February 2023: Two fifths of a novel!

In my progress post at the end of January, I mentioned that I had finally figured out the ending to my YA romantic fantasy, Facing the Music.

After spending a bit of time reading over old notes and giving it thoughts, I finally took the plunge on February 4 and put pen to paper (fingers to keyboard?).

I made my daily goal 300 words, but I discovered that in these early stages of the story, there was a lot of material in the old drafts that could still be used with minimal adaptation. Some days, I did only manage to go through 300-500 words. There was one day where all I managed was 97.

But most of the time, I managed much more than that, resulting in just over 18,000 words in my new document over 25 days. My target for the finished manuscript is currently 50,000 so I’m roughly 2/5 of the way there.

Having said all that, I have been up and down with motivation to work on the story. I’m still feeling motivated at the moment but I am reaching the point where a lot of old material will be less reusable for various reasons, and I’ll have to be writing many more new words. It’s possible a break will be due before the next month is up.

Fortunately, I’ve got some options for other projects to work on:

Draft 1 of Drosselmeier book three.
Edit the short story I finished in January.
Write a submission for Canberra REP’s new program, “The ‘Logues“.

In fact, if I’m honest, taking a break from drafting and doing some editing does sound appealing. Don’t judge me, I like editing! 😂 But we’ll see how it goes.

How’s your March shaping up?