April 2024 was a bit of a rough month for me, writing-wise, and my final word count then was under 2K. I’m pleased to see that, this April, I can at least report a word count of five figures: 13,750 exactly. Unfortunately, that figure only represents a little over seventy percent of my monthly goal, meaning that I’ve fallen behind on catching up the annual goal. As of this writing I’m at 86.45%.
I spent a healthy amount of my writing time going through with self-publishing “Whitewood,” which took a more effort than I thought it would (although I learned a lot, so I’ll be able to shorten the process in the future.) I’ve also created a hard-copy version of Standing in the Dark for anyone who might wish to purchase one, but aside of listing it on this site, I don’t plan to promote it. (I’ve already done some promotion for “Whitewood.”)
The other major project I took on this month was shutting down my blog. I’d been having a good hard think about what, exactly, it is that I want out of my creative writing, and to my surprise I’ve discovered that it isn’t accolades I’m after. It’s publication: the idea of seeing my name on something that someone else can buy and read for pleasure.
Don’t get me wrong; every writer who publishes dreams about national bestsellers, and I’m no different. But the perspective I’ve gained from understanding that I’m not trying to be a full-time, professional writer has given me a chance to re-evaluate both where I am and where I’d like to go. The truth is, I like my “day job.” I do see it as a career. And I’m really a better writer for having a non-writing job during the day. (I’m also better at the day job for writing before and/or after work every day.)
As such, I’ve migrated all of my writing-related posts over to this site, with the understanding that I will only add new ones every now and then. They’ll continue to be at least monthly since I always do a monthly update, but I won’t commit to any more often than that. I’d rather focus on my fiction work.
The other big thing I ran into was The Perfect Daughter itself. I wrote the first 19% of it this month, but I hated it. The main character was, put bluntly, a cast-iron b*tch. That definitely was not what I’d originally had in mind, so I stopped work on it to give it its own good hard look. It wasn’t until the very end of the month — when I was out of town on business — that I figured out what I wanted to do to address this. And that gives me a good place to start for May.
I’ve also already begun outlining All that Mattered (the sequel to Standing in the Dark), and I’ve made some real progress on updating and reposting all of my old fan fiction.
So although I’m frustrated at missing my overall goal, it was not a bad month. I will still characterize it as rough, though not as rough as this month last year. But I’m also exiting with a plan and a lot of reasons for hope, and that makes a big difference. I fully expect I’ll hit my goals in May.