I’d like to begin this week’s progress report by thanking all of you awesome people who’ve followed, liked and/or commented on my blog!

Here are this week’s stats:

Words Written This Week: 1,775

Words Written For Book So Far: 30,181 in order/55,624 total (less than last week due to some revision…see below)

Last Chapter of Rough Draft Completed: Chapter 8, still hammering out Chapter 9

Chapters To Go (subject to change): 15/16

Days Until October 11th Goal Date: 75

Thoughts: I’m going to tell you that this week was just as challenging as last week, maybe even more so. I finished the Captive Prince trilogy on Monday, but it is still on my mind. So much so that on my way to work on Tuesday, I decided to play a little game in my head: let’s see what happens when my story’s two heroes meet Damen and Laurent.

Now, I don’t want to share my characters’ names yet, but suffice it to say that Damen and my Character-A resemble each other closely, in both personality and how I imagine they look. Laurent and my Character-B slightly resemble each other, but their personalities are quite different with a few shared tendencies. So this imagined conversation was pretty entertaining for me…until Laurent started suggesting that Character-B was making it too easy for Character-A. Make him sweat a little, he said. And it hit me like a ton of bricks…my story is too easy at times.

I’ve been slowly reading a book by Josh Lanyon about writing m/m romance (review to come after I actually finish it). One of the biggest things it emphasizes that didn’t quite click until I read Captive Prince is that in romantic fiction, the conflict has to remain constant until the conclusion. The conflict can morph and change, but it has to be present in each and every scene in order to keep the reader interested. I suppose I was subconsciously aware of this, as I’ve read quite a lot of romantic fiction in my life, but it never registered completely…at least, not until a certain Veretian Prince suggested it in his haughty, self-righteous voice.

Character-A’s jaw dropped. Damen chuckled to himself. Character-B considered it. Laurent smirked proudly. And for the first time since I wrote the all of the chapter outlines almost a month ago, I had to do a major rewrite on the Chapter 9 outline. Thank goodness Laurent spoke up when he did, otherwise it might not have worked (he’s crafty like that, lol).

Something amazing that did happen this week that I’ve been waiting for: I finally have a title for my book. I have been trying to settle on a title since deciding that this piece of writing wasn’t just going to be fan fiction, and it has been DIFFICULT. I legit have an entire page in my writer’s notebook filled with title ideas only. I’ve thought about it while driving, while listening to music (I cannot tell you how many song lyrics/titles were considered), but nothing sounded or felt quite right.

Until Tuesday night…can you guess where it came from?

I was shamefully re-reading the first chapter of Captive Prince, when a single word jumped out at me. Like my character’s names, I don’t want to share yet because I want to make sure I’ve really settled on it. But it is an incredible relief to finally have a title that feels right.

My goal for next week is to get Chapters 9 and 10 down, and smooth out any kinks left over from the shift caused by the changes in Chapter 9.

Note to self: Sometimes, picking up a guilty pleasure when you know you should be re-focusing pays off.