Mid-month progress check-in for March

I decided early in the month that this is it, I’m finishing my next book this month. I set out a schedule and I’ve been doing my best to follow it. I like it, too, so that’s a plus.

Three days ago, I started having massive back pain and I think it’s a kidney stone.

I’ve had my best word counts for the whole month since the pain started. :-o (What?)

Silver linings and all that, I guess! I’ve found that the only comfortable place to sit in my house at the moment is at my desk because it keeps my back straighter, and a straighter back seems to be a lot less painful for me than the alternative.

I’ve written more words in the last three days than I wrote in the entirety of February.

That’s not to say I didn’t do any writing in February but it was writing related to working out details for another book that wouldn’t leave me alone and stuff like that. It was just part of the process I’ve found myself repeating time after time. I write a lot, then take a break, then struggle to get back to writing, and then do it all over again.

Sometimes it takes longer between books than others, apparently.

Also, turns out I did not make a wrong turn in my story. I rewrote (redrafted) sections of chapter 9 and chapter 10 for my current book but overall everything is the same and I’m taking the same path in the story that I thought I would be taking. What changed was how I got to where I am through the characters’ dialogue and some of the narrative. What was there just wasn’t working for me, and what’s there now has changed the way I view the characters, so there was a definite point to it. Basically, I just needed to keep working that section until things felt right and I wasn’t doing that. I was looking for some big thing that wasn’t there. In other words: the problem was the bugs in the trees, not the trees in the forest. :D