1,273 words, and a plan…

So, as you can see, some progress was made over the past week, though not that much (remember I posted on Sunday last time, so don’t consider today’s word count as part of my week’s progress). It was pretty challenging getting into the book while also returning to the work routine after the holiday break. Seems like if I can just be sure to write first thing in the morning, I’ll be okay. I’m trying to push a little past the daily word count goal. While it’s more than reasonable to finish the first draft at the end of February, I wouldn’t be upset to see it done before then.

My characters are held captive, though loosely, but they’ve got a plan to get free. The challenge? – How can I make things go wrong for them? Tomorrow, though, I’ll be in a different POV. I wonder where that will take me.

For those who are interested, I found a very interesting resource yesterday in George Saunders’s Story Club. Saunders is a literary writer who doesn’t really do fantasy or science fiction, but I enjoy his absurdist stories and I really love his efforts to share with the public how he teaches classic literature at Syracuse. So if your reading tastes ever stray into the highbrow, be sure to give that link a look.

New Year, New Goals

Well, the past two years seem to have been filled with silence on this blog. The good news is that they haven’t been completely devoid of work. I figured it was time to start sharing a bit about what’s going on.

Perhaps the biggest thing that happened in those years is that I wrote and revised a short novel. It was not a great novel, but it taught me some valuable things to use for the next novel. And the next novel is in the works! Here’s the status for the current work:

As you can see, I’ve given myself a fairly modest goal of 70k by the end of February. I’m planning on self-publishing at the moment, but I’m open to pushing for traditional publication should the first draft want to expand to 80k (I’m willing to add 10k in revision, but not 20k).

Also, the day counter only reflects weekdays, which is why it says 42 Days Left when there are clearly plenty more before the end of February. I don’t plan to take weekends completely off, but I do intent to write very little on them just to keep the streak going. The main goal, besides writing the novel, is to get 5 days a week, 1250 words a day, or about 25k per month (yes, that will have me hit 70k a bit early). The recommendation comes from Holly Lisle’s forums, where she discussed it as a good goal to teach someone whether or not they want to write professionally.

So that’s the main project! Doesn’t mean I will take the year off completely from short stories – I do want to have something for you to read. 2022 will be a literary adventure, and I’m looking forward to seeing what it brings!