Oops, I forgot to do January’s round-up.
So far this year I’ve written a new short story: Mudgerwokee. A horror tale which was initially 9,000 words, then I shaved down to 7,500 to meet the editor’s word count, but now based on the editor’s notes I’ll be bumping up a bit again to flesh out the ending.
I’ve also completed self-edits on the first sequel to Charming, a fun novella called Charming Rivals and getting it out to my critique group for feedback – a longish process since the story after editing has become 18,000 words long and I can only post 5,000 word each month to my group.
February I’ve spent most of focused on Glass Slippers, completing my self-edits on that novella(which includes adding almost 10,000 words) and have now sent it off to beta readers and should get the feedback returned by end of March. I also wrote a (completely unplanned and out of nowhere) an erotic scene between two characters from Glass Slippers. Considering the style of the novella though, I doubt that scene will ever see the light of day ;p
And for the last couple of days I’ve been getting my head back into the voice of Min, my first person perspective protagonist from ‘Skeleton Romance'(working title) as I intend to finish that novel’s first draft this next month. I’ve been rereading the 43,000 odd words I’ve already written to refamiliarise myself with both plot and voice. Yeah, yeah, I know you endlessly hear writing ‘gurus’ telling you to never do that, just push ahead with the draft, but sometimes advice needs to be ignored. I mean if I didn’t do this, how much more rewriting and editing would I need to do later? Is the three days I spent re-reading (note: I was reading, not editing) a bigger waste of time than the time I would spend in rewrites and editing because I wasn’t better prepared? Also, I’m not a newbie who has never finished a novel (I’ve finished several) and the advice feels aimed at newbies who are finding ways (subconsciously or otherwise) to avoid finishing their novel.
I also went to a seminar with Joanna Penn which was awesome and another step toward my ‘keep learning’ goal.
So a lot of editing, and some fresh new words (approximately 26,000 new words). Not a bad start to the year, but I’m going to have to push harder if I want to meet all my goals for the year.
How’s the first two months of 2017 been to you?
