While I’m still stuck in idle on The Perfect Daughter — I only managed 414 words of rewriting — I was still fairly busy during May. Final word count for the month was 22,540 against a goal of 20,000, which means that as of this writing I’m currently at 92.84% of my annual goal. In other words, I’m still behind, but I’m managing a pace that will eventually catch me up. In fact, that could come as soon as this month.
So what was I working on instead?
- I finished up five rewrites of old fan fiction stories: Sweet Riddles and The Witch in the Mirror (Star Trek: Voyager), Time for Grief (Star Trek: Discovery), Cruising Speed (Firefly), and Lent (Earth 2).
- I revamped the Q&A section of this web site, although I’m still working on posts to answer the questions themselves. (I got two question posts out this month, and wrote about half of a third.)
- I drafted two new pieces of fan fiction: Alternate Pathways (Earth 2) and Crossed Lines (Scarecrow and Mrs. King).
- I worked on another new piece of fan fiction, called “Washing Our Feet in the Tide,” also set in the Scarecrow and Mrs. King universe.
- I put together a large timeline document for The Roscaran Chronicles, which is an original shared-universe that I have under development.
- I got a few more chapters of All That Mattered outlined, though I’m still only partway done with the outline.
So, I’ve been busy. Just not with The Perfect Daughter, which is now becoming something of the elephant in the room. In order to keep it from getting any worse, I’ve given myself a deadline of the end of July to have that first draft done.
In the meantime, I’m giving myself permission to work on fan fiction. I should note, though, that I’m pretty close to finishing up the revise-and-repost project aside of one very long item that’s going to need a complete rewrite. This is a good thing, but it does mean that I’m going to have to do more work to keep my word count on track.
That’s not exactly a bad thing, though.
During June, I’ll be traveling to Burbank, California, for the Scarecrow and Mrs. King reunion at The Hollywood Show. I’m hoping to talk with some other fan fiction writers there, while we’re standing in the autograph lines. The idea is to come back with some new ideas and insights.
In the meantime, there’s still plenty to do and a lot to look forward to, even when I don’t consider the elephant in the room. And when I do, I have reason to believe that, too, has potential.
It’s going to be a good month.