In my defense, I'm writing

So I do apparently need to make a note in my calendar when I should blog. The pandemic/lockdowns have really messed with my perception of time. When I thought about blogging, I thought "I just did that" - but "just" was three weeks ago. 

In my defense, I'm at the stage in the book where I've basically upped sticks and am now living in my book. The characters are more real to me than people I've met in the flesh, and I'm both looking forward to being "done" and dreading it a little. It's a huge investment of energy and focus at this point in time, and I don't have capacity for much else that's also going on. 

So when I blogged three weeks ago, the book was standing at about 80k. I've been going at a solid clip and am now closing in on 97k. So this will be even longer than Mean Machine, which was already a beast. 

My characters are now weirdly adorable to each other. I think my favourite thing about this couple is that they communicate quite seriously and earnestly and are smart enough to really nail down what's going on and how they feel. I've at times written avoidant characters, but these guys feel grown up and mature and they totally deserve their happy ending. 

Then I was approached by a budding writer today to talk about writing. And since that's one of my other favourite things to do in my life, I'm thinking I might go back to developing a workshop to be held over Zoom or Discord to help writers. I might charge a nominal fee (£5/10) or go completely free on this and just take donations (as the pandemic has hit lots of people pretty badly). I'm going to think about that some more, but basically I've always enjoyed teaching/mentoring writers and want to get back into it.

In any case, the book will get done before the end of the month. I know there's going to be 2-3 large scenes of 1-2k each left and that's it. Beyond that, I only see black, so the inner movie is done after that. June will be the month when I clean up the book and get the book off to editors and betas. I'm thinking September could be a good release month - it's the time when the book is set, so that would suit it quite nicely. I'm also still pondering titles, hence I'm just talking about "the book" here for the moment. But - things are moving in the right direction. For the moment, I'm trying to build back up to one novel per year and then speed up again once I've handed in my resignation at the day job.