The birds are singing, making up for their silent winter absence, the sun is warm again and inevitably the British springtime has the occasional fit of cloud and rain. Another month has flown by so it’s time to look at how my writing is doing and what my plans are for this month!
What were last month’s goals?
- Word-Count Goal: 10,500 and over
- Finish a new short story
- Write 7,500 words of Priest of Ashen Bone
- Get Business out for critique
- I also wanted to write another blog post that wasn’t an update
How’d I do?
Word Count: Done!
This word count is only approximate as I wasn’t doing a set word count everyday this time around but I did about 3,800 words of short story writing and about 7,800 words of novel writing. Not quite the high-score-beating amount I was hoping for but at 11,800 total it definitely gets me into the realm I want to be in!
Finish a new short story: Done!
I was talking about The Honeyed Alchemist as my favourite last post so obviously I completely ignored that and wrote Orphans of the Quay (now titled Our Mother Under the Water) instead. It’s come differently to how I thought it would so now I’m wondering whether to write it again and stick closer to the original feeling of the idea. Instead of a troupe of urchin orphans rushing round a city and though the orphans were still there it became about how they escape conscription as they hide in an abandoned fishing village. At the least it needs going over once or twice more to see if it works.
Write 7,500 words of Priest of Ashen Bone: Done!
All done here! I managed to get to about 7,800 although it is mostly planning.
Get Business of Spiderwebs out for critique: Kind of!
Yes and no. It’s currently out with a couple of people but I will only get questions and broad critiques rather than the in-depth I was hoping to be in a position to ask for at this stage. But! I have gone through and scribbled all over a hard copy so once I’ve edited the changes in and set right any questions I’ll send it out properly.
Another blog post that isn’t an update: Clearly not!
I clearly haven’t done this but do have one coming up!
Plan for April
- Word Count Goals: At least 12,000 in total
Building on my word count for this month and trying to beat it – I figure if I can keep my monthly total over 10,000 words then that’s a healthy word-count and will put me in good stead by the end of the year. I’ll finish the plan of Priest and start the writing proper, then also …
- Write a short story
I’ve got a streak going in the first three months so don’t want to break it now! I’m not sure what story I want to write as The Honeyed Alchemist needs more planning so I’ll have to go through the list and see what strikes my fancy. My writing so far with short stories has been a slower on average in terms of ‘word-per-hour’ as I am conscious of the shorter medium’s need to make the words work harder.
- Editing Goals: Read through Wind Borne King and a line-edit/read through of Business of Swans and Spiderwebs
Now that I’ve got a story I want to edit I’m hoping that my current workload will stay fairly static and I’ll cycle what stories I’m reading/editing and writing new things. I’ve got the very rough draft of The Wind Borne King sitting to one side at the moment and (given it’s been about 3 months since I touched it) it’s about time I got back to it. As I mentioned I’ve had Business looked at a little but want to go over it again before putting it out properly.
- A Non Update Blog Post
This is self-explanatory and I really must get around to it this month!
There we have it; another month down, another month coming up and a lot more writing to do! Good luck to everyone with what they want to achieve this month!