July 2023 in writing
July was a trainwreck.
I had planned to finish my first draft by the 20th. Instead, I slowed down and even stopped my progress due to a confluence of issues. I’m barely past my end-of-June word count at the end of July.
I’m hoping this is a blip.
My plan for August is to finish the damned thing. And start the 2nd draft.
Archer
We had to put Archer down on the 14th, five months after his initial cancer diagnosis.
Without going into too much detail here, I’m glad we got to spend the time we did with him. He needed a lot of love and attention in his final weeks. We’re all missing him.
I’ve missed a lot of workouts and days of writing, and that’s ok. I have a streak of a few days of writing in a row under my belt now. Hopefully this sticks.
3rd POV Issues
As I mentioned in my previous blog posts (1, 2), I hit a block in the 3rd POV and decided to start the outline over. Then when life interfered, I started writing without a solid outline.
This all happened at the worst time. In the first two POVs, I was able to get through harder days by leaning heavily on my outline: I just needed to write the scene as outlined. Crappy words are better than no words.
Losing that anchor when everything else turned upside down made it hard to motivate myself to write. Perhaps it would have been better to finish the story using the broken outline than to cast myself adrift.
Diablo
I’ve been playing a lot of Diablo IV lately. In a way it’s good to distract myself, and in a way it’s a time sink that prevents me from fulfilling my goals.
I’ve been bingeing the Writing Excuses podcast while playing, which both keeps my mind on the craft and is somewhat ironic. Hearing about Kevin J. Anderson’s prolific output definitely sparked a guilt trip.
I’ll get back to my scene per day habit and look at increasing my productivity after that’s fully established again.
Stats
July’s stats: