Day 1 – 2571
Day 2 – 1042
Day 3 – 2011
Day 4 – 2684
Day 5 – 856
Day 6 – 1700
Day 7 – 3573
Day 8 – 3626
Day 9 – 2510
Day 10 – 2075
Day 11 – 1762
Day 12 – 542
Day 13 – 5185
Total Word So Far: 30,137
Today I was on fire with my best day so far at over 5k words and pushing me over that 30k edge, and it’s only the 13th! I set my goal for this month at 50k, but I think 60k is reasonable, so I’m calling this the halfway mark. Of course, I’d love to hit higher, but we’ll see. Like I said, I’ve been pacing myself with other projects, and it seems to be working.
I had a breakthrough over the weekend despite writing so few words the last two days. A couple different things came together for me, tying up some stragglers from books one and two and integrating a new idea I came up with for a novella of sorts set in the same universe.
I need a reader magnet, and I’ve been quietly working on something for a few months, but nothing has really stuck. I’ve been playing with the idea of compiling a few short stories into a freebie I can trade for email signups, but that never really spoke to me, and I don’t think it would be super desirable for a reader. I considered giving away a full novel too, and I have a draft of something I’m not sure I’ll ever release that could be a good candidate, but I want the freebie to reflect the rest of my writing, and that book is just…not it.
So a novella seems to be the smartest thing, I just have to find time to write it! And revise it! And stay on schedule with everything else! I do feel like I only have so many words in me a day, and though that number’s going up, I fear for the quality of them. I legitimately have no idea how Chris Fox manages 5000 words an hour, but I’m willing to make the effort to see if I can ever do it.
I’m happy to be pushing through this draft, hopping from scene to scene, making things happen, but the revisions are going to need to be really heavy handed. That’s probably okay since I knew going into the Vacancy project and turning it from serial to trilogy that I needed to be open to messing up everything, it’s just daunting. I don’t want to come to a place where I can’t move forward, especially since once The Association is out, I’ll be working on Vacancy stuff from October through, like, May 2021? And potentially won’t be drafting anything new and outside the Vacancy world until January. Man, how do people who write like nine book series do it? Especially without retconning every damn thing? (I’ve already got a huge list of things that need to be changed throughout the whole series!)
Well, I guess that’s really far off and it’s all for Future Ashley to worry about now. (Haha, sucker!) I just need to keep the words up this month and the ideas coming, and when August hits I can just hide all my Vacancy stuff away and pull out The Association for its final revisions and beta reading (hopefully to be released in October). Then in late September/October, I can pull out the Vacancy stuff again and roll my eyes at how terrible it all sounds. Ahh, yes, really looking forward to that.
A.K. Caggiano 