February Update: Always Shifting

The writing group I'm a part of has stopped doing monthly meetings. This is mostly a good thing, as it was the same 3-5 people saying the same things over and over. Mostly the meetings were to schedule things, and all of that now happens through the FB group. Overall, it's been nice having the first Sundays of the month back.

The one thing we're missing is the monthly accountability. Going around the room saying "hey, my accomplishments last month were these, and I hope to get this done this month." We've started doing a FB post for that, as well, but it doesn't feel quite the same.

That being said, I seem to have shifted to doing my writing blog updates closer to the beginning of the month the last few months. And while I thought it might be good to have a wrap-up of a month at the end of a month, I realize that these blog posts might be a nice way to bridge that gap.

So. At least for this month, I'll talk about what I did in January and what I hope to get done in February.

I'd planned on writing most of last month. All of that changed when an amazing dark sci-fi/fantasy magazine opened up submissions for novels and novellas in January. I'd already subbed to another publisher that had open submissions at the end of last year, so since I decided this has sort of become the year of publisher submissions, I'd throw my hat in the ring.

Trouble was, their word count limit was 120,000 words. Monsters of Lawrence was nearly 125,000. So, I spent January doing intensive edits on book one. It was fantastic. I cleaned up all of the clunky language that had made me cringe for years. I cut a lot of inside jokes from when I first wrote it nearly a decade ago. I fixed some of the lore that has evolved since writing another book and a half.

And at the end of January, I had a sleek, stunning, 119k-word novel. Even if it doesn't get picked up by the publisher, it was an overhaul it desperately needed. I hadn't done an intensive edit like that in about a year. It was going to have to happen to self-publish anyway. I am now ahead of the game (and with a much cleaner, tighter draft for when I sub to other publishers this year).

I've blocked out the rest of my year as far as publisher subs. I've got two more lined up, and then, I just may chuck it at one last one at the beginning of next year, depending on how everything else goes. Book three should be done by then. Written at least. Maybe ready for beta readers. I may decide at that point I do want to do it myself and not bother. Although on the other hand, I may send it just to say I did. It's the first time I've done any of this. I want the full experience from start to finish. I want to be able to say I did everything I could with it before either trunking or self-publishing.

At any rate. I didn't work on book three at all in January. That ended up working out, though. I got reacquainted with all my friends as I cleaned up book one, let the world sweep me up again. And while I was there, I figured out a lot of things I was getting hung up on with book three. And while there are still some issues, I've filled in some blanks and fixed some plot holes, so I'm ready to move forward.

Or I was, until I got the flu.

But I got better. And as of today, I've written about two thousand words on it, getting past the scene I was stuck on and figuring out what comes next.

My goal for the next 22 days is to write about 15,000 words. I'm excited about the things that are happening. I really love a few of the scenes I've written. I'm so excited to share this with my friends and family. I'm so excited to be done with it so I can read it!

Ideally I'll spend the next three months putting words toward it, finishing it up in May so I can spend the rest of the year doing edits. That being said, I may need a break before then. It took me most of last year to write 50,000 words on it. I fully anticipate getting stuck at some point.

But when that happens, I will probably go back to Druid Wars and get that off my plate. I haven't come up with the best way to fix the opening chapter yet, but the rest should be fairly easy to fix. For beta readers at least. It doesn't have to be perfect yet. Although I won't lie, the high praise I got on book two was nice. I'd love to be able to do that again.

And then I'll have to stare down Online Dating for Demons. But that's for Future Sara to worry about sometime closer to the end of this year.

Sally Prescott may not get any attention this year. Although I have figured out that the invention of the translating device dovetails nicely with her losing her wish at the end of the series. I haven't given up on her completely, but she's still rather back burner for now.

But that could change. My plans are always shifting. If I suddenly became unemployed, I might consider throwing season one out there just to make a few bucks. I could write an adventure a month if it suddenly became a way to make money. Hopefully it never comes to that. Sally deserves better.

Anyway! TL;DR: I spent January working on book one. I will spend February working on book three.

Here we go.

January Update: 2017 Accomplishments and 2018 Goals

Here we are. Another year of my writing blog. I've made some amazing headway in the last seven years. Three more years to reach my ultimate goal--the goal I started this blog for. I feel like I'm on the right track. I just need to quit putting the cart before the horse and quit rushing. Slow and steady will get me to my goal. And the baby steps along the way make it all possible. My yearly goals are the key to that.

So, speaking of goals, for 2017, my goals were to do the following (I've added in parenthesis the degree of completion for each):

• Write Scions of Mythos (wrote roughly half of the book)
• Sell or self-publish Monsters of Lawrence (I queried it a lot, but didn't sell)
• Send Towers of Kansas to beta readers and incorporate their edits (done)
• Finish the first season of my adventure novellas (done)
• Start the second season of my adventure novellas (done)
• Write at least six stories for the Cafe and keep the Cafe running (done)
• Edit Druid Wars Book 1 for beta readers (didn't finish, but made good progress)
• Start writing Druid Wars Book 2 (have decided to put off writing second books in series until I get a book picked up)
• Do dev edits for Online Dating for Demons (pushed this back a year)
• Help run Reader Con in October (con was canceled, sad face)
• Write a blog update every month, even if I have nothing to report (done!)

I had a lot of lofty goals, and while not all of them were 100% completed, I feel really, really good about where I'm at, especially since I battled depression most of last year. I mean, look at what I accomplished.

In 2017, I:

• Finished editing Towers of Kansas (and sent it to my brother and sister to read)
• Finished writing the first season of my adventure series
• Started the second season of my adventure series
• Did most of the edits on the first book in the Druid Wars series
• Wrote over 10k words on a new project during NaNoWriMo
• Wrote a flash fiction for the 24-hour writing contest
• Wrote six stories for the Confabulator Cafe
• Wrote over 50k words on Scions of Mythos
• Won the story-in-a-bag contest at ConQuest
• Brainstormed nine ideas for short stories and novels
• Managed the Cafe so that it had at least four stories most months in 2017
• Sent out 60 queries for book one (and got two partial requests)
• Wrote blog posts every month this year
• Beta read two novels for writing group friends
• Overall, wrote 115,636 words on various projects and spent 101 hours editing
• And in addition to all of that writing, I also had three different freelance editing clients, where I edited two novels, one novella, and three short stories in an anthology.

I learned a ton about querying and self-publishing. I've developed something of a system for editing, so now I almost enjoy the editing parts more than the writing parts. I completed a full year of tracking my writing and editing habits, so I have a more realistic idea of what I can do in a year. Which means I have a better plan going forward.

No more writing full series all at once. I'll finish up book three of MystWatch then self-publish it, but I need to write more first books and query those. When they get through the querying process with no luck, then I can focus on writing additional books for self-publication, but right now it is frustrating that my best book to date is the second book in a series. 

So I guess what that means is, I'd like to be able to write two books a year: one for querying, and one for self-publication. As long as they aren't massive 125k-word books like the MystWatch books, that should be do-able. I averaged around 115k words a year the last two years, which isn't quite two books, but once I start publishing, I'll buckle down and push that a bit. It's like doing a budget. You have to spend some time analyzing your spending before you can implement spending goals.

My goals aren't as lofty this year, but they're pretty serious. I need to get them done so I can stay on-track. I've been wishy-washy about these projects for awhile, but now it's time to buckle down and do them. And I have a whole year to do them without too many other projects as a distraction.

Here are my goals for 2018:

• Finish writing Scions of Mythos
• Send Druid Wars to beta readers, incorporate feedback, and hopefully start querying it this year
• Edit Online Dating for Demons
• Write at least four stories for the Confabulator Cafe (and keep it running)
• Start a brand new project for Nanowrimo
• Finish the first adventure in season two and start the second adventure for Sally Prescott
• Volunteer at ConQuest
• Write at least one blog post a month here.

Those goals are, notably, in order of importance, and the first three are the ones I absolutely must do. The others I will let slide if it comes down to it, but those three are the core of this year. Oh, except for the blog posts here. Those keep me accountable, keep me motivated, and keep me apprised of the big picture. Without the big picture, without looking back to see what I've accomplished on a small and on a large scale, the momentum would peter out and I'd be dead in the water. Even if I have nothing to report, it's still important for me to update this blog.

I also know I will be editing at least a few books from Bottle Cap Publishing. I'm not sure if I'll have any other freelance clients, but BCP should keep me plenty busy outside of my own work. And I will probably have beta reads from my writing group friends, which I always enjoy.

So that's it. Here's to a brand new year of writing, and another few steps closer to getting published.

What a journey it has been.

December Plan Update (Part 3)

Wow. It's amazing how absolutely useless I become when I hit vacation mode.

It turned out, I had a project that lasted until halfway through Wednesday last week at work, so I spent the remainder of the day chilling and messing around. And then I was in full-swing holiday mode. Stockings on Wednesday night; presents, baking, and going out to eat on Thursday; chores and errands on Friday; not getting dressed until 2pm, and then some Yule stuff on Saturday; shoveling snow and grocery shopping and Christmas Eve movies while drinking Bailey's on Sunday; and Christmas Day was filled with cooking and eating and more Christmas movies.

Today I stared down my to-do list and managed to get two things accomplished. One of those was not writing. Oh, and more snow shoveling.

That being said, I did get two scenes of about a thousand words written on Scions of Mythos during all of that. It's not nearly as much as I had hoped to get done in the last week, but they were good scenes. I've also spent a lot of time thinking about the book and living in the Mythos world. so while there's minimal forward motion on the actual story, I'm comfortably settled in the setting so that I'm ready to write when I finally sit down to it.

I sent off book two to my brother and sister yesterday for Christmas. I did not end up doing the last tweak I had planned. Every time I sat down to do it, I was equal parts overwhelmed by the task and apathetic about the importance of it. I've decided, ultimately, that it might be a nice setting thing to add at a later date, but that it won't have any impact on the story. At best, it's a way to mark the passage of time in the book. At the least, it's another way to make the book more unmistakably Lawrence, and to add some more character development to a few of the Hunters. Neither of which seemed pressing enough to try to cram in when I had plenty of other things to keep myself occupied before Christmas.

I now have two more days of vacation at home before I head to see the family for New Years. I'm hoping to poke at my book at least a little. A few thousand words would be great.

I wanted to be at 60k before the end of this year, but I find that unlikely now. If I can get to 55k, I'll consider it a win. Because I got to thinking about how book one and book two both ended up around 110k-115k words after the first draft. Revision drafts and editing grew them to the 120k mark. So I don't have to write 120k words for book three to be "done." Aiming for 110k might be better so that I have room to go back and add stuff.

Because let's be honest, here. It's the last book of a trilogy. I'm going to get to the end and realize I have about a million loose ends to tie up somewhere in there.

So. If I can get to 55k this year, I will be halfway through the book. As official of an approximation as I can get.

So yes. I have revised my plan again. Fewer words. But more realistic goals. I feel good about this, now.

I may not update again before the first of the new year. I'll be with family and it's my birthday weekend. But. I may have news on how my siblings like the book, and I may want to do one last update on my final word count for the year.

And then, next week, I will do my yearly "where am I going, where have I been" post for my goals and accomplishments.

Those are always very motivating for me. I tend to get lost in the minutiae, so it's good for me to look at the big picture from time to time. What better time than the first of the new year?

Hope you all had a merry Christmas and have a lovely New Year!