Fashionably late, as ever, here’s an update on my writing progress and activities for March.
My main achievement for March was finishing the final draft of my short story Drones, which I was sufficiently pleased with to submit it to a magazine (no word on that – not expecting much, but it’s good to actually be doing something with these stories).
I did a little more work on Where We Belong, but lost my way a bit by the third chapter and decided to put it on hold for a short while. To help with the process I’ve developed a basic planning template … which I have yet to actually use for any planning. But it’s a very nice template.
I complete a second draft of another short story, Needle, making a number of tweaks in the process and managed to spot a few problem areas that could do with some attention when I get around to the third draft.
I also did some proofing (using ProWritingAid) on There Is A Light… and decided that it wasn’t yet as good as I wanted it to be (“Whoa, did I really write that?!?”). Consequently, I began a ‘final’ draft late in the month and that’ll almost certainly see me through April as well.
All in all a productive month, even if progress on the novel did stall.
The stats
I’ve added some new stats below. Firstly I’ve listed writing and editing sessions separately (a session is most typically a single morning shift) and, as I’m also recording it now, I’ve added in the average word count for both writing and editing (this is derived from the number of sessions, not the total number of days in the month).
- Number of writing sessions: 5
- Number of editing sessions: 20
- Days missed: 6
- Words written: 4,922
- Words edited: 24,793
- Average words written: 984 (best to date)
- Average words edited: 1240