If March was a little weird, April was a whole lot weird.
Lemme ‘splain.
I abandoned the thought of keeping to any kind of “schedule” with regard to my writing. At the end of last month, I had drafts for Apprentice of Wind and Figments completed, or so I thought.
So you’ll understand my surprise when I went to print off Figments, that I hadn’t, in fact, finished it. A few hundred words fixed that up, but boy was I embarrassed.
Then, once I had AoW and Figments printed, I heard Initiate of Stone calling my name. Even though I haven’t heard back from all my betas yet, I needed to do a little work on IoS.
I just finished reading Roz Morris’s first Nail Your Novel, and before that, I read Victoria Mixon’s Art and Craft of Story. I wanted to do a combination approach with each draft, using Roz’s form of beat sheet and Victoria’s holographic structure.
With IoS, I had previously eliminated a POV character. Now I’ve decided to remove her entirely and give the specifics of her plotline to other POV characters. It was something others had recommended and I resisted. I guess I just needed time and space away from the ms to realize the truth.
And it wasn’t half so difficult (read fraught) as I thought it would be.
So I knew that I would not be doing a lot with regard to “new words” in April because I’d mostly be focusing on working with my printed drafts and most of the new work would be on my blog.
Then I edited a couple of stories for submission, but the net new words for that was just over three hundred.
Once again, I find myself surprised.
Total word count for the month: 11, 612 (!), 10,930 of that from blogging alone.
Amaze-face.
Mind you, I have been blogging all those juicy sessions from Ad Astra. It’s transcription, but it counts.
Here’s the round up for the year so far:
Month | Total | Blog | Initiate of Stone | Apprentice of Wind | Figments | Gerod and the Lions | Short Stories |
January | 11,532 | 7,114 | 0 | 2,781 | 207 | 821 | 609 |
February | 9,789 | 6,303 | 0 | 47 | 308 | 1,296 | 1,835 |
March | 10,781 | 8,193 | 0 | 333 | 1,488 | 312 | 455 |
April | 11,612 | 10,930 | 0 | 0 | 381 | 0 | 301 |
So this has been an interesting month, and the next few promise to be as well.
I won’t be actively querying until I have revisions done on IoS, so that’s on hold, again, too.
I did receive my contributors’ copy of Sulphur IV, the literary journal of Laurentian University. I have three poems in there. The CV has been updated.
The Sudbury Writers’ Guild, with its slick new web site, is moving forward with its anthology, so I’ve set aside some work for that.
I made a decision at the end of March. I’d been an associate member of the League of Canadian Poets since 1999, but I’d never gone to its annual conference or AGM. So I decided this year not to renew my membership and instead invest in SF Canada and the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association (home of the Auroras).
It’s been interesting so far.
As far as what’s coming up, Baen Books has a short fiction contest, and I’ve just become aware that Lightspeed has an open reading period for Women Destroy Fantasy.
So there you are.
Progress continues to be made.
How is your writing life going?