Writing:

August turned out to be an extremely productive month despite the fact that I didn’t start writing until the middle of the month, when kiddo went back to school. I finally got to a sequence of scenes in BLOOD OF SALT, TEARS OF PEARL that I’ve been working toward since I came up with the idea for the book, some of the original scenes that made me want to write the book in the first place. And after being away from it for over two weeks, I came back to the draft with a lot of pent up creativity. I had several 2000+ writing days, and even a couple of 5000+ days. Things started to wind down a little once I reached the end of Act II and the turn into Act III at the end of the month, but that’s to be expected. Act transitions are hard. I’m very pleased with how much I managed to write, especially since I surpassed my expectations for the month! I’m up to more than 200,000 words now (201,502 to be exact). Last month, I said I doubted I would manage to write over 30,000 words in one month, but I proved myself wrong. 😊

Word Counts in August:

Blog/Newsletter: 1425
Patreon: 731
BLOOD OF SALT, TEARS OF PEARL: 33,784 !!!

Total Words Written in August: 35,940
Total Words Written in 2019: 241,283

Plans for September:

I have another busy month ahead of me. I’m planning a big Harry Potter event at the local library that will take a lot of time away from writing in the week leading up to that, but hopefully not too much. I’m now in the final act of the book and working my way toward the end, so I’m really hoping that writing will pick up as I approach the other big scenes I’ve been planning since the very beginning. I expect another 30-50,000 words are left in this draft, so I may or may not get to the end of the book by the end of this month. It just depends on how many words that’s going to take.

This is going to be a very long book when it’s done, and while that has bothered me a lot over the last several months as I realized just how long the book was going to be, I’m feeling better about it now. The best I can do is write the story the way it needs to be written, and if that means the book is going to be 250,000 words at the end, then so be it. I’ll edit the ever-loving crap out of it too, once it’s had time to rest, but I don’t think I should get so hung up on whatever the word counts ends up being.

I feel confident in saying that I’ll be finished in October, though. Which is a very good thing, because the big book convention I’m planning is the second weekend of November! The sooner I can finish the book, the sooner I can devote more time to making sure that Ozark Book Con goes off without a hitch. But we’ll see how September goes first.

Patreon:

I managed another month of getting all my Patreon rewards finished! Huzzah!

For $5+:
POEM: “Fire” – a poem about ending friendships

For $4+:
VIDEO: Chapter 25 of BLOOD OF SALT, TEARS OF PEARL – a real-time video  (sped up 8x) of me writing a scene from the book

For $3+:
BEHIND-THE-SCENES: “Act Transitions” – a look into the difficulty of transitioning from Act II to Act III

 For $2+:
EXCERPT: “Voca Satanas”
EXCERPT: “An Old Enemy”