I fully understand that this update is late… and I take full responsibility… but also I blame the weather.
You may be thinking to yourself, the weather? How can the weather affect someone’s writing output and frequency?
It just can. So, there.
As you may have gathered so far, I did not get as much done this month as I had anticipated or wanted. I was hoping to get at least 10,000 words if not more, but I ended up with only around 2,400. There were various factors that played into that. My family and I were sick a couple times this month, we had a few massive snow storms (which, again, doesn’t seem like it would have an impact on an inside activity… but as I implied above, I hate winter and you should just go with it), and a heavy workload at work all contributed to mental exhaustion that resulted in far fewer writing sessions. And, in an effort for transparency… Hogwarts Legacy came out and I played a lot of that. Don’t hate.
Now, for a bit of good news, I did finish chapter 2 which ended up being around 7,300 words. It was massive, and it was so fun to write. With this being the early parts of the book, I often do a little bit of discovery writing to figure out how the characters react and respond to different scenarios within the scene, and when I find something I like and that feels natural and fits the character, I have to go back and add in little details and additions to make it all feel more seamless. That happened a few times, but what I was left with was pretty fun, in my personal, unbiased opinion.
In an effort to avoid spoilers, all I will say is that for chapter 2, the action hasn’t kicked off quite yet… but the foreboding feeling is growing and the relative mystery is unfolding in a way I hope will make that inevitable scene where they first see these, we’ll call them zombies, incredibly intense.
One thing I’ve noticed with writing (at least in my case) is that it can often feel amazing to finish a chapter, but then it becomes harder to start the next chapter. That seems stupid, but it really is this strange mental block I’ve seen in myself. It’s like I feel a sense of accomplishment with finishing something, only to have to turn around and start a new something all over. I’ve felt it before in my writing, and it’s just something I will need to push through if I want to get this story done in a reasonable amount of time. What I may try to do is try timing my writing so that I can finish a chapter and make at least partial headway on the next one before finishing out that particular writing session.
Hopefully things will calm down a little bit so that I can get more than a couple thousand words on the page. As of right now, I’m sitting at just over 10,000 words total. My goal this month, again, is to get another 10,000 words at least.
At least there isn’t another Harry Potter video game coming out…