Writing Update: February 2023

PROGRESS UPDATE
After spending most of the holiday season and my two week break disgustingly sick, I dove right into an editing project in January 2023 that wrapped up at the end of the month. It was a fun, cyberpunk sci-fi romp. However, that left me little time to do any official writing and what I did accomplish? Not that great. I mean, it wasn't bad! Just, wasn't super inspiring for me and when I signed off to shift my focus to other projects, I left a note in the margins that was essentially "trash this scene."

IF YOU WANT TO HELP YOURSELF...
Help someone else. There's a saying that goes like that. Whether or not I truly helped anyone else, is up to them to disclose. On my end, I definitely put in the work, and I think my own writing has ended up better for it. 

When I finally came back around to working on Nowhere Man, I realized that the one fatal error that was blocking me from making much forward progress---I'd borked the timeline. This is a thing that happens with me... the closer I get to the ending the more I rush things.

However, after a refresh reread at the beginning of this month, I realized that I'd ACTUALLY messed up and added a few extra days to a seven day week and since I really needed some of the bigger set pieces to take place over a weekend, I'd have to stretch out the current run from one week to two weeks. 

And once I did some mental refiguring about how that would look, what would happen, etc.---everything just magically fell into place.

IN TERMS OF WORD COUNT...
I'm ignoring that for the time being while I fill in the details of a missing week. Gotta keep my eye on the prize. It's going to fluctuate so rapidly, and I'll probably (like always) end up a little over, but I'm once again excited about where things are going.

But if you REALLY want to know, Nowhere Man is sitting at 71k right now. Progress!

READ TO WRITE
I have a little stretch of time between editing gigs and I'm desperately trying to fill that with WRITING but also cracked the spine on a reward/pleasure read last week "Spare" and fell in love with the (I'm assuming) ghost written prose. Whoever they hired did an amazing job of not only capturing Harry's voice, but also filling the page with delicious, sumptuous details. 

I spend a lot of time absorbing story in all sorts of mediums, but there's really nothing quite like reading a honest-to-goodness book---words on a page---to get you re-inspired to pick up the pen (er, digital ink) again. 

ASTRID IS GOING PLACES
On a whim, I passed the unfinished manuscript of Astrid vs. the Asteroid off to my mother in law to get her hot take. I love the world and the characters, I just think in order to get to a satisfying ending, I might have to do some serious REwriting and that feels daunting, overwhelming. ALL THE THINGS. Looking forward to debriefing with her next week about that. 

That's it for me. I'm refocusing my efforts on finishing up Nowhere Man, and then I'll make the next round of edits to Rosita Ruins the Heist (to be handed off to second round beta readers), AND THEN I'll hammer out a rough draft of Casualties. Huzzah!