March has come and gone (and good riddance, I say. This was the second year in a row that I’ve spent most of the month sick), so how’d I do with my monthly goals?

• Reread one of my novel WiPs to refamiliarize myself with a work that I’ve been mostly ignoring since the summer.
• Finish a comic script I’ve been noodling on.
• Finish drafting that novella I’ve been noodling on.

Not bad. Could’ve been better, but I didn’t count on getting a cold/flu that lingered for over two weeks. I did complete another draft on that comic script, but it still doesn’t feel ready to send away.

The novella was the first thing to get finished in the month, and I’m pretty sure I still want to add a few scenes to it, and flesh some things out, but I like the characters and the weird little made up city they’re running around in. This was the first time I’ve tried writing a novella, but the drafting was relatively painless. It was also one of my more heavily outlined projects to date. Possibly why the drafting went so well. Not enough data points yet to decide whether I want to move away from pantsing a story to outlining first.

I only read most of that novel WiP. I reread all of the chapters I had considered mostly “locked in”, revisited the outline, and read the next fifty or so pages of rough drafts, to get a feel for where I’d left off, and where I was going. I did manage to lock in one more chapter and do another draft on the next one, which I hadn’t been expecting to get to. I feel pretty good about this book, so I’m excited to get back to it.

Which brings me to my April goals (no foolin’):

• Work on my other WiP
• Revise and submit one of my previously drafted short stories.
• Get rolling on keeping the rest of my short fiction on submission again (FINALLY)
• Finish my comic script

Write on!