Hi all!
I’m writing another update because… *checks calendar* it’s May?!
I have no idea how this happened and I didn’t approve February, March and April to go by as fast as they did. But they did and here we are. Since it’s been about three months since my last post, it’s time for another.
Last time, I’d mentioned that I’d been querying for QG and had no luck so I started a new series. I had called it FT1 (fairy tale 1) as at the time I didn’t have a title, but now I do. I normally like to keep it a secret in case it changes, but it’s already all over my social media.
It’s called Heart & Darkness.
(Gah, my heart skipped a beat writing that. Which is weird because like I said, I’ve already announced the title and have it plastered everywhere I could.)
As per my last post:
My plan is to have FT1 written before the end of the summer. This gives me about seven months, which I think is definitely doable. Especially if I start soon, which I think I will. I just need to work on the main story arc for the series a bit more. There are A LOT of threads I need to connect so I really need to know what’s going to happen in each book. I have an idea of where each book is going to end, but I’ve been moving plot points around so I’m still working on outlining the series. But, FT1 is fairly solid. I know how the story starts and where it will end. I need to flesh it out more, but I think I should be able to start writing within a month.
So what is going on?
I’m glad you asked.
So here’s the run down of my progress:
- January 17th – I created the document in Scrivener.
- January 17th to February 2nd – I outlined the book and series, created character biographies, drew two maps, and a bunch of other things to get me ready to write.
- February 3rd – I started writing the first chapter of Heart & Darkness.
- February – I had a total of 22 writing days (almost the whole month!) and wrote a total of roughly 11,000 words.
- March – I had 12 writing days and wrote almost 5,000 words.
- April – I had 11 writing days, but only 2,700 words.
By the time of this post, I had wanted to have half, roughly 62,500 words, completed, but clearly that hadn’t happened. I’m not even a quarter of the way done at this point. (I’m at 23,000 in case you’re wondering.)
But that’s okay.
I’m still plodding along and I know I will get it done. I’ve been in a bit of a writing slump these last two months (mostly because of life stuff, but some story issues too). I’m hoping now that things have settled down at home that I’m able to focus more on writing and can get the chapters done quicker.
On average, I can write two or three chapters a week which for this book is about 5,000 to 7,500 words. I don’t know that I’ll hit my original goal of June 24th, but it’s possible. Scrivener tells me I have to hit 1,800 words a day to finish by that date (at least word count wise), which isn’t outrageous, but when I break it down by chapter…
I’d have to write 23 chapters in May and 23 chapters in June, which if you do the math…is almost a chapter a day.
It’s not impossible. When the words are flowing I can definitely accomplish that. When I was writing QG, I could easily write 2,000 or more in a single sitting, but for Heart & Darkness, it’s a little more complicated because my current WIP has seven POVs.
This means that each chapter I have to get into a different character’s head and they each have a different mindset and personality. For some characters, I can easily slip into their mindset, but for others, I have to sit awhile and think of what is happening and how they’d feel. It makes it harder to write more than one chapter a day as it’s not the same narrator. A lot of times, I’ll finish a chapter and if I’m not completely burnt out, I’ll start the next chapter, but more often then not, I change it because it isn’t right. My mind is still in the previous character’s head.
That’s partly why I’m writing this post now. I just finished writing a chapter (the hardest one to date as it took me the whole month of April to complete) and I’m taking a mental break by writing this, hoping that when I return to my story, I’ll be able to change brains. Fingers crossed it worked.
I think that just about covers everything I wanted to say. Maybe I’ll write another blog post at the end of May. If I remember or feel there’s a need to. In the meantime, here’s two TikToks I posted about Heart & Darkness. If you have TikTok and want to check out all my videos on my current WIP (and my cats) you can find me.