My forced writing break at the end of March ended up stretching into the first half of April as I had literally no motivation to work on my book.  I would sit down at my computer and immediately want to do something else. So I read a few books, tried my hand at a short story idea that ultimately wasn’t enough to keep me engaged, and worked on a D&D campaign instead, which seemed to be what I needed. I started working again in the third week of April, re-editing what I had written so far because I realized the edits I did in March actually made things worse, so I had to undo a lot of that, and then refine the rest, which gave me more words than I started with at the beginning of the month, so that’s good. I got stuck on one of my character’s motivations that took me a few days to puzzle out, but I think I’ve got it now. More on the up-side, I’m in a better place now in my attitude toward the book. There’s less doubt and second-guessing now, though I’m still struggling with the lack of a seizable goal right now. Hopefully, that will lessen over time. At least I’m working again, even if it is in fits and starts.

April Word Counts:

Blog posts: 548
Short story: 1718
THE MERMAID & THE BEAST: (edits) +3847

Total Words for April: 6113
Total Words for 2018: 45,484

Plans for May:

I plan to continue editing the first section of THE MERMAID AND THE BEAST as I adjust scenes according to the changes I’ve made so far and implement new changes that have come to mind as I edit. It’s a complicated book, and while I know I should just make a note and move on, I want to make sure I have a good foundation to build the rest of the book on, especially with regard to the characters. I’ve already had to change one of my characters drastically, and with one of my secondary characters taking greater importance than planned, everything else has to shift too. I’m also still trying to figure out exactly what kind of story I’m trying to tell, so I’m having difficult with deciding what scenes should stay, what scenes should go, which ones should be cut down, and which ones should be expanded. I’ve never written anything so complex, and never with so many POV characters, so that’s a new challenge I’m having to deal with.

So, plans are to finish editing what I have so far, and write what I can before the end of the month, when kiddo starts summer break. It’s harder to write for long periods of time when she’s home during the day, so the last week of May, I’ll be turning toward getting my steampunk series moving forward again. I really want to publish REBEL ENGINEER by the end of the year. I’ve had really good feedback from a couple of beta readers that is going to help me in edits, and then there’s just the process of getting it publishable.

And maybe once summer break is over, I can turn my attention back toward THE MERMAID AND THE BEAST. I originally planned to have a finished draft by the end of this month (LOL me), so it’s a bit of a disappointment to not be anywhere close to finished with it, but c’est la vie.