November writing progress

Posted by on December 13, 2013

Well, December has certainly been a busy month so far (as you can probably tell from the fact that I’m posting my November progress update halfway through December and not in the first few days!).  I’m expecting that it will continue to be busy for the rest of the month between work and time with family.  November ended up having its fair share of busyness as well.  It’s always seemed a little odd to me that NaNoWriMo is in November and not, say, January or August.  Because part of what’s important in November (as well as in December) is taking a little extra time away from the writing and away from the other things that keep us busy and instead enjoying the gift of family.  We hosted Thanksgiving dinner at our house this year, and my wife did an admirable job filling the table with enough delicious food to keep us all happy and full for a week.  My daughter even made a surprise appearance, as she–no doubt sensing something special afoot–refused to go down for her nap and instead spent Thanksgiving dinner ensconced in her highchair eating marshmallows (which was the only way we could keep her in the highchair for the entire meal).

As far as writing goes, I ended up having a fairly strong writing month in November, though I did fall short of the ambitious goal of 50,000 words that I set for myself.  As it turned out, here’s what I accomplished:

November, 2013:  31,610 words

So all in all, not too shabby.  I didn’t quite finish the first draft of Shattered, but I’m definitely in the home stretch.  I’ve adjusted my goals (which are often initially ambitious) to what I think is a somewhat more reasonable timeframe:  finish the rough draft in December, finish my internal editing in January, send it out to the editing team in February, and then publish in March.  We’ll see how it goes, but this new schedule for Shattered feels reasonable to me.  I should be able to finally get started on The Emerald Veil in January.  More than likely, that will push The Emerald Veil’s release back into the second half of 2014, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.  In the meantime, I’m focused on putting the finishing touches on Shattered and making it the best book it can be.

I hope that you all have a blessed Christmas and a wonderful start to the new year!

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