I had made a solid plan for myself to get 5 chapters done each month. I assumed that some of those chapters would need less work than others. I did not prepare for the full week that my brain decided to lean hard into executive dysfunction (sometimes known as ADHD paralysis) and therefore not work on anything…
Needless to say, I’m not quite on track with my chapter goals.
That’s okay!
I’m giving myself the tentative deadline of July 1st to finish my edits. I say tentative because…well I’m bad with self-enforced deadlines. Official deadlines with other people depending on it? Say no more, I’ll get it to you early. But if it’s just me, myself, and I working on a project that does not effect any one else…oh boy. I’m working on that. In the meantime, I’m giving myself twice as long as I actually thought it would take if I…you know…dedicated myself to getting it done. “Oh it shouldn’t take more than 3 months, since I wrote the first draft in like 1.5 months…” into “okay, so I’m giving myself 6 months and won’t be mad if it actually takes another year…”
In terms of responsibilities, I have very few. I only have a fur-baby in the form of my sweet almost 3 year old golden retriever, and my partner who has his own solitary hobbies. There is no reason I would be unable to work on my writing every night…alas, I do not. And that’s okay.
I’m making a solid deal with myself to try and get a chapter done every week. That’s 20 more weeks for about 20 chapters.
I love how the chapters so far are going. Sometimes I read them and hate their guts, but I still feel like I’m actively making them better with every round of changes. I’ve rewritten my first chapter about three times now, so I’m trying to move on from that and focus on getting the rest of the story details set.
As, I think, I’ve mentioned before, I’m working on changing the motivations for some characters to make more sense in the world as a whole. Some of them I had in mind during my first couple of drafts but didn’t actually show it in the chapters…whoops. Do I remember where I was going with them? Nope. Do I think what I came up with is probably stronger than the original? Heck yeah.
This book has never been an exercise in speed. I knew it would be one of those that takes me a long time but teaches me a lot. I’m getting antsy to share it, but I want it to be as good as possible before then.
Random Things on my mind:
- I want to start an Author Newsletter, but I’m not sure if we’re quite there yet
- Is anybody else on Substack? Is anybody else intimidated by Substack?
- Artist Way starting March 1. Anybody want to join?
Hope you all have a great week!
Happy Writing!
Rachel
Subtle Stories 