Artifice of Power Update # 16

Here’s my weekly update and unfortunately, this week didn’t go well for writing. And I don’t mean “I had a rough week and only got 5,000 words written even though that’s triple what other authors write in a week”, either. I got my goals on track for about a day and then got hit with a nasty cold that had me laid up in bed for a couple days, then hit my husband so I had to take over all child-management while still sick and working full days, then it hit my kiddo. I still got about 1,200 words written and I am still feeling good about my progress in the book overall. I am about 10k words past the middle of the book, after all, and the progress is pretty smooth when I get to it… but this wasn’t a writing week

I initially said, in the beginning of these updates, that I wanted to have early warning for my readers if I was falling off. I think we can all understand that one week where my entire household was sick is just a blip, not a crisis. It still feels off, though, and it is making me intentionally push my timeline back into late October for finishing the draft instead of late September.

Now, of course one week of lost progress doesn’t require an entire month to make up, but this blip isn’t the only reason for that adjustment. Another major reason is that my ten-year anniversary with my husband is in two weeks and I’m not expecting great writing progress while I’m out learning falconry on a weekend excursion with my husband. I’ve also had a couple of instances where I wanted to go back to earlier parts of the draft and make substantial adjustments so that later portions flow better. That has meant that while I kept my writing numbers goals, my actual progress through the book has derailed a couple times. I have probably 60k words left to write, and doing that in 30 days would require doubling my daily goals. That’s asking a lot.

The good news is that I baked some leeeway into my timelines, so pushing the end of this draft back into late October shouldn’t delay the actual release date, since I’m planning my first round of serious feedback to prep final edit in January. Still plenty of time to get this book ready for next year’s release. The adjustment may affect some of the other, secondary projects I had for supplemental material, but of course, those are of less importance than the actual novel anyway.

Sorry I don’t have great new progress to report, but we all have those weeks where everything else just needs our time. I’m excited to finally have time to get back to writing this week!