February Word Count / Goals

Historically, February has been a bad month for me.

old-mission stories: 86
Haley novel: 6496
Total new words in February: 6582

Queries sent: 5 (and I've lost count of how many potentials researched & crossed off)

Take that, February slump!


Also sent off another short story, and signed the contract (happy dance!) for my first short-story sale.


I shifted the inertia on the Haley novel, and it's been sputtering along decently since. I kind of feel like I've been burning the writing candle in the middle with a blowtorch, but also that it's been going in fits and starts, so I did a little analysis. Turns out that both are sort of right. I wrote on 15 days for a total of 18 sessions (a few two-session days in there), with an average of ~361 words per session. Which is about average for me; the only oddity may be that the days were clumped together a bit more than usual.

Part of all that, I'll admit, was a drive to not have my word-count suck this February, which, hey, hail to that. Part of it was that, having moved the big end-of-book reveal to the middle-third and decided to use that plot twist that I'd set aside & wasn't sure about, my characters now have something to do, which always helps make the words come tumbling out. Opposite that was the fact that I kept writing headlong and getting distracted by clever, exciting plot things, and forgetting to put in the important character thing, which then didn't fit even though I'd started the scene specifically for it. I finally recognized that I needed to step back and let the latest scene percolate for a bit. It's still sludging around in my head, and may not ever be what I originally envisioned it to be, but I should be able to make it work.

I think it's an important development for a writer to learn to recognize the difference between slacking off and needing to let the back-brain chew on something for a bit.


But now, onward to March. Another 5000 words and a query every seven days. Forward momentum, and forward is thataway.