New Year, Same Book

Update #30 27 Dec- 2 Jan.

A new is dawning… matter of fact it will be here as this is published, but this update is about the week leading up to the date.

Last Year was a pretty big one. I finished and revised my thesis novel in a matter of months. I graduated with my MFA. I did a lot of work improving my medical condition. And I dealt with cancer in my family. (Not once but three times).

I wrote a bunch of query letters, sent out a handful of them, and received two rejections and half a dozen no responses.

I gamed online, added a new friend to my regular games, listened to thousands of gaming podcasts. Started my own podcast with two other great friends.

I did a lot. The one thing I didn’t really do was finish my manuscript in the 9 months since I started it.

Writing and Schedules

I came up with a schedule while in my MFA program. It was part of one of my courses where we had to do long- and short-term planning for our career. And I will freely admit (and have admitted over several of these posts) that I dropped a lot of those plans as very unrealistic. I know I’m a “part time writer”… no matter how much I think about writing and outline in my head. Draw notes and scenes. And even with making weekly word goals. I’m doing this around my day job, my podcast, my side job, etc.

I still call myself a writer, and I will forever call myself a writer… because I write every week. Period. I just don’t put in as many hours. I don’t feel bad about that. I refuse to feel like an imposter. I am a writer.

The parts of my schedule that didn’t work out were those where I guessed at things. To be honest, if I hadn’t stopped and restarted my novel three times, I would probably be well over 200k and done with the book. But those changes have made it better each time.

I’m not going to cry about it anymore. I’ve done a ton of writing. I’ve made an effort, and I have only upward to go.

Words

This is journal about the process, and the path. I meant to get in more this past week. I don’t have a good excuse for why I didn’t get in a writing session during the middle of the week. Yes, I had a lot of things I had to do, and it was late afternoon before I got back to my keyboard, but I DID have the time to write.

Oh well. We’re moving forward. Everything it fresh in the new year.

Last week I managed a 3803-word single day session. I knocked out 2 more chapters and the book sits at 126,722 total words.

The next few sections should start to speed up. I notice that a lot of my books tend to start with a slow journey and then rush into a break neck final third. The chapters get shorter, the action gets tighter, and it’s a roller coaster after reaching its peak.

Or if you’re feeling less generous… it’s a rushed collection of action sequences that just comes to a “non-ending”… because the characters will be reappearing in a future book. Only a portion of the story is done…

Plans for Next Year

I don’t have big plans; I didn’t even make a real resolution.

I want to finish this manuscript during the winter. Then put it aside and start outlining the next book in the series. I only have a basic map of the whole series. I don’t have the actual story arcs fully mapped out. I plan to use at least a month working on the series bible, character guides, and the maps and such. I will also use the winter and this outlining time to get my desktop computer fixed so that I can get to my query letters and start querying again.

My goal is to sometime in April or May start book Two of the Invasion. (Also, need to update my webpage data on the books and works in progress.) I also want to slow down a little and work on some shorter works. I know that short stories aren’t really my thing (I don’t even enjoy reading them often). But I do have a number of novellas that are half done that need some love. I don’t really know.

I’m only going to broad stroke some plans and get on them. I will not be doing a year long, month by month “plan” and trying to stick to it. Life likes to throw bumps at you and we need to adapt.

Outro

I had even planned to write this post differently. But I let my heart write ahead of my head and this is what we ended up with. I’m all beat up this morning as New Year’s Day is my inventory day at work. After 10-hours standing on a concrete slab, counting comics, my body is pretty much broken this morning. I’m supposed to write the novel today as soon as I finish writing and scheduling this post and I’m already thinking of getting out of it.

That is the struggle.

Thank you all for reading this far, and for any other post you read last year. We’re about to start the fourth year of this website and I’m super excited about that. Stick with my and I’ll keep taking you along for the slow ride.

Bye.