A. B. KEUSER

It’s almost Valentine’s Day and I’m choosing to fall back in love with one of my books that I’ve lost interest in. I’m doing it by tearing it apart and turning it into something else entirely!

I still love the concept, but, having put about 60,000-words in it, I’ve come to the conclusion that the reason I haven’t been able to finish it is that I’ve clearly gone down the wrong track. So I’m going to print out the pages, delete anything that doesn’t work for me and see what I need to change from the parts that do work.

Would I have liked to figure all of this out sooner? Definitely. But it’s a learning experience and that’s better than nothing, right?

Anyone else in this spot? Or am I the only one staring down at a mess of my own creation?


Join the insecure posting.

Writing
72,000-words

I’ve got my days set up in a long checklist of to-dos. The plan is to get 30K into a cyberpunk style story, 28k into science fantasy that has been slowly consuming my soul for twelve or so years, and then 14k set aside for free writing/admin (brain breaks, blog posts, and jotting down plot bunny notes so I can save them for another day, that sort of thing).

Reading
5 books

This month’s TBR includes:
Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard
Outriders by Jay Posey
Mesoamerican Mythology by Kay Almere Read
Monstress by Marjorie Liu
Dusu by Sebastian A Jones

Going to see if I can’t get those first two read, since I didn’t manage them last month.

My research book this month was a christmas present and I confused my mother in law with how much I geeked out over it (I almost started reading it then and there). I am honestly considering taking a trip down to Mexico to see if I can’t find a better selection of books on the subject--a perk of being able to read Spanish fluently.

Editing

On…

Words Written: 34,168 in 23 days
(Average: 1,486/day
8 Projects + Admin (11%)

I didn’t reach my goal of 57k. Not by a long shot. But I’m not stressing about that. It’s better than four months from last year, and as long as I’ve got an average of 1k/day (of the month, not actual writing days), I’m willing to count that as a win.

It’s been a rough start to the year, which invariably impinges on the writing stuff. So mostly I’ve been doing world building and nonsense like that. Things that add eventual depth to the story, but will probably never make it onto the finished page.

Pages Edited: 164
I’ve been sneaking these in wherever and whenever I can. But the bigger changes are oddly the easier to deal with, so these finite changes are taking FOR EVER to deal with. Next month should see a higher number *fingers crossed*.

Books Read: 7

I only got to 3 of the 5 books in my proposed stack. But I’m on track for the GR challenge, so I’m definitely not complaining. I started on Red Queen, but hav…