The Quarterly Writing Round Up!- Q2, 2017

Welcome to Q2, y’all!

Halfway through 2017 and I’m feeling pretty good (despite what you are about to see). A lot of things are coming together, setting up the second half of the year to likely be a cascade of productivity!

Here’s a recap of my goals for the year, in case you don’t want to go back and read the original post:

Overall goals for the year: ~~Edit and~~ (Finished, Q1/Q2) Publish “The Stars Are Fire” (now titled “Doubt The Stars”); ~~Write~~ (Finished, Q2), Edit, and Post “Good Intentions”; Finish Writing “Double The Baggins, Twice The Took”; Finish Writing “Wonderland Reclaimed”; Write first draft of Tempest in Space novel (tentatively titled “Such Stuff As Dreams”)

I know, it doesn’t look like much. And you’ll notice I’ve added “Q2” to the editing portion of “Doubt The Stars”. That’s because when I wrote these goals, I didn’t consider the professional editing I was going to be subjecting this book to. Because I had never done it before and had no idea how involved it would be. Spoiler Alert: It’s involved.

I know, I’m a doofus 😛 I’ll do better with the goals next year, but for now, here’s my WordKeeperAlpha graph for the year so far, just so you can see that I really have been doing stuff:

You see that? You see all those words? I told you I’ve been working!

Alright, here’s the month by month breakdown.

Quarter Two, 2017- Review

April- Give “Doubt The Stars” to beta-readers. Write 50,000 words on “Good Intentions” for Camp NaNoWriMo. Post two chapters of “Double the Baggins, Twice the Took”.

I did all of these things except posting new chapters of DBTT.

I wasn’t all that worried about posting the new chapters (honestly, that was a little bit of a pipe dream, and I knew it), so the two most important bits were accomplished, which means I feel pretty good about April 🙂

May- Read the feedback from beta-readers, revise “Doubt The Stars”, send to editors for sample edits and decide on professional editor. Finish the first draft of “Good Intentions”, let rest for the rest of the month. Post two chapters of DBTT, write 10,000 new words.

Um… yeah, this month wasn’t such a success. In my defense, I had no idea how much story was left in “Good Intentions”. But that’s pretty much the only defense I have.

I did manage to post three chapters of DBTT (trying to make up for my one fail in April), but I failed in the words department and I have no excuse for not finishing my beta edits. I just got bogged down in “Good Intentions” and… well, here we are.

June- Send “Doubt The Stars” to professional editor, begin search for cover designer, start working on back matter, dedications, acknowledgements, and links to include. “Good Intentions” pre-edit prep. Post two chapters of DBTT, write 10,000 new words.

Now, this stuff, I actually did some of this stuff. But that’s pretty much because I had already been working on it, little by little. I picked my editors, and sent “Doubt The Stars” for it’s first round of pro-editing. I decided what I’m doing for my cover design (I’m going to try 99designs). I finally finished the first draft of “Good Intentions”, but because it took so long (and I was officially sick of looking at it) I decided to put off the editing until after Camp NaNo in July, and use that time to work on DBTT. Which, by the way, was a complete fail. I posted one chapter, and I’m not even particularly happy with it.

Which brings us nicely to:

Quarter Three, 2017- Goals

I don’t actually feel all that far behind on my goals (despite all evidence to the contrary). Let’s see what I can get done in the next three months!

July- Camp NaNoWriMo: Finish writing DBTT, begin on the sequel (50,000 words total); Post two chapters of DBTT; Receive feedback from “Doubt The Stars” content editor and begin necessary changes; Pre-edit prep for “Good Intentions”.

August- Begin edits on “Good Intentions”; Finish content edits on “Doubt The Stars” and send to copy-editor; Complete cover design contest; Post last three chapters of DBTT and first two chapters of sequel; Write 5,000 words on DBTT sequel.

September- Complete edits on “Good Intentions”; Make copy edits on “Doubt The Stars” and send to proofreader; Finish final touches for publishing; Post four chapters of DBTT sequel and write 5,000 words.

You’ll notice that I’ve lowered my monthly goal for new words to 5k. I’m doing this with the understanding that “Good Intentions” is probably going to kick my a$$.