July Update: *Staind Voice* It’s Been A Whiiile…
In which: Maggie once again gets derailed. It’s called self care, okay?!
The best laid plans pave a path to hell and something about horses and water? Eh, you get what I mean. The chaos of life in 2023 derailed my blogging ambitions for a bit but! That doesn’t mean I’m done.
I’m going to revamp things just a smidge here, not a full reboot like I’ve done in the past but a few shenanigans anyway. At some point I’ll write up some beefier blogs and back-date them to clear up the gap (yeesh, 3 whole months?!).
And in the meantime, I’m going to take a leaf from a podcast (mixing metaphors is my self care) and focus on writing shorter blogs that are just weekly or semi-daily updates on what I’m working on. You know, for consistency! And because my wrist is still wonked up from moving so I don’t want to journal myself into a wrist brace again (yes, that happened).
So! With that in mind…
My WIP, which I’ve decided to codename Hermit: Crabs?! after a joke someone made in one of my writer Discords, is currently sitting at a sweet 90,439 words and Scrivener is still giving me syncing heart attacks.
Seriously, why doesn’t Scrivener have an auto-backup feature?! Or its own cloud storage?! The wonkyness and stress I have trying to open the same project on my desktop vs my laptop drives me NUTS. But oh well, I haven’t lost any work, and it all looks good.
This week, I’m working on getting to the meat of Act 3 while also going back to previous acts and adding some beef. This is based on my own brainwaves but also on the comments from my Internet friend, HJ, who is reading an alpha draft for me and giving me up-to-date thoughts. She’s been so helpful so far, partially because she’s calling to attention the snags that I already know exist (and thus confirming I need to fix them before I can call this a “completed” draft), and also offering an outside perspective on things that I DON’T already knowing about, giving me ideas of what to add or edit as I go.
In a perfect world, I’ll finish this draft by mid-August so I can take a few weeks away from it. Then, I’d be able to dive in with fresh eyes when I go to a second writer’s retreat in mid-September. However, I’m going to Gen Con next week and I’ll lose an entire week (probably more, with recovery) to that, so I don’t know how realistic of a plan that is.
Regardless, to stay on track for school, I need to have this draft finished by mid-September, which feels totally doable. I think I’m within 30,000 words of the ending. (And given I’ve had two 10K+ days in the last month, I COULD get that done pretty quickly!)
I feel good, though! I know what I’m working on and where I’m going, and I can keep speeding along as best I can.
To the boats! (What?)
Til next time,
Mags