How’d I do last month?

• Reread the completed Thunder Road and Tombstone Blues novels and make some notes before diving back into Book 3.
• Reread everything I’ve already written for Book 3.
• Reorganize my research notes and the scenes that were written while the book was resting, and insert them into the manuscript.
• Start writing Book 3 again.

Not too bad, I was hoping to have all that reading done, but it’s been a busy month. I’ve started teaching a teen writing workshop for ACI Manitoba, and while I knew it would take more time than I expected, it is taking even more than that. I am enjoying teaching though, and it’s been a good experience so far. Rereading the previous books, while important, wasn’t nearly as vital as getting through all of my notes and rough draft material, because now I can actually start drafting again, and I have written a couple of new scenes I’m pretty happy with (Now if only I could find a title I like…).

So, what are my goals for February?

• An hour of new words, every day, regardless of what else is going on. My buddy Kevin Madison has been doing an hour of drawing every day since 2013 with some amazing results. Word count isn’t so important to me with this experiment as forcing myself to make the time. I experimented with it during the last weeks of January and managed to draft a short story I’ve been thinking about writing for a while. I’m not setting a hard word count for this goal; 1000 words would be nice, but I’m thinking that I must draft roughly a page, so 250-350 in each sitting. I’m keeping a running total of how many words and which project they belong to). Some of these words will be for Book 3, but I’ve got a few short stories on the go too.
• Get my short fiction house in order, by which I mean: finally enter the last round of story rejections into my submissions tracker and fire them back into the world again.
• Reread the completed Thunder Road and Tombstone Blues novels and make notes relevant to Book 3.
• Turn in my article to Prairie Books Now.

Write on!