A. B. KEUSER

It’s Friday, time to look at what we’ve done for the last week.
March felt like three years. Here we are, almost out of april, and I feel like it’s gone by in a literal blink. I cannot tell you how often the words “time is stupid” tumble out of my mouth. 
Words written (week/YTD): 7,354 / 182,279
229 words of admin + 1 projects. 
Let this week’s numbers be further proof that fewer projects equals fewer words. I’ve got a few deadlines coming up, which means I’ve got to put all of my focus and energy into a few very specific things. I’m not perturbed by this week’s low count, though, because of the number of pages I got edited.
I blew past 2015’s April w/c yesterday, which is always a good feeling. But my “Productivity = Worth” brain continues to tell me I’m failing if I don’t write more than I’ve ever written before. I can rationalize all I like, but my brain won’t accept defeat.
121 pages edited
Pro Tip: If you’re going to work on a book without having locked down which tense you’re going to…

I’ve seen a lot of posts about how to make maps of your fantasy worlds.
And I thought I'd share mine with you.

Because this is a long-ish process, I'm breaking it up into four easy to follow parts over the next weeks.

Having a map of your own world can be useful when plotting quests, or just figuring out how things relate to each other spatially.
The maps I've created are almost exclusively for my fantasy worlds (In the Clockwork Fairy Tales as well as unpublished works).

Didn’t see part 1? Check it out here.


Prep your proportions

If your map is crazy big (like mine was) you may need to deal with that. In my case, I took a picture of the whole map and then I popped it on my computer, dropped it into a word document (because I needed to be sure it worked on a 11x17 sheet of paper) added a few minor details, and then printed the thing out on a single sheet!
You may be able to skip this step if your original version fits on a normal sheet of paper.

Break out your black marker

This step…

It’s Friday, time to look at what we’ve done for the last week.

A lot of non-writing activity this week. Means a low word count, and a lot of progress that isn’t visible on “paper”.

Words written (week/YTD): 8,046 / 174,925
325 words of admin + 3 projects.

It never fails: The fewer projects I work on in a week, the lower my w/c is. My brain needs constant flitting. It is a humming bird, and my books are only some of the flowers.

I’m very close to passing the 2015 April w/c, and I’m trying DESPERATELY to not let things on the low end of the priority spectrum distract me from what needs to get done first. But I’m very distractible right now.

20 pages edited

Content edits are great. They help me deal with finding where I forgot to write something because I skip around a lot and also with those scenes that I just can't get flowing without making a real pen bleed on the pages. Another fifty to deal with over the weekend, so… hopefully that’s the number (or higher) we seen next week.

What I’m …