Didn't hear your wicked words every day

At the end of March, I owe a good, solid draft of Jacaranda to the very fine folks at Subterranean - and I intend to deliver. Oh, I've had CRAPPY draft hammered out since January, but I'm sure as hell not handing THAT in; and I've learned that it's best (for me, personally, YMMV) to let these things cool off for awhile before returning to them for editing purposes. So as you know Bob, I gave myself February "off" from that project, and got a running start on Chapelwood instead.

But now I'm back on the case.

It'd be nice to assume I had a whole freaking month to do rewrites on this novella, but that might not be the real-life situation over here - depending on what else comes down the pipeline in the next few weeks. Copyedits for Maplecroft and revisions on Princess X are the two big Damoclean ceiling-swords at the moment, and either one of them could drop at any time - essentially taking a rocket-launcher to my carefully laid plans for productivity.

Therefore, all I can do is try to stay ahead of everything, all the time, all at once. No biggie, right? [:: cue maniacal laughter and tears ::]

For the moment, I'm divvying up my days like this: Mornings go to Chapelwood, afternoons go to Jacaranda rewrites. But this means Chapelwood is getting the short end of the production stick, because I'm not usually ready to get rolling until 10:00 a.m. or so (if I'm lucky).*

Therefore, I expect word count totals to be down significantly over the next few weeks, but I WILL try to tackle Chapelwood daily. Even if it's only a few hundred words at a time.

Since revisions are much more difficult to quantify (for me, personally, YMMV), I won't bother with a meter for Jacaranda. All you'll get with these sorts of posts are the same stat stylings you've seen for the last month.

Like so:

Here's recent progress on my witchy art-deco horror novel about Lizzie Borden thirty years after her parents' deaths - now featuring ghosts and non-ghosts alike, anti-Catholic conspiracy nuts, supernatural political shenanigans, the mafia, and a Bonus! space-worshiping murder cult hiding behind the KKK:
Project: Chapelwood
Deadline: October 1, 2014
New words written: 3174 (meh)
Present total word count: 42,401



Things accomplished in fiction: Caught up, compared notes; visited a very interesting man in a very weird hospital.

Next up: Finish the hospital visit and go to church.

Things accomplished in real life: [today] Neighborhood jaunt with dog; went to the bank; went to Walgreens; cleared out my inbox; paid some bills.

Other: The daily/semi-daily posts may or may not continue, depending on what else lands on my plate this month. I'll try to keep up with it - and of course, the very MOMENT I can share the Maplecroft cover, I'll splash that bad-boy all over the place. Or if there's, you know. Any other awesome news to share. I'll post that too, rest assured.

Number of fiction words so far this year: 75,812 (can't complain.)


* I'm almost always up around 8:00-8:30 a.m., but Greyson gets a 45-minute morning walk and I have to, like, put some pants on and stuff. Sometimes. Also, mornings are my errand-running time because the husband and I share a car - and his errand-running time is in the afternoons.