WIP Crackin' ... Thursday?

"I say tomorrow, he say today..."

My mid-week report to you that covers the three major commitments I’ve made: to write, to edit, and to read.

Writing

About 10k words last week! Half of that was on Sigils. Another half was an outline for a different book that’s been kicking around in my head for a while. I had a few thoughts on that, wanted to get them down, and four hours later… boom. I’ll let that sit and marinate for a while. I hit my BICHOK goal as well, going 6/7 days.

All the big rocks (the “TODO” comments) in Sigils are done, and the first 75% of the book is complete. It may be complete trash, but it’s complete! I’ve got 10 remaining scenes, down from 15. That means maybe 15k-20k left to write. So the end is in sight.

Commitments for this week:

• BICHOK. Want to go 6/7 again this week.

• Knock out at least 5 of the remaining scenes in Sigils

• Get the first 3 acts of Sigils out to beta readers

Editing

As already mentioned - I finished off that pesky TODO list for Sigils! So that’s one goal met. I had to do some light editing to get things to fit together. I’m still focused on getting the story down. Not much point in polishing a section that my beta readers or editor are going to tell me needs a rewrite.

Speaking of editors: confirmed that I’m on the schedule for end of month. So I’ve got to hand over something on May 31st. No, I don’t have a publishing contract. Yet. This is a freelance editor I’ve hired to help me work through and understand how to identify structural issues. I’m trying to think of it as a 1:1 tutoring session.

I also did some editing for a non-profit I work with this week. Not much, but it took up an evening. That seems to be a regular occurrence for me, so I’m thinking about simply putting aside one night for that.

So this week, I will:

• Forgo editing to write

Reading

Plugging along in Civil War Pittsburgh: Forge of the Union by Len Barcousky. Going to tee up some fiction for the next few weeks. LibertyCon is coming up, and I absolutely want to read a few things by some of the folks that will be there so I can at least speak somewhat intelligently about their stuff :)

Other

I’m keeping up with #TeamAndMore.

I’ve ditched Grammerly for a couple of reasons. Primarily security concerns in the browser. A big second was that it seems to be increasingly flaky, putting up pop-up menus right over where I’m writing. Bleah. I’m going to test out ProWritingAid for a bit and see if that’s useful or nah.

The next few days are going to be extremely busy, helping to set up and prep for the Lady’s Tea. As promised, I left baking the scones to my wife and her friend Jackie, who are hosting the tea. I did, however, verify that as an organizer, quality control is part of my job description. So while the weekend will be busy, I will also have little fancy tea sammiches and scones to carry me through.

Last note: the rain has passed, the sun is shining, and part of my “busy schedule” for today is “take a walk and pick up the tea for the tea”. I’ve got goals, I’m making things happen, and life is good. This week, I’m going to focus on keeping it that way.