June was a relatively slow month, though I did get quite a bit done in the first couple of weeks. Writing has very much happened in short, productive bursts with long periods of nothing in between. I did more worldbuilding for STARCALLER, and I even updated Patreon, for the first time in forever. Most worldbuilding work was localized to creating my conlang for the book. I finished reading The Language Construction Kit by Mark Rosenfelder and highlighted a few things to look back over later.

Considering how little I wrote in April and May, June looks extra productive.

Word Counts in June:

Blog/Newsletter: 716
STARCALLER: 7661
Patreon: 1370
Other: 1295

Total Words Written in June: 11,042
Total Words Written in 2020: 72,624

Plans for July:

As of today, I’m not entirely sure what I’ll be doing this month. After finishing The Language Construction Kit, I ordered The Planet Construction Kit by the same author, to help focus my worldbuilding. I still need to do a bit more work with the conlang before I can start naming things. So I may focus on that before developing the world further.

On the flip-side, I’ve been considering starting edits on BLOOD OF SALT, TEARS OF PEARL. I finished the first draft near the end of March, so it’s been a good three months and change of not working on it. I don’t know how quickly I’ll make progress on it, but I may go ahead and print out the first few chapters to see if I can edit anything effectively right now. I need to cut the word count in half, so it’s going to have to be a really brutal edit, right from the start. The first pass will mostly be big-picture story stuff, rearranging things, smashing things together, and eliminating as much fluff as possible. I expect I’ll need to organize myself beforehand to get the most out of it and examine each scene for maximum impact. I normally just read through and make notes as I go, but I think this book calls for a more… surgical approach, considering how many words I need to cut. (It’s currently 272,000 words! Ahh!) My initial goal is to get the second draft below 200,000 words, at least. If I can cut more, that would be best, but if I can get down to under 200,000, that’s a good start. Each subsequent pass will require more trimming, until I get it to a more reasonable number. The ultimate goal is 135,000. The closer I get to that number with each pass, the better. Line edits are going to be… interesting.

So this month may be divided between making a little worldbuilding progress with STARCALLER, and edits on BLOOD OF SALT, TEARS OF PEARL, depending on how much I’m able to focus.