January Update: New year, fresh start, old goals

Well, I left off last post not sure I'd actually do any writing in this New Year. And I didn't, to be honest. Not until the very last week. But. After a six-month hiatus...I am making a small amount of writing progress once again.

I talked about this in my main blog a bit, but it seems like half a year is about as long as I ever go without making at least some minimal writing progress. I can't ever stay away. I often need the long rests, especially when I've been hitting projects hard and pushing myself to reach challenging goals.

Which I feel I did last year. The fact that I wrote over 30k words on one novel over a few months was pretty intense. I always need breaks after that. And after the devastation of realizing how much work MystWatch 2 needs, it was difficult to make real progress on that one.

I did finish a whole SP novella. The end is garbage, but it has an ending. And oftentimes, I get to the end and think it's garbage, then go back and read and realize it's not as bad as all that. This was an important adventure, where the stakes get higher and the consequences bigger. It's where a shift in the series starts to happen. So, yeah. It was a hard one to wrap up. And while I don't love the execution of the last third of the story, I do like what happens, so I'm okay to keep going, at least. And I have a great first line for the last adventure of season 2! I'm excited to work on that this year.

Yeah. This year. I sat down at the beginning of January and made something of a plan for this year on my project timeline spreadsheet. As mentioned in my last post, it is mostly just finishing things I didn't finish last year. So finish writing Chain Letter Choice, finish editing MystWatch 2, write an outline for the next novel or two I want to write, and write 1-2 SP novellas. When I sat down to figure out the timeline for that, I got a bit overwhelmed. How does one finish a novel and edit a novel when one hasn't written or edited for half a year?

Well, one starts smaller.

I thought about starting with SP, but I didn't really have the energy for Sally's chaotic good energy. So. I am starting even smaller than that.

Short stories.

I haven't written a short story in awhile. I started a couple last year but never finished them. So, this year, these first two months, I am going to write short stories. I have three or four I want to play around with. The first is the next installment of Witch's Daughter. I'm almost finished. I have written up to the climax scene, then written notes for that, then started writing the resolution. I may not finish it by the end of the month, but I hope to. I should wrap up the month of January with around 5k words. Which is not the 8k words that will get me where I'd like to be by the end of this year. But. It's more words than I've written in the previous six months combined. So I'm counting it as a win.

Next month, I will probably try to write another short story. I have the knights unemployment office one that I really want to write, one about witches I started to write for Althea, one about little kids and a dragon that I'd like to finish for Althea (once I find an ending for it), and then, of course, the Makai short I've been toying with for awhile.

Now, I did put an editing month in for February between short story writing. We'll see how that turns out. Maybe I'll edit next month, maybe I'll write short stories, or maybe both. But yeah. Between now and the end of March, I'd like to finish at least a couple more short stories and start again on the Mystwatch 2 edit.

April is Camp NaNo, so I'll switch to Sally, then. She'll take a bulk of the following few months. She usually takes two months to write a complete adventure, and I'm hoping to write that consecutively this year like I did last year, because that worked pretty well. Once I finish month two of SP, I'll take a break month, where I'll try to outline my next novel. Then for the second round of Camp NaNo, I'll work on fixing and finishing SP 3.1, which I started writing ages ago. It needs massive edits to be able to fit the ending I want on it. So we'll see how that goes.

That puts me way beyond the first half of the year. If all that goes well, August will be more editing, September will be outlining another novel (probably the first Shane spinoff, because I've been thinking about him a lot, and I'll be working on Mystwatch edits in August), then October and November, I will dedicate to wrapping up Chain Letter Choice. I think it needs about 30k more words at this point. Ugh. So much longer than I ever meant for it to be (but I always write long, so that's no surprise). If I do a half-NaNo in November, I only need to do maybe 5k-10k in October.

Then, of course, December is a break. Or maybe one last short story. If I can finish three short stories this year, I will be tickled beyond belief.

And if I can finish all these other projects, as well, I will also be tickled. Maybe even to death. To finish CLC and season 2 of SP, finally edit Mystwatch 2 and get SP 3.1 in line with the rest of the series after starting it back before season 1 was even finished...that will feel so fucking amazing. I don't even care if I don't get any new novels outlined. Although I think it'd be nice to go into 2024 with at least a couple of novels ready to start into. Brand new stories.

Mystwatch 3 I think I had planned to poke at as far as editing this year, but we'll see. I may not have it in me. I may turn it over to my brother and sister for feedback. Since they devoured my other two books. Well, three, because both read Druid Wars, as well.

Anyway. As always, I've gotten way ahead of myself. I've written 4.5k words this year so far. Asking myself to write 70k more and edit a very broken novel seems like a lot.

But I've got 11 more months to face that.

So, yeah. My main goal this year is to finish old goals. So next year can be whatever I want it to be.