It’s hard to believe that it’s already October . . . the summer has flown past and now fall is in the air.  Well, not quite yet for us.  We’ve actually had really beautiful weather over the last few weeks and it hasn’t really turned cold yet.  I’m sure it’s coming, but for now I’ll enjoy the 70 degree days!  Writing progress in September was relatively low compared to what I was hoping for, but lots of that is actually due to a decent chunk of time being spent on further edits to Awakening from the Shadows in preparation for its . . . well, let’s not get ahead of myself.  We’ll save that for the next post  :-P  This post will focus on word count, and in September I ended up with:

September, 2013:  5,199 words

Like I said, certainly not the most prolific of months for my 2013 writing challenge, but I did get some new fiction written and, like I said, got some good edits made as well.  I’m hoping that October will be a big month for hitting a higher word count again.  At this point, I’m going to break off this post and segue into the next, where I have some exciting news to share . . .

Another month has passed, bringing us more or less to the end of summer and the gradual transition into fall.  It’s always crazy how quickly the summer flies by, and this year was no different.  The good news is that I was got started on some new projects this month and was able to make rather decent progress.  Not as much as some months, but still a number that I’m happy with:

August, 2013:  22,031 words

I’m hoping that progress should continue at a higher clip now that we’re back into the fall and the normal routines that that brings.  I have several exciting announcements regarding the upcoming release of my first fantasy novel as well as other exciting projects, but I’ll save those for future posts rather than making this one post really long.  For those who are tied in one way or another to the academic calendar, good luck with the start of the school year, and to those who are not–well, happy September  :-)

July saw the completion of my first-round edits to The Awakening and saw the manuscript shipped off to my beta readers.  As with June, actual word-count writing progress has been slow in July since editing doesn’t always net you a whole lot of new words at the end of the day.  I still got in a few, though, giving us:

July, 2013:  1,000 words

I know, I know, as with June it’s a round number.  But it’s close enough.  With the calendar flipped now to August and with The Awakening in the trusted hands of my beta readers, it’s finally time to return to new fiction again.  Book 2 in the Mirynthir Chronicles is tentatively entitled The Emerald Veil, and it will soon be underway.  I’m also planning to finalize the cover art for The Awakening in short order, and I’ll post it here as soon as I have it available.  Hopefully August should see the return of some substantially larger and substantially less-round monthly word count!

Yes, I recognize that it’s nearly the end of July, but I never did report on my June progress, so I figure that now is as good a time as any.  There’s actually relatively little to report in terms of word count progress since essentially all of June (and all of July to this point) have been spent editing The Awakening, the first book of the Mirynthir Chronicles.  Though I have made lots of changes as I’ve edited, I do my word count totals by a simple “word count at the end” – “word count at the beginning” method, meaning that unless I’m adding entire chapters, I’m not really doing much for my word count during the editing process.  Nevertheless, I have achieved:

June, 2013:  3,000 words

Yes, I know that’s a round number, but my record-keeping got a little sloppy during editing, so it will just have to do.  The final editing total looks like it will be around 4,000 words added, so I’ll just count the rest for July.  I hope that everyone is enjoying a lovely summer and plenty of fun beach reading!  If you’re looking for something to pass the time, I can recommend a few short stories . . .  :-)

It’s late on a Saturday night, so I’m going to keep this post short before I head off to bed, but I wanted to check in with a quick update on my writing progress for May.  May was a really exciting month for several reasons.  First of all, I finished the rough draft for my first novel, The Awakening.  I’ve been working on/thinking about/planning this novel for a loooooooong time, so it’s gratifying to finally have it written down from start to finish!  I’m in the midst of editing right now, and I hope to have the editing finished up sometime in June.  I also released my short story collection, Fantastical Tales, in May, and I learned how to draw fantasy maps in GIMP.  Not to toot my own horn here, but I’m rather proud of the map that I put together for the lands of Mirynthir that are found in The Awakening.  And lastly, I was able to maintain the high degree of productivity that I had for April.  I didn’t spend quite as many hours working and didn’t end up with quite as high of a word count, but hey, I’m still happy with what I’ve got:

May, 2013:  37,911 words

I’m expecting that June will be a little slower on the word count front as I will be fully in the editing swing of things, and you don’t really produce too many words of new fiction when editing (ultimately it depends on how you do the counting, but the counting method I plan on using is simply number of words in the file at the end of the day minus the number of words in the file at the start of the day).  As I think more about the editing process, I have realized that my initial plan for June release for The Awakening was hopelessly optimistic.  The revised plan is going to aim for July, but not be too upset if it slips to the beginning of August.  It all depends on how long my edits take plus how long the copyediting takes plus how many days are lost to summer vacations on tropical islands  :-)  In the meantime, happy reading and enjoy these beautiful summer days!