Blogland!
This week was extremely productive. Like, the most productive week I’ve had in a long time. It was also exhausting, and then suddenly very relaxing. Apparently I was all over the place this week!
Last Week
- Publish 2 blog posts
- Edit The Steel Armada
- Write 1k words for The Fall of Ezra Clarke
- Read Whispers Under Ground
- Review Madhu’s pages
How’d I Do?
- Publish 2 blog posts
- Edit The Steel Armada
- Good Lordy bajornies, YES! It took about 16+ hours of work, but yes. It’s done!
- Write 1k words for The Fall of Ezra Clarke
- Yep! Still have no idea where this story is going but I’m happy to spend time with these characters.
- Read Whispers Under Ground
- Yarp. I think I finished it on Tuesday?
- Review Madhu’s pages
- You know it!
Weekly Word Count: 4,163
Y’all. Holy Crow what a week! There was lots of reading (Whispers Under Ground, The Productive Writer, and Here There be Gerblins), a ton of editing that rendered my brain into gray pudding and brought about a level of crankiness I hadn’t experienced in years. Also, there was a stupid amount of iced coffee just to keep me functional and even that still felt like running on fumes come Friday afternoon.
Thursday and Friday were days off for me. I printed out the rough draft on Wednesday (all 81 pages), and then woke up on Thursday with one goal in mind: I would sit down and edit as much as my brain could possibly handle. I knew the ending needed rewriting, and I wanted to get that done on Friday if I could. Which meant I needed to get more than half way through the manuscript on Thursday.
That was… taxing. I’ll share an Editing Check-In this week where I’ll talk about the entire process (how I start, how I know when to call a draft done and move on to the next stage, what problem areas I focus on when, etc), but let’s just say that it was a freaking gauntlet.
After that, I was pretty much useless. A migraine and a completely wrecked sleep schedule later, I sank some hours into one of my Dragon Age: Inquisition playthroughs, read a little fanfic, and played Gloomhaven over the weekend. Which only worked out because I had finished all of my other goals by Friday night.
I’m beginning to think that the writing I’m doing for The Fall of Ezra Clarke is actually just background/foundation work. Right now its too passive, too high school drama. But if I can understand their pasts I can write their futures into something much more compelling. So, I’m just going to keep on until I hit on the actual story. I’ll hone it in from there.
There’s a sudden sense of freedom having The Steel Armada deep in its editing stages. I can work on… anything! I still have short stories out for submission, I’m working on a new sci-fi story (Ezra), I have ideas for a new novel series and a new short story. I have Cards to revise, and the rough draft of From the Quorum to finish. For the first time since 2014, I finally fee like I have options.
So, What’s Next?
- Publish two blog posts
- Write/share one tumblr prompt
- Write 1k of The Fall of Ezra Clarke
- Record an episode of Santa Sarita
- Read Broken Homes
- Read through The Steel Armada/send to Madhu
- Review Madhu’s pages
That’s a busy week. Lots of bullet points. But it’s mostly reading, some editing, and a little bit of writing. Lucky for me, I (mostly) enjoy all of those things! I’m still a little tired, my mind not quite as sharp as I’m used to, but that could just be because I haven’t had my coffee yet.
So, I’m off to remedy that, and probably snag some breakfast while I’m at it. I’ll be back this week with the review for Whispers Under Ground and an Editing Check-In. So, until then, I hope you all had a good weekend, and that the week ahead treats you right.
Talk soon, Bloggos.
BZ
To Write These Words Down... 