Originally published at Joely Sue Burkhart. You can comment here or there.
It’s been awhile since I fessed up, because I didn’t think I had that much to report.
January was a bust in many ways. I didn’t get up Dark and Early (D&E) to write. I felt sluggish, sleepy, and lazy for most of the month. I didn’t come out the gate fast and hard like I planned, so I was rather bummed. Then came the last of the Brava contest finalists, of which Letters was not included, and my well-laid plans for the year had definitely gone awry.
However, looking back at January, I actually accomplished quite a lot, if not what I expected. I finished a first draft of the Arcana project plan, no easy feat. I got a few opening passages written. Yeah, they need a lot of work and the rhythm of the speech isn’t right yet, but I’m not going to stew about it now. There are some really good elements in there.
I finished a massive read, Passion by Jude Morgan, at 661 pages, and also finished The Spymaster’s Lady by Joanna Bourne. Awesome books.
Then I developed a project plan to revise Letters by adding Conn’s POV. This wasn’t as easy as I thought. I’ve got 16 new sections outlined for Letters, as well as 14 existing sections to revise into his POV. I added another subplot with his best friend. All in all, I might have enough to get me to 80K. That’s what I’m hoping.
Meanwhile, I completed the second and third pass of editor revisions on The Rose of Shanhasson, another brief pass on The Fire Within, as well as extensive discussions on cover, promo, etc. with Deena at Drollerie Press. We’ve got some awesome things lined up for this month and next, not to mention gorgeous covers we’ll be unveiling soon.
I also overhauled my website. Although it still needs work, it’s streamlined and much faster to load.
Including all the prework for Arcana, I ended up with over 17K new words.
All in all, not a bad month. In February, I’m shifting priorities. I worked over the weekend to get Letters in shape for a contest. I’ll be entering it tonight. Then my goal is to finish the expansion this month, while I work on the outline and Day Sheet for book 2, The Road to Shanhasson. I wasn’t sure where it’d fit in the year’s goals, but it was always on my list to write this year. After discussing a plan with Deena, I moved this priority up higher so we could tentatively slate its release for September.
I’ll also be sending out review requests for both Rose and Fire over the next few weeks.
In my free time, *snort* I’ll revise the Arcana plan and try to get a full “proposal” written, first 3 chapters. I think that will make it easier to come back to once I get Road finished.
So what’s the biggest thing you accomplished in January, and what are you working on in February?