We’re deep into what our prime minister calls an “intelligent lockdown”, which boils down to advising people to stay the fuck at home. Which I’ve been trying to do as much as possible for a while now. While there are more people who don’t take it seriously enough or struggle to not leave the house, I’m not that bothered. I’m an introvert, kind of a hermit, and though there’s plenty of downsides and very unpleasant things occurring over these past weeks, I never have to be bored out of my mind.
Yeah, I’ve got several lifetimes worth of books to write.
So March had me pretty scattered in terms of my writing projects. I wrote less than previous months in 2020, but it was still a nice number (almost 22.000 words). As always, I had a lot of ideas I wanted to work into a project and it turned into preparing and drafting multiple stories. Some works I finished and subbed, others I barely started.
I mainly worked on my novels Salandrine and The Blood Maiden’s Covenant, as well as two short stories; A spell to Soothe the Heart (Masquerade) and Handle Me (steamy PNR). You can read a bit more about my progress in my last writing progress report (W13).
You can find more information on my novel WIPs on the above inserted links or go to the menu at the top and hover over “fiction”. All three novel WIPs take place in the same (secondary) world, albeit different settings. They all include Black queer main characters (mostly bi/pan), different levels of magic practitioners, varying degrees of romance and heat levels, and elements such as mystery and horror.
For my short stories I allow myself a bit more freedom, though most adhere to the above mentioned details.
And with my book babies, I set out to achieve a couple of goals. You can read about my March goals here. So reflecting on last month, I’ve met 3/4 goals (I wrote a newsletter, blogged, and wrote at least 1.000 words for a short story or flash fic).
The numbers
Here are my wordcounts for March. In total I wrote almost 22.000 words spread across 6 WIPs.
- Week 10: 3.567 words
- Week 11: 3.934 words
- Week 12: 10.952 words
- Week 13: 2.947 words
- Week 14: 5.723 words
Of what’s to come
So, March sucked. It wasn’t a complete dumpster fire, but it’s definitely smouldering and covered in smog. Glad this behemoth of a month has ended.
So I don’t really know what to expect from April. It’s not looking too bad so far. I’ve already written about 11.500 words and almost all of it has been for Blood Maiden, so there’ll be another progress report devoted to that WIP alone. During the upcoming weeks I’ll continue to work on Blood Maiden as well as another short story of the month. I’ll also continue submitted stories to online magazines, so root for me 🙂
Next steps
This month’s goals
- Write next month’s newsletter (sign up here),
- Write blog posts,
- Write at least 1.000 words for a short story or flash fiction,
- Write at least 10.000 words for a novel WIP
Hoping it’ll be a good month! You can find my 2020 writing bucket list here.