Writing Progress

I'm going to take a moment to sit down and talk to you. Not at you like I do with most of my posts, but to you.

Yes, you.

As you may know I started this blog as a way to promote my writing. I post the occasional helpful writing tip as well as a plethora of other things.

Satyrs anyone?

But I've noticed that, in the process, I don't talk much about my actual writing. Oh I give examples and the like, but if I were to personally ask any of you what I'm currently writing you'd just shrug your shoulders and say "I dunno."

When I gave myself a moment to really stop and think about it, I realized I have never told you guys because I'm afraid of letting you down. I don't want to hype a story only to make you guys wait two, three, maybe even four years (I'm being highly pessimistic here) to be able to read it, and that's if you even get to read it at all. What would be worse than announcing a story only later to scrap it because it never worked out?

The problem with not telling you guys anything at all is that you're left in the dark, and then you might start wondering if I'm even doing anything at all.

But fear not, today that all changes! I trepidly step out into unknown territory and reveal to you guys all of my writing progress, whether it's nearing completion or just a spark in my mind, including what round number of editing I'm in. To give you an idea, Dusted took 3-4 full edits, beginning to end. This won't be an exact number for all of my manuscripts, as the length of the story and how much work it needs will vary. Some may require only a few editing rounds, some may need tons.

So, here is my honest progress (the number of them should also show you why you shouldn't pitch your own ideas to writers):

Dusted: Needs new cover and editing.

All Just Survivors: On editing round 2, has 76,395 words. Procrastinating. (To give you a comparison, Dusted clocks in at 74,858 words, and it gained 10,000-20,000 words after editing.)

The Crystal Witch: 17,192 words in. Current focus.

Dreaming (AKA: Dusted 2: The Dustening): 32,963 words. Currently on hiatus.

The Witches of Dunraven (working title): 13,408 words. Resisting urge to work on it so I can focus on other, more complete works.

Lady of Crows: A spark. Resisting urge to even start it so I can focus on other work.


So there they are. This doesn't even include abandoned works, ideas that aren't even a spark yet, or works that need reviewing or writing, but aren't even on the back burner (mentally double or even triple this list for that.)

The problem is, when it comes to writing, I work best at shotgunning. I used to force myself to work on one thing at a time, but that often caused me to lax, sometimes for months at a time. By shotgunning, I'm all over the place. When I find myself getting tired of one thing, I'll jump to the other and work on it until I'm feeling up to working on the first one again. I'll admit, I probably won't get something done in a reasonable amount of time, but it's far more efficient than burning out and doing nothing at all. Best of all, when someone else is helping to read through and edit one manuscript, I'm working on yet another.

Have any questions? Curious about any of them? I'd be happy to provide descriptions of them (note that the less they're worked on the more vague of an answer you'll get). A few people have asked about the sequel to Dusted, so expect to hear about that in more detail another time.