As you may recall from last month’s post, March turned out to be a pretty slow month for new writing progress. I was really hoping that I would be able to turn things around in April. One of my goals was to try to write at least a small amount each day, even if the only time I could squeeze out was a 15-minute sprint before bed. All in all, this approach seemed to work pretty well. I wrote at least something on 27 out of 30 days in April, a much higher writing-day-rate than I’ve had in January (17/31), February (15/28), or–ahem–March (5/31). The total number of hours that I spent writing was consequently higher than previous months, although not staggeringly so: 44.3 hours in April, compared to 27.7 in January, 33.6 in February, and–ahem–9.5 in March. Given all this data, it would seem reasonable to expect April to have been my most productive month yet. And that’s exactly what it was. But the numbers are somewhat staggering:
April, 2013: 48,015 words
That’s right. In the month of April, I wrote more than I did in January and February combined, and nearly as much as I did in the first three months of the year. Egads! I really think that making time–even a small amount of time–for daily writing is really important. Words don’t get on the page unless the butt is in the chair and the fingers are at the keyboard. Dean Wesley Smith has been a constant source of writing advice and inspiration that have helped me to improve my productivity. I find that daily writing also helps to keep me in a better flow within the story, so that I spend less time getting back up to speed each time I sit down.
In terms of products produced in April, I released my fifth short story, The Star of Amalore, which is the last of the five short stories that I have planned for the moment. This month I will release the corresponding short story collection that places all five stories into a single volume. Together, they are over 40,000 words, which is about half the length of a novel. I also plan to experiment with designing a trade paperback version of the short story collection on CreateSpace. That process will doubtless be a nerve-wracking (though hopefully exciting) one. I’ll have more to say about that as time goes on.
Lastly, work on my first novel proceeds at a steady clip. I am actually in the midst of writing the climactic scenes right now, and I expect that the first draft will be finished this month. Then it will be time to edit, revise, proof, etc. Ultimately the novel will be ready when it’s ready, but I’m holding out hope that I can release it sometime in June.
These are certainly exciting times for this particular indie fantasy author! I hope that you have enjoyed the short stories that are out there so far, and I’m really excited to share my first novel with you as soon as it’s ready. Until then, happy reading!