Mostly that I didn't necessarily want or plan to take a break this month. Especially with last month being a kind-of break. But, as it turns out, I did manage to burn myself out a bit, I think, with even the casual goals I made.

Or I guess burnout isn't necessarily accurate. I just...don't want to write right now. Every time I settled down to write in July, it felt bad. This month, just thinking about writing felt bad. I felt loathing and disgust for all of my stories. None of my worlds were interesting. All of my characters were annoying. And I just didn't care what happened to any of them.

That realization hit about midway through the month, and rather than trying to salvage it, I just checked in with myself a few times to see if I felt differently. I never did, so I finally let it go.

I don't know what happened. I don't know if the month of August's energy is just off, or if it has to do with the moon or my energy level or what I've been reading lately. Or if it's just like every hobby that ebbs and flows.

Because as much as I have illusions of making money writing someday in retirement, the honest to goodness truth is that writing has become a hobby. And my hobbies I tend to pick up and put down as the mood strikes me.

As a hobby, there's a lot of "oh, I should do this thing," and then not doing it, then kind of shrugging of shoulders and realizing I didn't really want to do it that badly to begin with if I didn't make time for it. There's really no reason to push myself harder than that now that writing is only a hobby.

It is true that I have things I want to get finished. I have novels I want to finish, series I want to finish. And I have new things I want to start. But there are only so many hours in a day and I have a finite amount of energy. The last month, I've been focused on getting myself outside, moving my body, trying to find a balance of the things I consume. I spent a lot of this year fighting depression, and now that I'm connecting with nature again, that has subsided. I only cried for about ten seconds on Mom's birthday yesterday, and was only sad for about an hour.

I don't by any means believe I am done writing. The desire to return to my worlds and my characters and tell their stories will come back. It always does. But I don't want to force it. There's just no reason. My life is shifting focus. I just got a big raise at work, so I'm committed to seeing this through til retirement. I have savings plans in place to make sure I don't have to work in retirement unless I want to. I had thought about putting aside freelance money to fund the self-publishing of Mystwatch. But right now, I'd rather put that money toward other goals.

So, yeah. As of right now, this last day of August, I haven't written for over a month, and I feel okay about it. I may give it more of a shot in September. But I do have another freelance project coming, so I may focus on that instead.

At the very least, I will probably do some thinking and some shifting of my schedule to see what all I can still commit to finishing this year. Mystwatch 2 is definitely off the table. I just need to decide between CLC and SP. And then decide what my plan is for November. Whether I actually do NaNo or not. Or a half NaNo.

I will let y'all know how September turns out. Hopefully with more words written than the last two months combined! Take care, and have a great month.

July Update: Rest and (hopefully) Rejuvenation

I had big ambitions for July. I wanted to write something like 12k and finish writing Chain Letter Choice.

Instead, I busted my ass finishing Lisa's copy edit, and then devolved into zero motivation to write.

Truth is, I'm tired. Not physically, really. Mentally and emotionally. I tried to write a few times, but after a big push early in the month (before I dove too deeply into copy edits), words became a struggle. I am not sure if it's because the scene is hard or if I am just not in a writing frame of mind. Either way, whenever I had plans to write the last week, I couldn't quite manage it.

So, with five days left in the month, and two of those where I will be out of town, I've decided to call it. I managed to write 3,500 words on CLC, and for right now, I'm happy with that. No, it's not finished. No, I didn't get 12k or even 8k. But I made progress. That's all I can really ask of myself, especially when I'm this...antsy? About writing.

I'm feeling a little down about the trajectory of my writing "career" these days. Watching Lisa and her success is both motivating and exhausting. I admire her hard work and drive, but I do not have that in me. I'm not even sure I want to. Which brings me back around to, I'm writing because I want to tell these stories and finish things I've started. Which...isn't always motivating to get work done when I don't feel like it and have twelve other things I should be doing.

I would still like to finish CLC this year. Maybe I'll manage it in August. If not, I'll put off the next SP adventure and push through in September and into October, if I need to. I think finishing this is more important than the next SP. And probably even more important than Mystwatch 2. Yes, I took book 2 apart and need to put it back together again, but what's the rush? Right now, if I go back to Mystwatch, I kinda want to work on the first Shane novel. Novella? I'm not sure yet. I just cannot get excited about book 2. I've never been particularly excited about it. And honestly, the longer I wait to work it out, the more experience I will have fixing structural issues with books. I don't want to have to take it apart and put it back together again, so I need to be sure to do it right this time, if I can.

Anyway. Yeah. Chain Letter Choice is my priority for the rest of the year. And...I think...I might spend some of October brainstorming for Druid Wars 2. So that I can give it a go in November. So I can spend a few months next year wrapping that up, rather than spending the whole damn year writing it.

If I do that, I'll have more time for SP and maybe even edits for Mystwatch 2 in 2023.

As much as I'd love to get everything I'd planned on doing this year done, I know it's not going to happen. So now I need to decide where my focus should be. And I think I'd rather do Druid Wars, a world and characters I know, then starting a whole new world I still know nothing about for NaNo. I honestly believe I might need to step it back a notch, the number of projects per year, so I have down time to think and brainstorm and, honestly, rest.

Because Lisa is planning on putting out three books a year for awhile. At least this year and next. And if Rachel does even one or two books, that's something like five months out of the year I won't have time or maybe energy to write. I've decided the freelance editing takes precedence. For now. For the money. For the experience. For the time for me to really think about what it is I want out of writing.

Right now, I want to keep writing so I have something to talk about with my friends. And that's...not a great reason. I also want to finish things, which is a slightly better reason.

I guess another reason, one I lose sight of sometimes, is that I love having written. Turning a sentence from an outline into an emotional scene is just magical. Reading something I've read and laughing because I left myself a joke is amazing. And crying because I put to words a thought or feeling that is really powerful is, quite frankly, more rewarding than I can express.

So yeah. Those are the main reasons I write. That's good to remember. But it's also good to remember that sometimes, when I'm tired and spread too thin and putting too much pressure on myself to do All The Things, I lose those moments. Or at least don't take as much joy in them.

So. Yes. Camp NaNo was a bust. That may not bode well for NaNo proper. But I like to think by letting myself off easy this month, November will be easier. I don't want to go into NaNo exhausted. I need to be rested and excited and motivated. And I will do what I can in the months leading up to it to ensure that happens.

Next month, hopefully I have an update with more actual progress. But it's August. So we'll see if I hide in writing, or avoid writing entirely. I'd be happy with a healthy balance between those two things!

June Update: Halfway through the year!

It always cracks me up when I go back and read my previous month's update and plans and compare it to what actually happened.

June has been a crazy, busy, unpredictable month, as, erm, predicted. But. Writing things went a little differently than I thought they would.

First, my vacation plans fell through. Or rather, I bailed on them. It's a long story that I won't go into here, but rather than going to MN, I came home. And for a few days I did nothing but rest. Mentally and physically. And then, I started on the dev edit. The dev edit that came a week late, so I did not get to do it before my trip.

Which worked out. I wouldn't have wanted to be finalizing it on the last day before I left, as most of that day was spent shopping and packing. And after having the days to rest, I was able to come at it feeling refreshed. I got a really solid edit done in less than a week and got it back to her almost a week early.

And I won't be getting it back until today!

So that left me with about two weeks to work on my own stuff.

I wasn't confident that I'd be able to get into Mystwatch and do my edit in that amount of time, so I sat down with my project schedule, and did some rearranging. As of right now, my plan is to have CLC finished by the end of July's session of Camp NaNo. Once that is finally off my plate, fitting in writing words around my freelance editing project in June and July, I will have the mental capacity to go after Mystwatch 2 edits again. I'm giving it one month. August. My, erm, shittiest month. But. I've decided that I don't actually have to get that edit done this year. There's no penalty, so if I make decent headway on it in August, I can leave the rest of the edit for another time. I'm okay with that, right now. And then I have September and October to write the next SP adventure, then NaNo for my new project, and December to outline Druid Wars 2.

Phew!

So, looking at the two weeks I had in June, I was like, this new timeline is ambitions. And hell, that's two weeks I didn't think I was going to have free. I should be able to write my normal monthly goal of 8k in that amount of time if I buckle down.

Hahahahaha.

Oh, Sara. When will you learn.

But I did learn. I learned very quickly that was ridiculous. So I scaled it back. Told myself to aim for 4.5k. As long as I didn't have to write more than 15k words in July, I could afford to write fewer than 8k words in June.

It's going to be tight, and I'm still not sure I can wrap CLC up by 100k. But. I ended up writing 6k words on it this month. That puts me at 87k. So that leaves 13k for July. I'll probably aim for 12k, because July is a busy month, too. With the copy edit and both Althea's and Violet's birthdays. And, y'know. The 4th.

Blah blah blah, boring number stuff.

I am quickly nearing the end, in more exciting plot-related stuff. I've got a few key scenes left, and the downtime that goes between them, then I'm done. I'm starting to really believe I can finish this book this year. I wasn't sure when I started into this year what all I'd be able to accomplish. Turns out, quite a lot. If I can, in fact, finish this, and knock out one more SP story...I'll have finished a novel that's been outstanding for a few years as well as wrapping up season 2 of SP. That is huge. Even more huge if I finish the Mystwatch 2 book edit.

But there's no penalty if I don't manage it. I'm seeing what I am capable of if I go slow and listen to myself. I'm feeling this out so that I can fall into a routine that will sustain me until retirement. Or at least until I'm 50. I can decide what to do with my back catalogue at that point, if anything. And if I am a SP adventure or a book or two short, no worries. I either take another year or push myself to work faster.

My biggest goal this year is to see what I can do, how much I can do, consistently, and avoid burning myself out.

A big component of that is going to be NaNo. Can I do NaNo and not burn out? If I don't do NaNo, can I finish books? Although for that one, I already know I can, since I think Myswatch 3, I started and ended outside of NaNo and only ever managed 1600 words in NaNo proper...although looks like maybe 35k during Camp NaNo sessions.

I won't lie. I like the idea of spending October planning out a novel, November writing 50k of it, and then the next year spending a few months finishing it up. But maybe I can't do that. Maybe I just take a year to write a whole book, and then take a year editing and writing SP and other stuff. That's what I want to find out. And I can't truly find that out until I get CLC done and Mystwatch edited. I need to pick a project and see it through.

So. Maybe I don't do Druid Wars 2 next year. Maybe I finish whatever NaNo novel I start. And maybe I start writing Druid Wars 2 for NaNo next year and finish it the year after that.

It's only the end of June. Still a lot of wait and see how things go.

That said, I wanted to note that the writing has been fun and fairly easy the past two weeks. I definitely have times of feast and famine with writing. I am much more productive and in the flow in the summer. That's always been the case. By September, I'll be in peak writing mode, I assume. Hopefully I can put it all to good use.

Right now, I'm still working on things I feel comfortable with. It's when I start a totally new project in a totally new world where it's going to get scary and hard.

Or maybe exciting and easy.

Time will tell.

I'm really enjoying this year, seeing what I'm capable of when I just let myself follow my flow.

And, y'know. Learn the difference between I'm not writing because I'm depressed and can't and I'm not writing because the next scene is hard or I can't focus because whatever reason. Been a lot of that the last two weeks, but once I settle in, the focus finally comes.

I am content with my writing journey thus far. It's going really well, and I'm happy. Half a year down. Half a year to go!

And then seven more years until....profit?  :D

May Update: Success and Difficult Decisions

 I am happy to report that I have both my depression and my writing stagnation under control. I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm high on life and firing on all cylinders as far as writing, but I am not in the hole I was in for most of the winter and early spring.

That said, I didn't get as much writing done this month as I'd hoped. Or rather, I went above and beyond my word count goal, but didn't get the work on projects accomplished as I'd hoped.

Some of that is because I didn't do quite as much as I'd wanted in April, so I was playing catch-up a bit. I had hoped to get more of the current SP adventure written so that I could easily finish it up in May and then work on CLC a bit.

That didn't happen. But! I did finish this SP adventure. Yay! And it had some synchronicity there, because I finished this adventure exactly a year later, to the day, that I finished one last year. So that was neat. A little disappointing in that it's still taking me a year to finish an adventure. But at least I'm making consistent progress.

The downside is that I really rushed the finish. The whole adventure is kind of a mess. I have a big editing project down the line when it comes to this adventure. It's probably my least favorite one so far (which is saying a lot, because I also didn't love the last one, either, although I do kinda love it, now). I guess my least favorite adventure is always the one I just finished. I hated the aliens one, and the Seattle fairies one, and the Australian scuba diving one and...well, like I said. All of them. At some point or another. I guess that's part of the process. It always feels like a hot mess when I finish. But after some time away from it, I think I will be able to wrangle it into something good. I will say that even though I don't love the romance stuff I did in this adventure (it feels really forced), I do love the character growth Sally shows. I worry that I'm having her grow too quickly, though. This is only season two out of five. But maybe it's right. Season three is the season where her love interest actually starts seeing her as more than a kid, although season four is the one where he actually realizes he's been falling for her (and actually acts on it).

But I digress.

Or maybe not. I am here to talk about my writing, after all.

The other thing I did not do this month that I'd talked about was work on short stories. Which, I don't regret at all. Finishing the SP adventure was my priority. I still have a few days left this month, so maybe if I get some time, I'll poke at short stories.

But. I'm not going to have a lot of time. I get a manuscript for dev editing on Friday. I have a week to turn it around before I leave for vacation for a week, so it's a tight turn-around time. That brings me into June. After I get back from my vacation, I have a week before I get the MS back for copy editing. And that takes me through July.

So, June is going to be tricky. I have one week to work on my own stuff. Well. I guess when it comes to writing, even during edits, I have scheduled time to work on stuff. For an hour or two twice a week.

Trouble is, June was supposed to be Mystwatch 2 editing month. I was planning on finishing it. With everything else going on, I'm not sure I'll be able to manage it. Unless I dedicate the whole week after I'm back from vacation to it. We'll see. If I don't get it done next month, I do have October, which is a miscellaneous projects month, basically a buffer to finish up whatever I didn't get to this year, before NaNo and before my break in December.

I think I need to make some hard decisions, though. After wrapping up this SP adventure, I'm sitting here wondering if I will actually be able to write a second one this year in addition to finishing CLC. I think I'm going to have to make a choice between SP and CLC. July is supposed to be another Camp NaNo month where I'd planned to write maybe 14k. I didn't manage it in April. Do I think I can do it in July? And then finish it in August with enough time and energy to write a few thousand words on CLC?

I currently have all of September set aside to finish CLC. Right now, it needs probably 20k to wrap it up. I know I can't write that much in a month. I think 15k is my limit. I definitely can do 10k, as that's been my average this year. So I need to find a way to fit in another 10k in my current schedule. On top of finding time to finish my Mystwatch 2 edit.

So, yeah. I have to give something up this year. Either the second SP adventure, finishing CLC, or possibly not doing NaNo this year. The dev edit of Mystwatch 2 is nonnegotiable. I have to finish that this year.

What I think I'll probably do, or what I'll plan to do right now, is get as much of the Mystwatch edit done as I can in June. July and August I will finish up CLC. September, I might start a new SP adventure, just to give me some space from this last one and get a start on it this year. That way, maybe I can do one and a half SP adventures a year? And work up to two someday? That leaves October open for, like I said, finishing stuff up. If I want to finish SP, I can. If I haven't finished the Mystwatch edit, I will. Or if for some reason two months isn't enough to finish CLC.

The only thing that endangers is the Druid Wars 2 outline. Which...in all honesty, I don't think is going to take me more than a few days of mulling and brainstorming and then sitting down and putting stuff together. I have a lot of scenes in mind already. Just organizing what I've already got and finding connective tissue shouldn't take very long. I could probably even do that in December, because it's a project that will be good progress but not feel like a lot of work. Because it doesn't have to be perfect.

Heck, maybe I can just make December outlining month rather than break month. We'll see, I suppose.

And then there's November. Still not sure what I'm doing with that beast. We'll see when the month gets closer!

But for this month, I wrote 10.5k words, finished SP 2.4, and spent the minimum seven days working toward my goals. It was a successful month, even if it felt like pulling teeth some days! That's typical. At least the writing ability was there again, if rusty. The terror of losing it forever has passed.

And I have a tentative plan for the coming months, including my super busy June next month!

Now it's time to settle in and read Mystwatch 1 to get me in the mood and frame of mind for next month's edit. Yay.

April Update: Writing is slow, ideas are abundant

I hit a wall this past month. Not just writing. Depression hit hard, so most of my energies have been directed toward doing daily stuff like working and household stuff and feeding myself and sleeping. It's been a struggle.

I was already struggling with writing, though. I didn't talk about it at the last writers group meeting because I was just realizing how depressed I was and I didn't want to talk about it, or anything really. But the biggest thing I'm dealing with as far as writing right now isn't exactly writer's block, or impostor syndrome, although I guess it might be a combo of both. It's just that, when I go to reach for my writing skills when I sit down to write these days, it's just...not there. I have been writing for something like 20 years at this point. But my ability to do it? It is just...gone. I fumble around without a clue as to what I'm doing. It's not even a sluggish feeling. Or a feeling of I don't want to. It's that I LITERALLY CANNOT. It's terrifying.

So I have just been avoiding writing this past month because if I sit down to write one more time and the ability is still gone, I might lose my mind.

This goes beyond wanting to write and not having the time or energy or motivation. It's like reaching for a tool you've had and used often for half of your life, and it not being there anymore.

I don't think this will last. I imagine it'll come back. But I am so scared to even try.

I am at a bit of a loss as far as what to do for May, now. I had hoped to have most of this SP adventure written, so I'd just wrap it up then maybe move to CLC. But now I don't know what to do with myself. Do I try to write SP? Or do I go straight to CLC? Or do I work on something entirely different while I try to screw my writing cap back on? Or maybe I reread MystWatch 1 and see if I can give editing MystWatch 2 editing another crack.

Most of the month I just coasted, not worried about it, but then I made it worse by sitting down and making another 10 year plan. Why do I always do that?? Seriously. Things were going so well this year with my, write two days a week, take it slow, take it easy, don't think beyond this year, just see what you can comfortably do. But then I hit the editing month and was pressuring myself to work almost daily, and then I tried to back off but I was already burning out when this month hit, and then I broke it by thinking about how/when to monetize.

That said, the plan wasn't bad. Of course, I always make these plans when I can't write. Because making plans about writing instead of writing still feels like progress sometimes.

At any rate. As of writing this, it's only April 25. Maybe I'll get my ass in gear and write every day this week to catch up on Camp NaNo. Or maybe I'll just paint instead and consider this a break month.

More importantly, I have got to figure out what I'm doing next month. It's all a big question mark, and that terrifies me.

 ___________________________________________

It's now April 29, and things are going better. I did determine after writing that last part that I would buckle down and write a little bit every day for the rest of the month. I managed three days in a row on SP, a total of 3300 words. Last night, I spent the evening with my sister, but before I went over there, I did sit down and write a more detailed, concrete outline for the rest of the adventure. I have notes for each scene I need to write, so I should be able to knock it out pretty easily. When I'm able to write better.

It's been rough, writing SP the last few days. I don't feel very funny, so not a lot of humor is making it in. Which is sad. I always look forward to the funny bits. It all seems so forced, so maybe I've ruined it. But it's SP, so maybe that doesn't matter.

My 10 year plan didn't make room for SP at all. And that makes me legitimately sad. I know if I want to write a book a year and edit a book a year (although when I say "edit a book," I actually mean dev edit one book, copy edit one book, and proof one book, and also outline a new book), something will have to give. It just sucks that it would have to be Sally. Those I write for myself and I really enjoy them.

Anyway. After looking at my 10 year plan made me tired, I determined it's still do-able if I wait until I'm 50 to start it. That way, I have eight years to write whatever I want in any order I want. I want to publish MystWatch by 50, so maybe that's just what I do. And anything else I can build up between now and then will be gravy. I may have to back off to one SP a year rather than two, but that's more in line with what I've managed in the past.

Anyway. I have been writing the last four days, so I'm closer to my NaNo goal. And my April goal. Although I guess my original goal was to write the whole adventure. I am halfway, though! I think I can finish it next month then switch over to CLC and knock out some words. Maybe not many. Maybe just a few.

Then my project timeline has me switching back to Mystwatch 2 for June. Ugghhh. I may be ready by that point, though. Or I may be really into CLC and try to finish that entirely before switching to, I dunno. SP 2.5 or editing. I am playing it by ear, although I did seem to have a good sense of my ebb and flow of energies when making the original plan, so I may stick to it, after all.

But yeah. Biggest goal for May is to finish SP 2.4. Any words I add to CLC are bonus words, honestly. I will need to write a lot for CLC at some point, but I want to finish this SP adventure this year. I need to be doing at least one a year, or this series will never end. And as much as I contemplated giving up on her forever...that'll never happen. I'll always go back to her, even if I'm only telling her stories for myself. I am my number one fan, after all.

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 One final thing I wanted to talk about is the fact that, despite struggling with writing, I've been very much in tune with my creative energies. I've brainstormed more than one thing this month. I read over the first Pandemonium novel and got excited about it again. Made more detailed plans for the sequels. I have gone back and read over just about every story idea I've ever had. Read most of my short stories (even read a few kid-friendly ones to Althea, which she loved, although was afraid of the gremlin in Mischief after Midnight, woops). I wrote up some notes for the assassin story I've always toyed with. I wrote notes out for a dream I had. I started a new short story for Althea. I found a few old stories I never finished that I want to work on.

I am in the MOOD to write. I am excited about my stories. The actual act of writing is still tough, though. The words are coming, just slowly. They work better as brainstorms right now. But I'm making slow progress. I may not hit my Camp NaNo goal, but I still feel good about the last few days.

A lot of it is that I've been managing my depression better. That makes everything a little easier. I'm hoping between that and next month being May, I will have a prolific month.

I just don't have enough time in my life to write all the things I wish I could!

March Update: Lots of editing

I forgot that March is also a rough month for me. My mood fluctuates with the shifting weather, which is never consistent.

That said, I feel like I made a fair amount of progress this month. Not on anything I thought I would, but it wasn't a wasted month, that's for sure.

I started with a novel copy edit for one of my writers. That was an intensive, time-consuming project, but it went well and I feel good about it.

But. It had me in a very editing frame of mind. Maybe because of the dev edits then copy edits for two different projects that weren't mine. So, after one writing day trying to work on CLC, where I only managed 650 words before I let myself stop, I switched over to editing.

Yeah, yeah. Past Sara apparently knew better than I gave her credit for. I did need a break. From writing. From CLC. I wrote over 20k on it in two months, and I was getting bored. Which, isn't good when writing. Means readers will likely get bored. But. Either way. Taking a break was good.

I got myself excited for editing Mystwatch 2 by reading Mystwatch 3. Sound strange? It's not. I love that third book. I was going in to do a developmental editing treatment for it, but the truth is, I think structurally, it's solid. There are parts I thought about cutting or rearranging, but once I got in there, I decided everything is where it needs to be, and while I could trim up some spots, I think everything that's there needs to be. Although I will admit that after a month trying to edit book 2, I am starting to doubt my ability to recognize what is needed and isn't needed in my own books. I like all these scenes, all the dialogue. I don't want to cut anything. And each pass it gets bigger.

Anyway. There are things I need to tweak for book 3, don't get me wrong. It has a few things that need addressing in pretty big ways, and I haven't decided what to do about it, yet. But the fixes are more like a handful of lines here and there rather than writing entire new scenes or moving things around.

Which I am still doing with book 2. After about a week poking at book 3, I finally switched to book 2. And ugh. It needs so much work, still.

This will be the...third? Fourth? Fourth time, I think, that I've torn the pieces apart and rearranged them. Some of that is because the plot changes I'm making to book 2 have made it so a lot of other things need tweaking. Fixing the shelf paper as I go, as it were. I also needed to do a lot with my main character's motivation. She's very wishy washy in the current draft. Very reactive. So I made her proactive, and then also reactive to the things she proactively made happen. That sounds confusing, I know. Basically, for the first half of the book, she kind of just let people dictate what she could and couldn't do, and she grumbled about it a lot (very meanly, making her not very likeable). When she finally does something, it doesn't go well, and she goes back to not doing anything. And that happens three times. So I had to give her more action. Yes, she still has to deal with the fallout of her actions. But she's actually taking action. And moping less. And trying harder, honestly.

Anyway. That was a digression. I am making progress there. Slow progress. I beat my head against the wall for a few days, writing a new chapter I thought I needed. It's where I'd stopped my last attempt editing this last year, this new chapter. I spent an entire day trying to write it, after deciding what all needed to go into it. The entire day was pain. Each sentence I wrote, I wondered...is this hard because I don't want to write this, or because I don't need to write it.

Turns out, as a writer, you gotta trust yourself sometimes. It was hard to write because it didn't need to exist. I wasted an entire day coming up with a chapter that I did not need. That was rough. It made me nearly quit the book, again.

But. After giving my brain a break for a day, I sat down and wrote several brainstorming documents worth of, okay, if I don't write this chapter, what do I need to do instead? What parts that I came up with for this new chapter would still be good to include? If I don't put the parts from other chapters I was going to put here don't go here, after all, where do they go?

So I wrote a whole new outline of fixes I need to make for about seven chapters in the middle. Not all of it is big fixes. But I do need to write two new scenes and a montage. In a different place than where I was writing. Ugh.

I also still have to find places for a plotline that...well, should exist but doesn't, considering book 3. Which shouldn't be a lot. Just sentences here and there. And information in places where, before, I was vague.

The hardest part with all of that is making room for the new parts by cutting out some of the old stuff. Especially when it's a funny line or a nice moment. Hell, I had a really lovely scene in the new chapter I wrote that I can't use at all, sadly. But. I think right now, my focus will just be on putting new stuff in. I will worry about cutting stuff on another pass. I'd rather have everything I need and stuff I don't when I sit down to do the next phase of editing than have to write new stuff again.

Although the new stuff I'm adding, while I was uncertain about at first, I think has been really great. I guess we'll see if I still feel that way when I pick this back up again.

Which won't be for a couple of months. I got my editing to-do outline to a good place so I know what needs to happen for at least ten or so chapters. I think the next time I work on this, I'll have to do the same thing for the ten or so chapters after that, once I've got the middle section worked out.

Next month, I'll be working on a Sally Prescott adventure. I've signed up for Camp Nano, and I'm going to try to write the whole adventure. I need about 16k words. I've given myself May for overflow if I don't get there, but May, I go back to CLC. Then June, I will take another crack at editing book 2 of Mystwatch.

I don't know if I can wrap up my book 2 edit in a month. I still have October as a "wrap up projects" month along with Druid Wars 2 outline. So if I need to, I can finish it then. But. Maybe I can. My client did a massive dev edit rewrite in less than a month. And I made a lot of progress on my edit this month, even with spending a week on a copy edit for a client, and a little over a week focused on book 3. So, yeah. Maybe a full month focused on the second book, I'll be able to muddle through to the end. Although June isn't actually a full month, either. I have another copy edit to do for a week, and I'm spending a week traveling. So that really only gives me two weeks, again. I doubt I'll get to the end, then. Or maybe I will, now that I know what I need to do for most of the upcoming chapters. I won't be stuck, this time. I can just sit down and power through my detailed list of edits.

It might still need another editing pass, even after I'm done this one. Once I've got all the pieces in there that I think it needs to make a better story. Then, of course, the polishing begins. That'll take...well, hard to say. I've polished book one so many times, now. I'm not sure it'll ever live up to the polish of that book. But it doesn't have to, I suppose. Someday, maybe I'll hire an actual editor.

All right. This entry got long, devolving into vague details only I understand about my books. But. I think that's a nice change from talking about my 10-year plan. It's nice to talk about craft and stories rather than timelines and products. For now, I am focusing on the creative side. Maybe in a year or two, I'll start to think about the business stuff.

This year, I just want to make sure I can work on writing at least seven days out of the month. So far so good on that one! I spent fourteen days working on Mystwatch edits this month.

Three months of writing and editing so far. I am still doing this! Hope I can keep it up. I think I can. Even when I was "in a fight" with writing this month, I still didn't have any desire to quit. I think that's a good sign.

February Update: Still positive!

Woohoo, I made it through February! February is always a rough month for me, both mentally and physically. Good thing it's the shortest month of the year.

Not only did I make it through, but I achieved my writing goal! Not only did I achieve my writing goal, I surpassed it! I finished out my writing session yesterday with 12k words for February. I did a 2.4k word day yesterday, and I was already almost 2k past my goal at that point. So, yeah. I can do this. One month, I can see it as a fluke. Doing it two months in a row may still be a fluke, but it gives me more confidence that I can do it again. I'm feeling like I have set myself reasonable writing goals, and it feels so dang good when I surpass them!

I officially broke the 80k mark on Chain Letter Choice. I have written the same amount of words I ended NaNo with on that novel. Which feels amazing. The only problem is, I figured this novel would wrap up in around 90k words. I don't think that's going to work out unless I cut some scenes from my outline. Right now, I don't want to cut anything I'd planned. Pacing-wise, these scenes feel important. Also for character development. So, I'm leaving them in. If I decide this novel needs to be cut down to 90k words, I can cut in other places. I'm taking my time getting through the scenes I'm writing rather than rushing through them. It's balancing my need to be a discovery writer (things I don't expect keep popping up) but also my terror that stops me from writing when I don't know what comes next. I'm liking this detailed outline thing. It turns out it's not actually that detailed.

Trouble is, I keep having to revamp it. I'm already a chapter or two off from where I thought I was going to be. So there will be at least a few more chapters than I thought. Which is fine. But again, that means it'll come in closer to 100k or more when all is said and done. I might have to sit down with my outline sometime this month and restructure it. Again. But I'm waiting to see if it's just chapter numbers that are off, or if I have to swap order of POV again. I may need to add a chapter, which actually means adding two, since I'm putting normal human chapters between agent chapters.

Anyway! I'd talked about swapping editing and writing months for March in my update for last month. And I think my plan is to do that. If I can write 8k-10k words more on CLC in March, I should be within 10k-12k of wrapping it up. I had planned on doing Sally Prescott for Camp NaNo, but I'm reluctant to abandon CLC so close to the end. I do not see myself writing 20k in March, so I'll have to decide if I am going to take a break from CLC for SP, or if I'm going to punt SP down another month or two. Or maybe I just write one SP this year. I know I need to write two per year to get them all done before I turn 50, but I don't think I've ever managed two complete SP adventures in one year. One and a half, maybe. But two this year might be unrealistic, since this is my first year getting back into more frequent writing.

I'll give it some more thought once I get to the end of March, but maybe I can work on finishing CLC through April, work on SP in May, then take my editing break in June. By June, I will need a writing break. I scheduled in a writing break for March because I figured after two months of writing more than I had a month in awhile, I'd need a break. But I feel good! I feel confident and excited about my novel. I'd love to wrap it up before moving on to another project, if possible.

So, yeah. That's been my progress, and those are my goals. I'm really doing this. It's going well, and I'm so happy about it. I even did the novel dev edit for one of my writers and a complete edit for the novella for my other author. And I still got my own writing done. I made an effort to guard my writing days, and it worked. I got things back to my authors closer to the deadlines I'd given myself rather than early like I prefer, but I think that's okay. Good, even.

Editing for other people definitely has me thinking harder about my own writing. I know I'm still writing for myself, at this point, but some of the things I'm telling my writers echo through my head as I'm writing. Is this scene doing more than one thing? What is it showing? Does another scene do this better? It's helped me hone in on what I want each scene to do. Not only advance the plot, but reveal characterization and advance character relationships.

Anyway. Tomorrow is our monthly meeting, so no writing again until this weekend. I've thought of a couple of things I might want to tweak in what I just wrote, and also about how I can maybe cut parts of my outline. Maybe I'll do that this week, since I'm not writing until this weekend. But we'll see. Maybe I'll just keep moving forward rather than looking back.

Either way, the last two months have shown I can do this. I am doing this!

January Update: Here we go!

So, last month, the end of last year, I made a lot of ambitious goals for 2022. I went from, "I'm probably going to give up on writing" to, "let's give it a solid try for one more year." I was worried that'd crush my fragile creativity, but as it turns out, it's the best thing I could have done.

Things are going well.

Well enough that I think I am going to go back to monthly posts. If I'm really going to be writing and editing as much as my new Ambitious Plan has outlined, monthly check-ins will be necessary, I think. My quarterly updates last year were pretty long, and I wasn't doing that much.

So! Here us an update for January.

Actually, first, an update for December. Heh.

I wrote some more, after that last blog post. My initial goal, after sitting down with spreadsheets to plan out my 2022, was to write 2k more words on CLC so I could go into 2022 with CLC's word count at 60k. That didn't happen, but I did write almost 700 words on it, which isn't nothing. I also sat down with the SP adventure I was struggling with and wrote a 1700 word outline for it. So, I know roughly what happens in that story, now. That should help when I do Camp NaNo in April. I still don't know if I can write two SP adventures in a year, but the work I did in December should help.

Of course, Sally Prescott is a future Sara thing. Present Sara is hammering out words on CLC.

In January, I edited up the Shane Mystwatch short story (it took much less editing than I thought it needed). I sent it to my friends, but I don't think anyone has read it, yet. Ah, well. I wrote it mostly for me. And for Shane. I added to a scene in Mystwatch 3, only about 300 words, but I addressed something that I realized was bugging me (why didn't Stark ever tell Makai what he was?? I came up with a pretty simple answer). And THEN. Drumroll, please. I wrote not my 8k word goal for CLC, not 9k, but 10k on CLC!

Which means I not only blew past my January goal, but I also made up for the words I didn't manage in December. Woohoo!! And boy, is that novel coming along. Action scenes, plots moving forward. The three MCs are together, now, so that's been challenging. But fun. I have hit a bit of a wall, though. One of the things on my to-do list is to fix the outline. I've been kicking that thing down the line all month because it didn't affect what I was currently writing. Well, I've caught up to where it gets messy. So, yeah. Before I write anymore, I need to spend some time with the outline to figure out what scenes I need, what emotional beats I need to hit, and whose POV the remaining 7-8 chapters need to be in. I don't think it'll be hard. Most of it is there. Although looking back over my notes, I found something I disagree with Past Sara about. I hope that doesn't totally derail me. Part of the reason I was stuck on this book so long was that I knew how I wanted it to end, but I didn't know how to get there. Once I figured that piece out, I was able to get excited about it again. So, yeah. There are a few pieces I need to hammer out before I can start writing 1.2k, 1.5k, 2.2k words in a day again. I was hoping to do that yesterday, but I ran out of steam. I'll try to work on that tonight.

I am averaging my usual 1200 words per writing session. That can take anywhere from an hour to three hours, depending on what day it is and how motivated I am. So, all of my ambitious goals seem like they might actually be possible. I'm not sure I can actually write 14k words on a SP adventure in a month, but I am going to try. April, July, and November, I will push myself to write more than I do on a normal month.

Of course, my biggest fear right now is that, because I had a successful month, I am an absolute failure if I can't manage it again. So I'm trying to be gentle with myself. Yes, for February, I am aiming for 8k on CLC again. But I will also be editing a novel for someone, and maybe editing a novella for someone else. I can't expect to make 10k every month. And if I don't hit 8k next month, I've shown I can make it up on other months.

I actually did a lot of thinking about what broke me. And I think I've decided that it was unrealistic expectations of myself and pinning my dreams on a lot of factors I had no control over. My plan was to keep writing while querying. The idea was, I'd write a book, query it, and if it didn't get picked up, I'd move it to my self-publishing pile. Rinse, repeat, until I either got picked up by an agent, or had enough books written to keep myself going as a self-published writer. The trouble was, querying took all of my brain power. All of my brain was focused on analytical stuff, which left no room for creativity. Writing words as your product isn't the same as creating a product that doesn't require creativity. But once I got behind on my "product," my timeline went out the window. And the rejection was discouraging, as well. I'd built this whole system, and the system failed me. My system. The publishing industry. I didn't make contingency for failure on both fronts. My timelines imploded, my passion was long gone, and, overwhelmed with bitterness, I gave up the dream.

There's a bit more to it than that, obviously. Depression, other interests, a complete change in faith, disillusionment in things I'd had confidence in before. But overall, I set myself up for failure, and failure washed away the foundation I'd built everything on.

I'm slowly rebuilding. I've been working to find other ways to keep myself writing and motivated. So far, in the month and a half I've been working on this new plan, it's mostly been "is this going to work" as my motivation. I've asked myself a question. If I structure things this way, will I get things done, and will I work my way back to enjoying the process. I'm giving it a tentative timeline of this year (and maybe next, but I'm not looking too far ahead yet). By the end of this year, if I've gotten the things done I set out for myself to accomplish and didn't hate it, I will do another year. If, by the end of this year, I've failed again, I may still give it another year. But. I'm mostly doing this year to see how I feel, not what I get done. I will reassess at the end of this year. I will have a lot of data to parse, at that point.

As of right now, I'm jazzed but nervous. I actually feel like I might get to the end of CLC. That is really exciting. I'm actually thinking about swapping writing and editing months so I can keep working on it in March instead of taking a break. I'd hate to lose the momentum by switching to Mystwatch for March, then SP for April. But I'm going to reassess that at the end of February.

I am going into Februrary hopeful. I'm trying not to stress about expectations. It's only 8k words. That's only 1k words eight different times in February. I've kept this reasonable, which is why I managed to get 10k last month. I used to write 15k words in a good month. And I may strive for that again someday. But I am starting small and reasonable and seeing if I can achieve my ambitious goals that way without killing myself.

Because as Dianne said, the best way to kill your creativity is push yourself when your burnt out. I don't want to push. I mean, I do want to push. I want to push myself to do what I think I can. But not more than I can. It's such a hard balance. Goals too easy, I won't take it seriously. Goals too hard, I'll give up in frustration.

I guess the biggest goal is just figure out what kind of writer I am, now. Because I am still a writer. I may only be writing for myself. Or maybe self-publish someday in the future when I'm bored and have an even bigger back catalog. But for now, I'm writing for me. I'm the only one who seems interested in reading what I write, anyway. Knowing it just has to be good enough for me takes a lot of the pressure off. Makes it fun.

Hopefully next month I will still be this positive. Tentatively optimistic! Let's do this!