February was another off month for me, featuring a bit of nihilistic defeatism that made me question why I even bother with writing and publishing anyway. I go through this on occasion, especially when writing is particularly hard or publishing is in turmoil or a little bit of both. I have a tendency to be a pessimist (shocker, I know), especially toward publishing, but even with all of my doubts and insecurities, I had an idea for another book yesterday (an old idea from 2010, revisited), so there’s that.

I did manage to start working on the rewrite for BLOOD OF SALT, TEARS OF PEARL again, though I spent several days just staring at it in annoyance and frustration, trying to figure out why it wasn’t working. My husband thinks I am too hard on myself, and no one else is ever going to overthink each plot point and worldbuilding detail to the same degree that I do, but I can’t help it. I’m always pushing myself to produce my best work, and I know I can do better than what is in front of me. I’m not necessarily pushing for perfection, because that is impossible, but I am trying to make it right, so that the story on the page ends up as close to the one in my head as possible, and it’s just not there yet.

I ended up deciding to revisit the outline I had constructed, rearrange a few things, and slow the story down a little bit in the beginning. I think I was trying to do too much all at once, and it just wasn’t working the way I wanted. I had some early reader feedback a couple months ago from a fellow writer whose opinion I trust, and they also thought I was trying to rush too much too fast. (I didn’t initially agree, but I see it now.) Because I started over again, I don’t have a definite word count for the project for the month. I’ve just been rearranging and rewriting what I had already started, so there’s not much quantifiable progress at the moment. But I am making progress.

I also spent a lot of time working on my D&D campaign, which is going well so far! Everyone seems really interested and engaged in the story I’ve set up. Hopefully, the interest continues.

I still haven’t returned to regular updates on my game blog or writing talk livestreams. Maybe I will start back up this month. I promise, you should be thankful to have been spared my defeatist attitude this last month.

Word Counts in February:

Blog/Newsletter: 881
D&D: 9,667
BLOOD OF SALT, TEARS OF PEARL: ?

Total Words Written in February: 10,548
Total Words Written in 2021: 18,973

Plans for March:

Now that I’ve finally started working on BLOOD OF SALT, TEARS OF PEARL again, that’s my main priority for the month. I’m not particularly concerned about word count at this point. I just want to get the story right, and then worry about cleaning up the prose. My overall goal is still 135,000 words for the finished second draft, but I don’t have a daily or monthly word count goal I’m trying to hit. As long as I’m making progress, whatever that looks like, I’ll take it.

I’ll also be working on the D&D campaign week to week, writing up descriptions and building out NPC dialogue, quests, and that sort of thing. I’m going to probably focus on that one day a week, or more, depending on how writing the novel is going.