The First Half Of April

It is halfway through the month of April now. I thought I'd let my reports slack off a little so that I could spend more time writing on stories rather than writing about writing on stories. Maybe I shouldn't have waited though, because, for the first time since I started all of this, I fell short of my goal...twice.

On April second I suffered from a brain fart. I was certain that I'd hit my goal that day, but on the third, when I went to enter my word count in, I realized that I hadn't ever entered the word count for the day before. When I checked, I saw that I hadn't even made it to 1,000 words on the second. I don't know why. I thought I'd finished my writing on my lunchbreak the day before, but apparently I had not, and I'd forgotten to finish it up. Whoops!

Then it got worse, because a week later, we went west to the Texas Hill Country to watch the solar eclipse. I'd meant to write my words in the morning before we left, but instead I spent all my time packing and getting things ready, and the thought never crossed my mind. I groaned when I realized what I'd done while driving north. Now I was going to have to write my words on my phone. I could do that, and have done that many times. 

While on our cruise, I took my wireless keyboard with me, and it was as easy as writing at home. I hadn't brought my wireless keyboard with me this time, though. I was going to have to type on the phone's onscreen keyboard as if I were texting someone. That's a hard way to write 1,333 words, but it was doable. I'd written more than 1,000 words in less than an hour that way already during this process, so I knew it could be done.

Then, that night, when all was dark, we were in our sleeping bags and drifting off for the night, my eyes popped open in panic. I hadn't written still. I'd completely forgotten, and now I was in bed. Should I get out and go tap away at my phone screen for an hour or so to put in my time? I decided against it, and just went to sleep. Everybody messes up sometimes. I've been virtually perfect so far, I could cut myself a break once in a while.

So, I'm about 2,000 words short on my total this month. I should be closer to 21,000 words, but I'm only at 19,000. I'm a little behind on my progress toward the goal. At half the month, I've only got 48.33% of my words written. I bet I'll still get there, though. I'll keep closing that gap, and by month's end, I'll have outpaced the meter and managed 100%.

19329 / 39990 (48.33%)

So, that was the month. How is the year coming along. Well, here is the charts for the entire time I've been at this. We're now into three images to make it all fit. 

I'm officially over the 200,000 word mark. That's pretty sweet. I still haven't quite made it to the halfway mark for the year, I think that is April 27th, but I'm past the 2/3rds mark toward the goal. As you can see from this meter below:

207903 / 304475 (68.28%)

So, the train rolls on, as far as that goes.

But those aren't my only goals for the month. As I said at the start of the month, I don't want to raise my word count yet, because there are other things that I want to be working on along with writing. I've been adding in non-writing goals like publishing stories on Amazon and the like for the last few months, and I did it again for April.

My first goal was to do story craft research by watching some of these Tyler Mowery videos as working them into the outline for my story idea called, "Skeleton Crew."

I did a little of that, but precious little. I need to step it up, too, because I'm sliding into home plate with "Digital Wizards." That story is going to be done soon, and I'll have to start something else. Will I be ready when that time comes? Not if I don't get with it.

I've been letting myself get distracted with other things...they're also writing-related things, but they weren't the goals I made at the start of the month. For example, I put together and published a second collection of my short stories this past week. This past few days, I've been struggling to remember how to go about formatting the book for its paperback edition. I'm almost done, and then I'll have that available for purchase as well.

On top of that, I've been helping Rish Outfield get covers made for his stories so that he can publish them. I've also been going through and redoing all of his really shitty old covers so that they match with the new style and don't suck so bad that people will click away rather than buy. There are still about twenty more of those covers to finish, but for now I'm focusing on the paperback manuscript. When Rish catches up, getting all the stories I've given him covers for republished, then I'll see about making some more.

I also plan on helping Rish get paperback and hardcover versions of some of the things he's published. He's putting out a few story collections right now as well, and I'm in the zone as far as manuscript formatting goes, so I could pop them out really quickly, I'm sure.

So, I'm getting a little distracted, but I'm doing things that are really worthwhile, at least.

My other goal for April was to get the audio for Kingdom of Flies and Fireflies published. I haven't been slacking on that one. I recorded and edited one of the two stories that was missing, as well as formatting and uploading all of the files that I already have. Now, I just have to get the title story, "Kingdom of Flies" recorded and edited, and I'll be totally done with that. I think I'll probably make it, though I'll be competing with my Anklecast episode for editing time.

Things are still humming along really well, and you can look forward to a lot of stuff coming at you from old Big Anklevich. Once I finish with this collection, I'll get the last collection out. Then I'll get going on the novels that I have already written. Then...well, by the time I'm done with that, it'll probably be 2025 and I'll have several more novels to publish. I guess it'll be a constant race from here on out trying to publish what I write. Should be interesting. Maybe if some people actually start buying stuff, I might even be able to get somebody to help me and win that race, but I'm not expecting it.