Project: Novel of DOOM (not a real title)

Deadline: Let's just call it 4/14/15

New words written: 3461

Present total word count: 86.915

Words for the year: 13,725 

Things accomplished in fiction: We're done. The heroes have met their fate and all the words are written, at least for now.

Things accomplished in real life: I was supposed to finish this last week while my kid was on spring break. Alas, the best laid plans fell apart and my week was spent entertaining the child during a week of rain, and cleaning EVERYTHING. We're at 90% ready for baby right now. 

The book is going to my crit groups, and I'm planning to ignore it for the rest of the month, maybe more if the baby shows up before the May 10th due date. Then I need to add some story, fix some voice and wording, cut clues, add clues and generally polish this up for beta readers. Hopefully the draft 2 version will go out before the end of summer and the querying will start by Christmas. 

This blog will go quiet again for a bit. My energy is so limited right now and family and craft come first. I have the next book percolating though. I'll be working on the outline intermittently and hopefully the first update for that will come before the new year. it's an excuse to buy new notebooks and index cards at least.

At long last a progress report

I'm back... and this time about 20% bigger. Nope not an exaggeration, I've got a baby bump about half the size of a yoga ball and a new baby due soon... and yet not soon enough.

So writing basically stopped for early pregnancy. When you can't sit up or look at words on a computer screen... it's pretty hard to be productive. Morning sickness is evil. February was the first month I made it through without throwing up. But in November progress started again on the novel of doom, with the new deadline of... before the baby! I'm pretty close.

Project: Novel of DOOM (not a real title)

Deadline: Self appointed Oct 1, 2014 Before the spawning!

New words written: Umm since last time... 13,167

Present total word count: 83,454

Words for the year: 10,264 

Things accomplished in fiction: I just wrote my pay off scenes. 95% of the plot and mystery was revealed and I am desperately hoping my alpha readers think it works. Practically we finished chapter 25 and in the next 3 chapters our heroes will be attempting to foil the villain's plans. 

Things accomplished in real life: Procreation? Right now 90% of my time is either going to writing, or just trying to get basic things like cooking done and keeping only somewhat behind on the housework. Kid number two is taking a lot of energy and mobility out of me right now. 

Next week I have two more chapters due in my writing group. I'm not sure how much the word counter will change, I have about 7k of words already written in them... and I anticipate cutting and rewriting a lot. After that the last 3 chapters have a writing group deadline of April 28th, but the goal is to get them done, and possibly submitted, earlier since that starts to run up to potential spawning time. 

After this draft is done, it's going in a drawer for a bit. I can't imagine I'm going to have a ton of time to write during the first few frantic baby weeks. I'm hoping to pick it back up by July. I've already cataloged and outlined my editing passes. Once those are done, we're going off to beta readers, and I'll take their feedback into consideration. My goal is to have this out to agents by December. Alas, blogging is probably going to take a backseat again until life evens out... say when the kids turn twenty or so?