June Update: I haven't updated since January??

Okay, wow, holy cow. I thought I was doing monthly updates this year. Why did I think that? I seriously came here and panicked because I thought entries had been lost. I guess...I just decided not to update my progress. Weird.

So I guess that it goes without saying after that statement that I have, in fact, made progress. Here's a quick recap.

January, I apparently wrote 5500 words and edited for 2 hours, working on SP adventures.

February, I didn't do anything until the very last couple of days, where I finally started working on my fantasy Leverage thieves guild story. Managed 2100 words on that, so that's cool. A respectable start, anyway. Not that I know where it's going. It needs some more world building, I think.

March, I did nothing. No writing. No editing. No freelance from Lisa. I have no idea what happened in March. I think that's about the time I reached out to the writers and let them know that I did, in fact, want to start writing, but I couldn't do it on my own.

Because then, in April, I managed 1000 words and an hour of editing. Writing was on SP, editing on fantasy Leverage.

It looks like the middle of May is when we started meeting on Saturdays to write. I spent an hour deciding what to work on one of those write-ins, and then dove into CLC. By the end of the month, I'd spent 12 hours reading and editing CLC and wrote 2250 words.

I guess that's why I haven't updated. By the first of June, I didn't have a ton of progress to update. Although in all honesty, all of that is a ton of progress! Even though I took a break in March, the fact that I was touching projects enough to write 1-2k a month is impressive.

But I think the other reason I decided not to update is that the spark of inspiration was very small and fragile. I tend to get overzealous when I finally start writing again after a long break, and when I get excited, I make all these plans, and when I do that, I snuff it out. So. I think I remember deciding to see how June went before updating.

So, here we are, first of July. And I had a really great month! We met every Saturday to write. And since we got most of the social stuff and procrastinating done in May, but June, we were able to actually settle in and do a bit of writing. By the end of the month, I was averaging 1000 words on those days. Which is fantastic.

So, grand total for June: 6400 words and 4 hours editing, all work on CLC. I am at 98k on that novel, now, and have fixed a lot of the problems from early on. I still probably have 20k more worth of story to tell, and I'm losing steam on the project. But. I made awesome progress on it last month. A few more months like that, and I could finally get that thing finished. Which would be so awesome!

Trouble is, I am getting bored with it again. And I don't know if that's just, in general, bored with writing, or if it's the story I'm bored with. It wouldn't be the first time. It's very exciting when I first read it, but then I lose the excitement once it comes time to write new words. I don't know why. I'm debating pushing through and trying to get to the end over the next couple months. Or at least giving it one more month. I am down to about six more scenes that need to be written. Five and a half. Including the epilogue, which I've written a lot of already.

In my experience, finishing any book can be a slog. But I don't want to burn myself out. And I don't know that I want to waste my writing inspiration on a book I'm not excited about anymore. Luckily, I have some time to decide before our next write-in. Although I really ought to try to write a bit on non-write-in days. I managed that a bit in the beginning of June but not so much by the end.

I actually decided to make it my goal to write 200 words a day. That's less than a page a day. A few paragraphs. But I picked 200 words a day because that's 6k words a month. I was originally aiming for 5k a month this year, but I got behind by, y'know. Not writing. I know writing an extra thousand a month won't catch me up, but telling myself I only have to write 200 words a day makes it feel surmountable. Of course, 100-150 words would be even better, but it's not quite enough to get where I want to be. At any rate, if I can write 1000 words every 5 days, that's my 200 words. I can write 1000 words in less than an hour. So if I write 1000 words at write-ins, I only have to spend maybe another thirty minutes writing during the rest of the week.

I hope I can keep this up. I'd like to keep this up for at least a few more months to get some projects finished. If I can do it the rest of this year, I could realistically get CLC and SP 2.5 done. Those are my big goals. If I get nothing else done this year, I at the very least need to wrap up SP 2.5. And I'd like to spend at least one more month on CLC.

But I might rebel and just work on Sleepy Shoals instead.

I will likely try to write another blog at the beginning of August to give an update on how my July went. I'm excited to see where I go. I might have a freelance editing project in the middle. Maybe I can work on CLC until I get that, then switch projects once it's done.

I have options! And I have accountability! And I have at least a little bit of excitement to write. Here's hoping I get some good progress done this month.